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December 22, 2002

What's wrong with this picture?

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!

The computer wins the psychological war

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.

December 23, 2002

The final protest

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.

Look at the talent assembled here tonight

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.

You're not in Kansas anymore

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.

December 26, 2002

Youngest ever to play Hastings?

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!).

December 28, 2002

FIBI Checks Kasparov

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.

December 31, 2002

More Random Fischer Rumors

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.

January 1, 2003

Kasparov Elo Astro

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.

Not Good Odds

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."

January 2, 2003

FIBI - KC - GK Part II

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!

January 3, 2003

Just Say "Lo" to Kasparov-Junior in Israel

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.

January 4, 2003

E=$<0

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.)

January 5, 2003

Slipped Him a Mickey

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.

Vik-ahn-Sea

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.

lee-NAH-race

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.

January 6, 2003

FIBI - KC - GK Part III - A Win for Kasparov

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.)

January 7, 2003

2000 + 0 = 2036

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.

Toilet Moves

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.

January 9, 2003

You Ess of A

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!)

January 10, 2003

US Championship Dirt

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?

The Ultimatum Chess Championship

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.

January 11, 2003

Mark Your Calendars

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.

"Those birthday candles are ruining my lighting!"

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.)

January 13, 2003

A Man of Letters

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.

January 14, 2003

Chess FM

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.

January 15, 2003

New York Ninja in Seattle

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.

January 16, 2003

Ken ye getchyer feckin camra aughta here?

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.

Free Ojjeh!

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.

January 17, 2003

Garry, is that you?

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 Saga Continues

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).

The Rules!

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.)

January 19, 2003

What a pair!

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.

January 21, 2003

Yet more on rules

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.)

January 22, 2003

The pawn could.. go.. all.. the.. way!

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.

January 24, 2003

The Soundbite Grandmaster

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.

January 26, 2003

Deep Junior Junior

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.

January 27, 2003

Et Tu, Boris?

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.

January 30, 2003

Not PC (press conference)

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!

January 31, 2003

Time for a Chat

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.

February 4, 2003

DJ Garry?

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.

February 6, 2003

ESPN2 Does Chess

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.

February 8, 2003

The Man of Man-Machine

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.

Chess News Network

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.

Rumblin' Stumblin' Blunderin'

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.

February 10, 2003

Chess on Wall Street

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.

February 13, 2003

Game On!

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.)

February 14, 2003

Don't Panic

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.

February 15, 2003

FIDE Confirms

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!

February 18, 2003

Escape from New Jersey

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.

February 19, 2003

Mi Buenos Aires Querido

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!

Hey Buddy, Got a Match?

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 to worry about what could happen to unification if the Kramnik-Leko world championship match collapses this year. They have to keep to a schedule or how can they raise funding and find sponsors for the unification match? "We need three million dollars. No, we don't know when the match will be or who is playing." Gooooood. Much more on this in the next Mig on Chess at ChessBase this week.

Bilangguan for Campo?

Former FIDE president, Florencio Campomanes of the Philippines, has been sentenced to almost two years in prison on corruption charges related to funding for the 1992 Chess Olympiad in Manila. Over a quarter-million dollars from the Philippine Sports Commission was unaccounted for by FIDE. According to Campo, FIDE never accounted for such monies by providing receipts until 1993. With his usual grace Campo tried to pass the buck (no pun intended) to FIDE treasurer Willi Iclicki.

This was reported over a week ago, but I was hoping more news would come out about whether or not he will actually go to jail, which seems unlikely according to insiders. Campo is still well-connected in his homeland. It's remarkable it made it to court at all, considering the variety of allegations Campomanes survived during his FIDE tenure. This would be a bit like convicting Saddam Hussein of illegal possession of a handgun.

FIDE and chess politics have been corrupt for ages, but since everyone benefits except for the poor sponsors, whose money disappears, it continues. Deal-makers like Campomanes and England's Ray Keene have long dealt with accusations (and lawsuits) of sticky fingers and sharp practice. They and others like them have done a great deal for chess and chessplayers, but it's an open question regarding the long-term benefits. For every sponsor that is brought in another dozen might be driven off by a reputation for graft and scandal. Boxing is big enough to be a corrupt mess and still get major corporate sponsorship, chess is not.

February 20, 2003

In the News

The Russian news service Interfax has posted a summary of the Kasparov-Ponomariov announcement that was reported here in DD 51. Nothing new, but one interesting paragraph at the bottom: "Asked to comment on the chess strength of Deep Junior, Kasparov cited prominent U.S. chess player Yasser Seirawan as saying it is a chess player with a rating of 2,400 that does not make mistakes." Funny, that's almost exactly what I wrote in one of my articles at ChessBase during the match! Great minds think alike? Many places have the Associated Press report with the same announcement.

The American media are always fascinated by professional athletes who play chess, as if they were Nobel Prize winners or something. Here's another fine example of the "and he plays chess!" phenomenon. Why WOULDN'T they play chess? It takes 20 minutes for someone to learn, this isn't calculus. I really don't think chess benefits from this rarified view at all. Players might think it's cool that people find them exotic, or suspect them of genius, but it's also part of the barrier that keeps chess from being mainstream in many places.

February 22, 2003

Kramnik-Kasparov Launches Linares

The draw has started things off with bang in the annual supertournament. 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik has white in the first round against the man whose title he took in 2000. Kramnik hasn't beaten Kasparov in a classical game since that match. Then again, NOBODY HAS. Yep, Kasparov is undefeated in classical chess since losing game 10 of the world championship to Kramnik on October 24, 2000. That includes four supertournament first prizes and the four classical games against Kramnik in the Botvinnik Memorial. Kasparov is also going for his eleventh consecutive supertournament victory. Going back to Wijk aan Zee 1999, Kasparov has 52 wins, 62 draws, and 1 loss in a little over four years of supertournament play. (Counting the 2002 Olympiad would add six more wins and three draws.) Terrifying.

ChessBase will have daily coverage of the games and should also be showing them live on the Playchess.com server. As usual there is a pretty and graphics-heavy official website. It should go down in a heap around 15 minutes into the first round, just like every year. I'd like to be wrong on this for once.

February 24, 2003

Timmaaaay!

15-year-old Teimour Radjabov beat Garry Kasparov in the second round in Linares. (Both are from Baku, Azerbaijan.) It was easy for chess writers everywhere (myself included) to say that he was the youngest player ever to be a world number one. Not that we did any research, mind you, but it's hard to imagine anyone else coming even close. I can only think of three possibilities: Reshevsky, Fischer, and Arturo Pomar.

Fischer had his chances. At 15 he drew a game with Tal in the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal and beat Larsen in the same event. He was 16 when he added victories against Smyslov and Keres. Fischer was already 18 when he finally got wins against Tal and Petrosian. Radjabov may retire by then.

"Arturito" Pomar of Spain was quite a prodigy himself. He also had the chance to play several games against the ailing Alekhine in the champion's final years in Spain. One of these was a draw when Pomar was just 13 years old. (Gijon, 1944). According to Alekhine's own notes to that game, Pomar was a move away from winning and instead played for a draw. Of course Alekhine was far from being the best in the world by then.

The famous win by the 11-year-old (although his age has been disputed) Sammy Reshevsky over Janowsky in 1922 is a worthy contender for most impressive win by a youth even if he was 13 and not 11.

February 25, 2003

ESPN2 Two

Several people have sent in this alert from ESPN2: The FIDE Man vs. Machine World Chess Championship, between Garry Kasparov and Deep Junior is scheduled to reair on ESPN2 Wednesday,
March 5 at 2:30 p.m. ET, 11.30 a.m. PT
. Don't forget to set your VCR this time, it might be the last chess we see on TV for a while...

My father listens to ESPN radio and told me that the other ESPN guys were giving Jeremy Schaap, the broadcaster who covered the chess match, a hard time about going to a chess match. Sure, it's not a real sport like, oh, say, macho stuff like walking or synchronized swimming or billiards or bowling or playing first base. Schaap, son of the legendary sports writer Dick Schaap, defended us well, I hear.

Onsie, twosie, threesie...

The fantastic battle between Leko and Kasparov in round three of Linares ended in a three-time repetition draw claim by Peter Leko. Surprisingly this apparently surprised Kasparov, who protested to the arbiter. But the arbiter verified the claim and announced the game drawn.

Leko had less than a minute left on his clock and since the penalty for a faulty repetition claim is five minutes, he would have forfeited the game had he been wrong. [As several people have told me, this is no longer true: The facts: You can't lose on time anymore (since 1997 if memory serves me) if you claim a draw incorrectly with less than 5 minutes on the clock. The old penalty of 5 minutes was thought to dissuade unfairly players to make correct draw claims.

The penalties now in the event of an incorrect draw claim are (50 moves or repetition):

Your opponent always gets 3 minutes more. You lose 3 minutes. Unless:
1) you have between 2 and 6 minutes: you lose half your time
2) you have between 1 and 2 minutes: the arbiter leaves you with 1 minute
3) you have less than 1 minute: no further penalty!

Stephen Boyd. International Arbiter, French Chess Federation (formerly Canada)

Thank you, Mr. Boyd!] The repetition occurred on moves 80, 82, 84, and 87. (Yes, that's FOUR, as GM Lubos Kavalek pointed out to me, and as I pointed out during the live commentary but managed to forget!) The position was a dead draw by then anyway. Kasparov had missed a simple mate in 62 back on move 71! Who says he has silicon in his blood? If you think it's easy, try playing that position against Fritz or Junior, especially if you have the Q vs Q+P tablebases installed. One move that's not perfect and it's a draw.

February 26, 2003

Linares Photos

As usual, the official Linares website is mostly useless in two languages. Some day they will figure out that covering a website in sponsor banners doesn't mean anything if nobody has a reason to go there. As I predicted in DD 54, their live game broadcast crashes regularly. Luckily, we have Playchess.com for that and I've been hanging out there most rounds watching and kibitzing the games. But what about photos and reports? The official site has nothing. The self-anointed"ChessBase web team" (aka Frederic Friedel) is arriving in Linares in a few days and then we'll get the good stuff. Until then, AP has some photographs here. (Photo AP Photo/ EFE, Enrique Alonso)

Theory of Relative Value

Einstein Group PLC, the company that has the rights to Vladimir Kramnik's world championship encounters and that organized the Kramnik-Fritz match in Bahrain last year, announced that they have received over a million dollars in loans "to pay existing creditors and to satisfy working capital requirements." That means bills, salaries, and rent, not organizing a Kramnik-Leko match! If they default on these loans, the lenders may end up with the subsidiary company (Intellectual Leisure Limited) through which Einstein has the contract with Kramnik. Not that it's been worth much to either of them as far as I can tell. Good luck, Einstein. Spend it wisely!

March 1, 2003

World Chess Rated?

Toward the bottom of the FIDE communique is this paragraph: "The Board noted that while FIDE was holding discussions with the WorldChessRating Company on an integrated rating program, it directed that the current rapid rating system be reviewed under the control of the Elista FIDE Rating Office." I was in Moscow in 2002 helping to develop rating models for this integrated system, and I think it's a great idea.

But today the new worldchessrating.com site, the new home of most of the Russian ex-KasparovChess.com employees as well as some guys from the old FIDE site, had this on its front page: "Dear readers! Due to financial problems we have to suspend the updating of our site. We offer our apologies and hope to resume our work in the near future."

Ouch! So soon? The English site was only launched at the start of the Kasparov-Junior match a month ago. Many talented people work there, but chess and technical talent do not mean internet success. I hope this is a misunderstanding and is temporary. Meanwhile, hello and good luck to my Moscow friends Denis (x2), Gene, Mark, Ilya, Sergey, Max, Evgeny, Vladimir, and the rest. At least Garry still has his day job!

Communiquetions

Fide.com has the official communique from the FIDE Presidential Board Meeting that just concluded in Bucharest, Romania. Mostly it's non-information with lots of "ongoing" this and "reaffirmed the commitment" that with a few "subject to the availabilities" tossed in. They did confirm the Ponomariov-Kasparov FIDE championship match for Buenos Aires, although they didn't mention the dates, supposedly June 19, 2003 and ending July 7. The document mentions "positive and fruitful" meetings with Einstein CEO Timmins and Leko/Kramnik manager Hensel. Unless Einstein puts something more than fruit on the table very soon, Hensel and FIDE are going to scamper off together, perhaps with Madame Ojjeh

They also congratulated Argentine President Duhalde, who has always had an interest in chess. When I was living in Argentina, Duhalde was the powerful governor of the province of Buenos Aires. In 1996 Bobby Fischer came to Buenos Aires and La Plata to present his version of shuffle chess, Fischerandom, in a trip mostly sponsored thanks to Duhalde. But claiming Duhalde is a "chess player of Master strength" is too much even for a press release! His enthusiastic pokes at the board in 1996 only made it clear he knew the rules. He's far from challenging the most famous Argentine chessplayer-politician, Che Guevara.

March 4, 2003

A Qualified Qualifier

I sure hope the second cycle of the world championship goes forward at the end of the year because we sure have a lot of players for it already! As you'll read here in my favorite paper and yours, the Jakarta Post, Indonesia beloved Utut Adianto was one of ten qualifiers for the next world championship. These were the top ten finishers in the Asian Championship in Doha won by India's second son, Sasikiran.

This FIDE calendar lists other Asian zonal but none for other continents, although I assume the European Championship is a zonal too. But a zonal for what? The Post article says there is a "World Championship scheduled tentatively in Netherlands in December." That's certainly not on the FIDE calendar! What IS on the calendar is also suprising: the Kramnik-Leko classical championship match. "World Chess Championship Match Kramnik-Leko - Venue to be announced - 2003-05-31." Whoa, a date!? Hadn't seen that one anywhere before. Is that an announcement or a deadline?

March 5, 2003

WCR II

Following up the freeze of Kasparov's new project, worldchessrating.com, there is no big news. People haven't been paid since the beginning of the year and they had warned that they would stop work on March 1 unless paid. They will return to work as soon as they are paid and are optimistic that they will be. Apparently this happened late last year back when the site was only in Russian. Although Kasparov is involved in the project, he is not the one financing it or signing the checks.

The raison d'être of the WCR is supposed to be a new rating list that will be more dynamic and also combine classical, rapid, and blitz play into one list that will include everyone from beginners to Kasparov around the world.

I think this is a great idea, but launching a big web chess portal before that system even exists is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. There is no revenue to be seen at the WCR site right now.

March 10, 2003

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Now that Leko and Kramnik have tied for first place in Linares, maybe it will be easier to get their classical world championship match put together. The latest rumors are that they are sticking with Einstein and hope to have a match announcement in April. That is very, very late, even if it happens. Announcing an announcement is a bit ridiculous anyway, although everyone does it. I may as well say I'm expecting to announce my impending wedding to Uma Thurman in April. No facts are required to announce an announcement. More to the point, if you had any facts, you would be announcing those instead of announcing the announcement!

Leko 2.0's energetic play and deep preparation make him a worthy competitor for Big Vlad (aka "Tall, Dark, and 2800"), but I would still put Kramnik down as the favorite in a match. Leko actually has a plus score against Kramnik in classical chess and has never lost to Kramnik in a long game. But Vlady's experience and incredibly solid chess put him on par with Petrosian when it comes to match play.

One Blow to Beauty, One Blow to Manners

Every year at the end of the Linares supertournament, a prize is given for the most beautiful game. It is voted on by the attending journalists and awarded at the closing ceremony. This year it was given to Teimour Radjabov for his win over Kasparov in the second round. Of course this was the crucial game of the standings (all the other top players beat Radjabov), and the world #1 losing to the teen from his hometown made news around the world. So a "most important" prize would have been fine. But a chess beauty prize for a game in which Kasparov was winning until he blundered is horrible. They should have found another way to congratulate Radjabov for his landmark performance.

Then things got weird. According to David Llada, a Spanish chess writer (who also does Paco Vallejo's website), in the Spanish magazine Jaque, Kasparov marched up to the stage to protest during the closing ceremony when the prize was awarded to Radjabov! The following is a translation of Llada's translation (and my friend David would be the first to admit he doesn't have perfect English, which is what Kasparov was speaking in), so word-for-word accuracy is not going to be possible. (Reprinted at the Spanish-language ChessBase site here. Update: Spanish GM Miguel Illescas, one of Kramnik's trainers, gives a more detailed account here in Spanish.)

Kasparov at the podium: "I don't believe that this was the best game of the tournament. It has been selected only because it was the only game that I lost and I consider this to be a public insult and humiliation."

While everyone looked on in shock, Garry walked over to a group of journalists and worked his rage up to shouting level. "This is the worst insult you have ever done to me in my life! It is an insult to me and to chess! You consider yourselves chess journalists? If you think this was the most beautiful game of Linares, you are doing a great deal of damage to chess with your reports and articles. Radjabov was completely lost in that game!"

Apparently this was all videotaped by.... Radjabov's mother (who went to school with Garry in Baku). Kasparov's mother asked her to stop and tried to calm Garry down. What to say? I and a few other people also thought that the selection of the Radjabov game was a slap in Kasparov's face, even if it was intended to recognize the kid's big moment. Kasparov losing his first Linares game in six years on a blunder in a winning position was bad enough! Giving a beauty prize to that game IS an insult to chess and every other game to ever win a beauty prize. But that doesn't excuse Kasparov's behavior there in front of Radjabov and the world. You wait until you get the journalists alone and then rip them apart! And of course he would have many of these same journalists eager to carry his opinions and outrage in editorials and interviews.

According to Illescas, Kasparov even went after Australian journalist-GM Ian Rogers, asking if he had voted and exploding when Rogers acknowledged he had voted for Radjabov. Then it was Spanish journalist Leonxto Garcia's turn. Also according to Illescas, Kasparov departed with the famous words, "Don't count on me for next year."

Kasparov blew up more than once over the Wijk aan Zee audience prizes as well. These were voted on every round and usually went to short, tactical games that the amateurs in the crowd found entertaining (as do most of us). Kasparov complained loudly several times and even cancelled a press conference once when a game he considered unworthy won the audience prize. (Not that he always said he should win, he once protested when a nice Timman game didn't win.)

In the four+ years I worked closely with Garry, I often tried to tell him that his chess and his results spoke for themselves and that as the #1 he was always going to receive the lion's share of the criticism too. Most people don't like to cheer for the favorite, and journalists can get bored with the same guy winning all the time. Let the dogs bark, take the high road, winning is the best revenge, etc. Nope! Kasparov has always worn his emotions on his sleeve and is very sensitive to any criticism, even after nearly 20 years at the top. It drives him to succeed, but his hair turned gray years ago.

Anyway, it's Leko and Kramnik who should be complaining. They both had very attractive games worthy of a beauty prize. Both of them wins against Radjabov! As GM Illescas puts it, ".. at the end of the day Kasparov was right: his game with Radjabov was not beautiful, it wasn't even a good game. Kasparov was better, Teimour offered a desperate piece sacrifice as a last resort, Kasparov didn't take it and later he committed a tremendous blunder that cost him the point. Kasparov is partially right when he says it takes a certain level of chess to comment well on a game. Leonxto told me later that he had quite liked the knight sacrifice. About taste one cannot argue, but evidently the appreciation of an expert would not be the same."

March 13, 2003

Drawn Out

US GM Maurice Ashley has posted at TWIC a long and interesting argument in favor of regulating draw offers. This has been a hobby-horse of mine as well over the years, although I have been more in favor of publicly shaming Grandmasters who draw too early, too often. (I developed a formula called the Chicken Factor that, to my great surprise, not only seemed to be accurate but was well received by the chess community, if not the professional players.) I was even accused by several players of trying to ruin their careers by suggesting they shouldn't be invited to tournaments if they didn't want to play chess. Ashley suggests prohibiting draw offers until after move 50.

Similar projects have been tried in the past, once at Fischer's insistence when his Soviet opponents made too many short draws amongst themselves. (Fischer famously flouted his own rule by playing a <30 move draw soon afterwards and answered the obvious questions with, "That rule is for commie cheaters, not for me!") Anything to help prevent the disasters Ashley describes (final round of this year's US Championship and the sixth game of the Kasparov-Junior match) is very welcome.

There are practical difficulties by the bunches, of course. Ashley mentions the rarity of short perpetual checks (short, sharp forced repetitions like Alekhine-Botvinnik, Nottingham, 1936 were also a problem for the Chicken Factor). But the problem are all move repetition draws, whether check is involved or not. Players could make a mockery of a rule by just repeating moves thirty times to fill the scoresheet. (Xiangqi, Chinese chess, has complicated rules that can force one side to break off repetitions and perpetual checks. Shogi also has rules like this. I don't see why they couldn't be applied to chess.)

I agree with Ashley that it's a generational thing. If today's young players are brought up with not being able to offer a draw before move 50, they aren't going to worry about coming up with bizarre ways to circumvent the rule. Today's professionals, on the other hand, we can expect to prearrange draws more than ever if the early draw offer is disallowed. They are just too used to playing the occasional non-game, and these non-games are ruining the sport.

He doesn't mention some of the old methods for handling drawn games. In many 19th century tournaments, up until 1867, drawn games were replayed immediately until somebody won. (I believe this is current practice with shogi matches.) Colors were reversed, so you really tried hard to win with white because you had black next if you drew. Of course few games were drawn back then; today's pros are much more consistent and they would be there all night. Another method I remember reading about is simply turning the board around when a draw is agreed and continuing play with the colors reversed!

March 15, 2003

Name Calling

Fresh from his Linares victory, Peter Leko gave a brief interview to the Indian website Chathurangam. Vijay Kumar made the slip of calling Leko's match against Kramnik, "a candidates match," in direct violation of the law that says everyone must pretend everything is a world championship these days. I expect Vijay has been hunted down and given a brutal wedgie by Leko/Kramnik representative Carsten Hensel by now.

I've gone to completely in the other direction and feel we are back in 1998-1999, and 1886 for that matter. Kramnik was supposed to defend his title after two years and instead stopped playing almost completely in 2002. The FIDE KO title last won by Ponomariov just isn't worthy of more than a year's duration. (Ask him now what's harder to win, Wijk aan Zee, Linares, or the KO!)

Now that the reunification train is rolling, we can all pretend that yes, Vladimir and yes, Ruslan, you are BOTH world champions. And if you both get to the board like good boys this summer we'll all go out for ice cream later. Oy. Before you go to sleep tonight, say a quick prayer to Caissa that we can navigate the obstacle course of egos and financial disasters and make this work.

March 16, 2003

Reign in Spain

It's never too early to take a shot at the "advanced chess" tournament in Leon, Spain. It runs June 5-8. The problem is that this year the Leon event isn't going to be advanced chess. Instead of having Grandmasters play while using computer assistance, it will be a normal rapid-chess event with Topalov, Ponomariov, Vallejo, and 13-year-old Karjakin. The time control is 20 minutes plus a 10 second increment. It's not a round robin, it's a knock out system.

This may be the end of the short life of advanced chess, created by Kasparov in 1998 in a quest for "near-perfect chess." I don't think it has ever been played outside of this annual event in Leon. (And on every chess server in the world of course... Playchess.com even has a "centaur" room for people who want to play with computer assistance and not get flagged by their anti-cheating system.) Kasparov himself fell out with organizer Marcelino Sion Castro before the second event was held in 1999 and abandoned his brainchild.

I was never a big fan of the concept. Chess is boring without mistakes. Seeing the players' ChessBase files after the games were over was interesting, however. You could see what lines they had been looking at and it was a sort of view into their minds. Kramnik ruined even that by refusing to release his game logs after he beat Anand last year! So advanced chess, RIP 1998-2002. (If they did this on the Playchess server with real-time live broadcast of the lines they were looking at, I could see resurrecting it.)

The official Leon website is graphics and animation heavy as are all Spanish chess sites. Even if you can't read Spanish you can enjoy a catch-phrase on the site that is sure to surprise the organizers of Linares: "The most prestigious Chess Spectacle in Spain." NB The game download page at the Leon site has a broken link to the ChessBase Light page and a direct link to download the program in a zip file from the Leon servers. The Chessbase Light page reads in part: "ChessBase holds the exclusive copyright to ChessBase Light. ChessBase Light may not be made available on other web sites or ftp servers."

March 19, 2003

American Woman

From the front lines of the Elo wars comes the news that 2003 US Women's champion Anna Hahn is unlikely to make the Olympiad team because of her rating isn't high enough. Even 2002 champion Jennifer Shahade, whose rating is 100 points higher, wouldn't make the current cut. Several recent emigres have raised the bar and apparently former women's world champion Susan Polgar is ready to get back into action and represent the US for the first time. The eldest Polgar has lived in Queens, NY for many years and hasn't played a professional game since 1997. Somewhat surprisingly her 2565 rating from back then still makes her the third-highest rated woman in the world, a few points behind the woman she easily beat for the women's title in 97, China's Xie Jun (also inactive). Of course both are far behind Susan's little sister Judit's 2700.


Anna Hahn, Irina Krush, Jennifer Shahade, Susan Polgar

"Title versus Elo" goes back long way, Hahn and Shahade would just be the latest victims of rating-obsession. 2002 US champ Larry Christiansen would have been left off the men's team had a few players not declined their invitations. [Not true, see update below.] Nice reward for winning what is supposed to be a prestigious title! Back in the 60s in the USSR there was a mini-scandal when some players and some politicians wanted to leave Botvinnik off the Olympiad team, something akin to leaving God off of the Heaven team.

UPDATE: GM Joel Benjamin, himself a many-time US champion and Olympiad player, tells me that a recent rule change DID make it so the champion automatically made the Olympiad team, and that Larry Christiansen made the 2002 team because of this rule and not because of declined invitations. (This change came too late for Benjamin, who was twice left off of Olympiad teams despite being the reigning champion.) This is good news, but why is it only for the men's team? If the US champ deserves that respect, and he does, why doesn't the women's champion?

If you are good enough to win the Championship you are good enough to be on the Olympiad team. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Elo should not always be its own reward. I hereby table a motion to make the most recent champions automatic Olympiad players, even if Elo is used to sort board order. There is precedent otherwise, such as in 2000 when FIDE champion Khalifman played first board for Russia ahead of several higher-rated players.

The two players Hahn beat in the playoff for this year's title, Shahade and Irina Krush, are playing a two-game rapid chess match one the 20th in a Manhattan art gallery. From the press release: "The Viewing Gallery at 114 17th St. between 6th and 7th avenues, just a few blocks from the Marshall Chess Club! The match will begin at 7:00 pm and will last until 9:30 pm." More importantly, further down it says, "wine will be served." The tough life of a chess writer. It's open to all, so if you are in the area, stop by.

March 20, 2003

'Ello?

I spoke with Garry Kasparov on Tuesday, although much of the conversation was about Iraq. (He's pro regime change, as his upcoming article in the Wall St. Journal makes clear.) (Much more from Kasparov will be included in the next Mig on Chess at ChessBase.com this week.)

Kasparov apologized for his ten minutes of outrage at the Linares closing ceremony. He is still hot about the game winning a beauty prize and angry at the journalists who voted for it. "I'm ashamed of my over the top behavior but Rogers and Garcia should be ashamed of their votes."

He added, "If it had been a prize for 'most memorable game' I would have given Radjabov the award myself. It was the first time I lost to someone born after I won the title!" He said that while he was upset after the game and didn't analyze with Radjabov, he did shake his hand afterward and they and Radjabov's father (who has known Kasparov since the early 70's) talked about the game together.

Kasparov said he was insulted by The Week In Chess editor Mark Crowther's recent comments regarding the end of the game, "He deliberately lost on time and left the board without shaking hands with Radjabov." I'm not sure how you can "deliberately lose on time" on move 39 with a few minutes left on your clock in a losing position. Crowther later added, in TWIC 436, "This could be seen on Spanish TV on the days following the game." No surprise that Kasparov talking with Radjabov and his father afterward wasn't shown on Spanish TV, or mentioned by the Spanish writers at the site. Not so much fun.

Kasparov will be playing a large internet clock simul on April 4 on the ChessBase Playchess.com server. The German tech company ZMD, which has used chess and Kasparov in various promotions previously, is sponsoring the event. Kasparov will play from Dresden and will face players who are logging in from ZMD offices worldwide. I'll be coordinating things at their Long Island office. Details will be announced here and at ChessBase.com.

This seems like a good time to point out that ChessNinja newsletter subscribers get a free six months at Playchess.com. Subscribe now!

Yuesovay

America's Foundation for Chess (AF4C), which runs the US championship, is planning many more big changes for next year. First they changed the event to a large Swiss system and had the women play together with the men, both positive steps that have worked out well. Next they want to move the event from its home in Seattle, where the AF4C is based, possibly to Las Vegas. They also want to make competition fiercer by lowering the number of players who automatically qualify by rating, forcing the GMs to participate in what will be an increased number of qualifying events.

The latest news has the US Chess Federation (USCF) lowering the number of years of US residency required to play in the Championship from three to just one. The three-year rule was to discourage strong players from coming to the US just to pick up a paycheck in the US championship, which wasn't really much of a factor back when there wasn't much money in the event. Now with over a quarter-million dollars in prizes and a $25,000 first prize, coming to live in the US looks a lot more attractive to the many ex-Soviets who already spent much of their time here but hadn't bothered with formalizing their status.

The only points of dropping the three years to one is to increase the strength of the event and encourage/reward immigration, which will certainly happen. 2600+ players like Onischuk and Yudasin will be able to play next year. I don't imagine that this will have a positive impact on growing chess at a youth and grassroots level, ostensibly the mission of the AF4C, which is not directly related to the USCF. We await an official explanation for this decision, which may not even be final. But this looks like a potential conflict on the horizon between the USCF and the organization that has saved them and the US Championship, the AF4C.

I've never had much sympathy with American GMs who complain about strong GMs coming in to take the top prizes in the big US opens. You're a professional and hey, play better chess. But I don't think the US Championship should just become the World Open II. It can be a powerful tool to promote chess at many levels and if 80% of the participants have entered the US in the past two years it's not going to do much to promote the growth of US chess at the amateur and junior level. I have nothing at all against the foreign players and many of them are good friends of mine. But asking them to play regularly in US events and show they are going to stick around for a while isn't too much to ask.

March 23, 2003

Aeroflot Open West

More on what will likely be an ongoing story for a while, the reduction to one year of the three-year residency requirement to play in the US Championship and the US Olympiad teams. Since they are somewhat related I'll bundle in the matter of whether or not the US Champions should automatically qualify for the Olympiad.

Several American GMs I have spoken with are angry about the cut in the residency period. There were earlier negotiations with the USCF, which wanted to cut it to two years. One year was never even on the table. The drop to one year was apparently the initiative of GM Susan Polgar, related to her return to the game and desire to have the strongest possible team behind her in 2004. Anna Zatonskih is a 2400 from Ukraine who has been in the US for around six months and would be third board after Polgar and Krush.

The biggest surprise in all this is that the USCF made this decision without consulting or even telling the AF4C! This change will have a huge impact on the US Championship, especially in how it may attract many more foreign players to the ever-expanding prize fund the AF4C has created. Not consulting with them was ridiculous and may have dire consequences. The AF4C has considerable weight to throw around and they have made it clear their priority is using the Championship to build grassroots chess in the USA, not just make it the strongest possible event by Elo.

US women's champion Anna Hahn tells me that she wasn't even told about the meeting of top women that took place at the USCF offices last week. ChessBase software was handed out and further sponsorship and training are forthcoming, so who exactly formed this team and what were the criteria? There are several players higher on the rating list than several in this "Training Squad." And discarding the 2003 champion, who won a playoff for the title over two of those who were invited, is bizarre. Are they so desperate for medals that they will invalidate their own titles?

The actual team won't be selected until mid-2004 before the Menorca Olympiad. Plenty of time to recruit a few more internationals and perhaps bump Jennifer Shahade off the team. Joel Benjamin pointed out that she is probably the strongest native-born American woman player in history. As with what happened with Akobian and the Samford scholarship last year, it is hard to encourage American talents to focus on chess when they know that at any moment they could be supplanted by someone from a more mature chess culture.

March 26, 2003

Go for the Throat

A follow-up on Kasparov's beauty prize tantrum at the Linares closing ceremony (DD 64). According to one of the subjects of Kasparov's wrath, Australian GM Ian Rogers, it was more violent than as presented in initial reports. His Sun-Herald column of March 16 includes the paragraph, "With a crowd of spectators gathering, including Linares officials, Kasparov, with his hand not far from my throat, launched into a 10 minute volley of abuse and then turned his fire on a local journalist."

More from Rogers and other Australian columnists can be found here.

March 27, 2003

Rules, Schmools

It looks like the USCF has put its new rules in opposition to those of FIDE, the international chess federation. According to the FIDE handbook here (scroll down to 2.2 and 3.2), non-citizens need reside for at least three years after they have given FIDE notification of their change of chess federation in order to be eligible for FIDE team and individual events.

So by dropping the USCF residency requirement to one year like they did a few weeks ago, they place the US rules in a contrary state. The USCF has many rules that differ from FIDE's and that's no crime, but this means they will end up producing qualifiers from US events who are ineligible to play in the events they qualified for! The US championship functions as a zonal for the world championship and (some) winners are placed on Olympiad teams. So they would have to skip some ineligible players and move down to the next eligible player.

The question is whether or not players should be participating in US championships if they aren't considered eligible by FIDE to represent the US. I believe the Netherlands had the most complications with this sort of thing. They had no restrictions and ended up with Sokolov and Nikolic playing in the Dutch championship and representing Bosnia in the Olympiad in the same year (Twice! 1998 and 2000), which seems completely ridiculous.

Ludek Pachman RIP

Hardly breaking news, but now we can put up some links to the various obituaries that have come out on the German-based Czech Grandmaster. He reached many more people through his prodigious writings than with his tournament successes. Perhaps his death will inspire a reprinting of his much-sought-after series "Modern Chess." I believe it's the third book that is almost impossible to find. I've heard offers of hundreds of dollars from collectors. Pachman's political activism and time in a Communist prison cell are why the NY Times has an obituary. (Free registration required.) His countryman Lubomir Kavalek has an obit in his Washington Post column. Note that the newspaper pieces will be archived and the links eventually won't work anymore. ChessBase has this piece by Frederic Friedel to which I contributed a few paragraphs from my copy of his biography, "Checkmate in Prague."

Mo' Money, Mo Women

I'm not going to provide daily updates on this, but I don't see any other sources talking about what could be a large issue soon enough. (DD 69, 70, 72) My main concern is becoming to keep everyone talking amicably and not let personalities become an issue. As a progressive political veteran I know how easy it is to let little battles divide people who really want the same thing. In this case that thing is the success of US chess. (See the message boards for more on this.)

I've corresponded several times with my friend FM Paul Truong on the matter. He is "Team Captain, Business Manager, Training Coordinator" of the women's training squad and a friend and co-author of Susan Polgar. The salient points he makes are 1) The initiative to change the residency requirement for playing on the Olympiad teams and the US championships did not come from Susan Polgar. 2) The women's training squad that assembled last week was based only on the rating list. From the top seven women, six invitations were sent out and five accepted.

The one that didn't accept is apparently Camila Baginskaite, who is also GM Alex Yermolinsky's wife. The one who wasn't invited is Elena Donaldson. Sources say she refused to play in several games during the Bled Olympiad and is unwelcome on the 2004 team.

The only info I have from the USCF so far is that the US champions ARE seeded onto the Olympiad teams, but only the champion from the year of the Olympiad. As I mentioned before, having only one champion make it is not unreasonable, but it runs into calendar issues. The 2004 US championship will likely be held in the Fall, right before the Olympiad. If the winner is then thrown on the team and isn't one of the members of this training squad, it's a double blunder. Training resources have gone to someone not on the team (the lesser evil since that will happen anyway because there are only four Olympiad slots) and someone on the team hasn't benefited from any of the training! With that in mind it actually makes much more sense to seed the champion from the previous year on the team, if they will only seed one. If the USCF wasn't aware of a scheduling change for the Championships it's only another reason why they should be talking regularly with the AF4C.

Of course putting both champions on the team also makes sense. True, that's half the team of four, but I'd rather have respect for the title than the tyranny of Elo. And how often will the champion not also be an Elo qualifier? You'd imagine that at least one of the two seeded champions would be among the top four women by Elo. And if they're not it would only prove that there is more to life and chess than rating points!

Regardless, this training squad is a great idea and kudos to the USCF, Paul Truong, and Susan Polgar for making it happen. The early noise from the AF4C is that they aren't happy about seeing their champion not on the team.

March 28, 2003

Last Plane Out

I've been hoping more information would come out about this, but I admit failure. 10 days ago Reuters reported that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia and also the president of FIDE, visited Baghdad, Iraq the day before the American attack commenced. He left on "the last Russian charter flight out of Iraq" on March 18.

Ilyumzhinov was part of a delegation of Russian politicians and religious leaders led by the Russian chief mufti (a Muslim scholar/religious leader). The chess connection was mentioned in passing in a few reports and some also said Ilyumzhinov met with Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, who is in charge of Iraq's Olympic Committee. An Associated Press report at an Arab news website said, "The Kalmykian governor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, described being summoned to see Odai Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son, at 5 a.m. after US President George W. Bush’s ultimatum, and being told that Saddam and his family would stay and 'defend our country and our people.'"

Some reports say that the delegation was made up of representatives of those most sympathetic to the Iraqi plight, although none of the quotations along those lines are from Ilyumzhinov.

April 1, 2003

Around It Goes

I've heard from the missing links in the USCF / women's Olympiad / training squad and after giving their rebuttals here I'm staying out of this until the relevant parties can work things out amongst themselves, or not!

Elena Donaldson writes in to say that in the Bled 2002 Olympiad team captain Ilya Gurevich didn't want her to play because, according to him, her style of play wasn't aggressive enough. In rounds 10 and 11 she was sick and could not play. She went on to say that the attempt to label her as "uncooperative" is likely a smear to keep her off the next team.

Her fellow 2002 team member Kamile Baginskaite informs us that she never received an invitation to the training squad meeting and only found out about it after it had ended. Something about a changed e-mail address is going around, but I don't think it would have too hard to reach her and she has reason to be miffed.

This is quickly getting personal, if it wasn't before, and it is clearer than ever that transparent rules need to be laid down. The training squad is a great idea that deserves support, but unconditional support is not what an organization like the USCF should be about.

As Donaldson puts it, "I am sure USCF will invite players to the next Olympiad based on official criteria such as residency and rating. If I do not qualify by USCF criteria, hopefully announced in advance, it is fine with me." Exactly. If the USCF wants to remove a player it must be done following published guidelines, and there should be something like an appeals committee for such strong actions. I have yet to see in print the exact qualification guidelines for the Olympiad teams. They must exist, right?

As for the training squad, is it part of the USCF or an independent project? Obviously they can choose whomever they want in the latter case. They could put me on the squad if they wished. The only conflict is if the USCF auspices the program, in which case they have some responsibility to protect the interests of their members. To me this means qualification by rating, seeding the US champions, and making sure in advance that all the players are eligible to play for the US under FIDE's rules.

April 5, 2003

Unreunification 2003

Get out the butter and jam because reunification is toast, at least for 2003. Kramnik-Leko is still vapor and both are playing in Dortmund at the end of July. Reports say Kramnik has already agreed to play in Cap d'Agde in October, when a unification match was supposed to occur. The second cycle was supposed to start in December. What will we have now?

We are back to 1998-1999, when Kasparov couldn't get a title match together and the FIDE title was the only one in town. The chess world more or less waited for Kasparov-Kramnik 2000 because 1) Kasparov was clearly the world's top player and 2) the FIDE system was not satisfactory to many. Kramnik might be hoping to emulate that scenario, but he's out of luck on at least one count in comparison, and maybe both counts.

The winner of the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE title match in July will either be the world's number one player or someone who beat the world number one in a 12-game match. If FIDE then holds a qualifier in December and begins candidate matches, a legitimate system with a legitimate champion will be in place and Kramnik will be out in the cold unless he plays.

All that would be particularly horrible for Peter Leko, who won a very tough qualifier last year and is playing the best chess of his life. If his match doesn't happen because Kramnik wants more money, should Leko be allowed to play in the unification match?! If the Kramnik-Leko match does occur the winner still needs to get to the board in a unification match, which will be even harder if the second cycle has already begun.

April 9, 2003

Hungarian Patience

Heard the latest about the Kramnik-Leko world championship match? Neither have I. Maybe the Prime Minister of Hungary, Peter Medgyessy, knows something we don't. At the opening of the Hunguest Hotels tournament in Budapest the PM said he would do "everything he possibly can" to bring the Leko-Kramnik match to the Hungarian capital. This from a Hungarian website and my thanks to reader Gyorgy Nagy for sending it in. The window for holding such a match is rapidly closing. It would take a month to play and announcing it less than two months in advance would make organization very difficult. Not to mention getting the media sorted out.

You can discuss and vote on the winner of the Budapest tournament here. Participants include Leko, Polgar, Korchnoi, Gelfand, and Short.

Elo Plays Basketball

Reader Jim Bartle sends in this link to sports statistician Jeff Sagarin's pages. He provides team rankings in various sports to the USA Today newspaper. In his page on US university basketball he talks about an "Elo Chess" rating for teams. He uses this term for a formula that only considers the result, not the score margin. Apparently this is because in chess it doesn't matter how long the game is, only the result. The new national champion team, Syracuse, was rated #5 by his system but #2 by the "Elo Chess" formula. As in chess, that's why we play the games...

In case you are thinking it would liven chess up to give a rating bonus to the winner of a short game, think again. No one would ever resign! All games would be played out to mate. This would be great for beginners and I'm sure the pros' technique would improve a lot. Still, it would be pretty ugly watching GMs play on in hopeless positions just to salvage a rating point or two. The ability to agree to a draw is ruining chess, but the ability to resign is one of its mercies.

April 17, 2003

The Greatest Generation

With three rounds to play Nigel Short is in clear first of the category 17 Hunguest Hotels tournament in Budapest. You don't have to be all that old to remember that Short challenged Kasparov for the last truly legit world chess championship in 1993. Yes, they had broken off from FIDE before the match was played, but Short won the official qualification process, beating the likes of Karpov and Timman in candidates matches.

Many might take Short's subsequent lack of top ten status as proof that his lunge to the top was a fluke. And of course he was pummelled by Kasparov, as everyone predicted. But unless you were following the match you might only look at the lopsided score (12.5-7.5 and -5 after nine games) and not know that Short really put the heat on Kasparov in many games with white. (Much more than Anand did two years later.) Short attacked relentlessly and had several winning positions that he failed to convert.

So "what happened to Short?" is an excusable question, although he has never dropped all that far. His occasional excellent results make me think that it was never really a problem with his play, but the outstanding talent that was growing up right behind him a decade ago. First it was Anand, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Bareev, then a few years later came Adams, Kramnik, Shirov, Topalov. Add Kasparov and Karpov and you have a top 10 for the ages.

You have to go back 40 years to find its equal. Look at the 50-60's generation that included Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Fischer, Petrosian, Keres, Korchnoi, Geller, Bronstein, Portisch, Spassky, and Larsen. You could add another ten great players from that decade with room to spare.

Kramnik Berlined him in London 2000, but one of the most impressive things about Kasparov's run has been staying a half-step ahead of this incredible pack of talent. Now you have Leko, Ponomariov, Morozevich, Polgar, Grischuk, Svidler, Radjabov... What defines their strength as a group is that any one of them could (and do) legitimately defeat Kasparov, Kramnik, or Anand on a given day, or even finish ahead of them, and it wouldn't be a big shock.

From 1972-1990, "the Karpov generation," there weren't more than three or four contemporary players who could threaten Karpov, Kasparov, and Korchnoi without lightning striking. Certainly not a dozen or more like you have today. Timman, Ljubojevic, maybe Andersson, Vaganian, Jussupow, Seirawan. Most of Karpov's competition came from that older 50's-60's group until Kasparov arrived.

I think a 2003 Dream Team would give a 1965 Dream Team a pretty good run for its money on a dozen boards. Sacrilege?

April 18, 2003

Goulash a Go-Go

You didn't hear it from me, but the little birds tell me a Kramnik-Leko match announcement is coming next Monday. Budapest for $1.2 million in June, tweet tweet? I don't know if these birds really know anything but they'd better not get too close to my cats. These dates would probably end up bumping into the Kasparov-Ponomariov match. Oy. Budapest is better for the chess press, which is mostly centered in Europe, but Buenos Aires actually has the edge when it comes to championship chess. Alekhine-Capablanca, anyone? I've seen the board they played on, a treasure of my beloved Club Argentino chess club in Buenos Aires.

EloOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

GM Ian Rogers writes in from Down Under to point out that someone is doing something useful with the Elo rating formula. Applying it to football! (soccer) Eloratings.net tracks all the international matches and teams. Brazil tops the chart at 2012, followed by Netherlands, Argentina, Spain, France, England, Portugal, Germany, Czech Republic, and Italy.

Of course unlike chess football has a legit world champion. Brazil wouldn't care if it were number 200 on the list as long as it had its World Cup trophy. USA made it to the final eight but are only #17 on this rating list. The lowest-rated team? Eastern Samoa at 550. Eastern Samoa?!

April 21, 2003

Do What I Say, Not...

Nigel Short finished off his great performance in the Budapest "Talent and Courage" tournament by coasting in the final round with a nine-move draw against Almasi. Short had black, but Almasi was in last place and just wanted to get out of there instead of trying to get a little redemption with a win over the leader. It guaranteed Short clear first place.

Certainly not an unusual situation, but there was an irony here if you read Short's 13-4 column in the Sunday Telegraph. (Free registration required.) Some excerpts:

"A few weeks ago I noticed an article by Maurice Ashley, the first black grandmaster, entitled The End of the Draw Offer? . . . Nevertheless, I have to admit that Maurice has a very good point. It is not that draws per se are bad (after all the most popular sport, football, seems to live fairly comfortably with the concept), but the perfunctory early agreed draw, which is done normally out of fear – “mutual respect” being the technical term. . . .

I succumbed to temptation, however, in the final empty game when the match [with Maghami] had already been decided. I still felt terrible pangs of guilt. Yes, we swindled the public that day. They deserved something better.

The recent Dos Hermanas event in Spain was likewise blighted by a spate of non-fights. Even dynamic tacticians like Shirov contracted the disease to a degree. It was a pity because there were still several exciting encounters. When games are allowed to reach their natural conclusion, it is amazing what can be achieved. . ."

Okay, the draw against Almasi yesterday guaranteed him first place, so it's not the same as an exhibition match, and criticism should be leveled at the Hungarian, not Short. But the coincidence of this game and the above paragraphs was too much to resist. Here it is, don't blink: 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bb5 Bb4 5.0-0 0-0 6.d3 d6 7.Bxc6 bxc6 8.Ne2 Re8 9.Ng3 d5 ½-½

April 23, 2003

Death of the Draw?

American GM Maurice Ashley (the first black GM, as his e-mail address does not let you forget!) is putting his tournament where his mouth is. He has put together the "Generation Chess International Tournament" taking place from April 23 to May 2 at the Marshall Chess Club in New York City. It's a ten-player GM-norm tournament with three Grandmasters and seven hungry IMs.

The concept behind the tournament is that "no player is allowed to prematurely stop the game by offering a draw before move 50." This format concurs with Ashley's article of earlier in the year about abolishing the draw offer (or at least postponing it to avoid GM draws).

It's also an interesting field that includes 2002 US Champion Larry Christiansen. The official site of the event says they invited players who play "risky, cut-throat" chess, although it's hard to see how Leonid Yudasin fits in there! But he's in the NY area nowadays, so we'll give him and his high percentage of short draws a break.

Fans always push for a 3-1-0 scoring system, as exists in many professional team sports. (Instead of the current 1-1/2-0 system in chess.) Many believe it would create more exciting games and avoid draws. First of all, I doubt this is true unless the rating formula is also changed to reward wins more. Secondly, we don't need to change the game itself by forcing GMs to play wildly. Just getting them to PLAY all the time is good enough for now.

We'll be keeping an interested eye on this experiment in "long games by legislation" by Ashley's new company. I'll be stopping by the event myself and you can check Chessbase.com for updates.

April 25, 2003

I Deny that Denial!

Faster than you can say "que lo pariö!" a denial has been circulated by FIDE. (Very tight circulation, but hey, this the DD.) They sent out an e-mail saying that the report at ChessBase is wrong and that the Kasparov-Ponomariov match has not been postponed. Funny, because the main organizer, Argentine GM Miguel Quinteros, has continued saying that it IS postponed!

From what Quinteros says, FIDE prez Ilyumzhinov and Argentine prez Duhalde met and discussed the lack of funds for a June match two weeks ago. So maybe Ilyumzhinov has a few aces (or bags of rubles) up his sleeve. Might he fund a Buenos Aires match himself or go with another site to keep things on schedule? It will probably take a few days for this to shake out.

The bottom line: the Argentine organizers are saying it's postponed, FIDE is saying it is not postponed. This may mean that FIDE is still planning on June, but not in Buenos Aires. (Then they would both be correct, in a way...)

Sweet November

I don't know how this has stayed under the radar for so long, but sometimes you have to hablar español to get things done. According to several Spanish-language newspapers, including this report in the major Argentine daily La Nación, the Kasparov-Ponomariov match has been postponed to November. This was apparently announced four days ago!

My translation: "The semifinal [sic] match for the world championship, scheduled to be played in Buenos Aires from June 19 to July 7 between the current monarch Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov has been postponed to next November. The dates will be confirmed by the players. This according to the announcement of Miguel Angel Quinteros, member of the organizing committee, and the head of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov." Thanks to Christian Sánchez from the home of Fito Paez, Rosario, Argentina.

The bad news is obvious. The match is at risk, there may not be any KO or qualifier in December, and FIDE is a mess (shock, surprise). The good news is that 1) now we won't have both WC matches at the same time (assuming Kramnik-Leko is announced next week for Budapest in June-July) and 2) the weather is much nicer in mi Buenos Aires querido in November. Unification was already in the toilet for 2003. Let's hope they can get their acts together for May 2004.

April 28, 2003

Denials but no Affirmations

Today from the FIDE Secretariat:

We write to inform you herewith, that according to the information sent to this office by Mr. Miguel Quinteros on behalf of the Organising Committee of the World Chess Championship match R. Ponomariov-G. Kasparov, "they are very sorry about the article in the La Nacion newspaper", as they never told the journalist about the intention to move the match to November.

Umm, so where did the journalist get the information? And what does this mean? I think the phrase they are looking for is "Oops." They are now backtracking and covering their behinds, but that's to be expected. More importantly, they still haven't said anything positive. They have not asserted that the match IS taking place in Buenos Aires in June on schedule. They need time to get things sorted out, and that is reasonable. I just wish they were honest about it. "We had some problems with the Buenos Aires bid and we are exploring our options right now" would be about right.

April 30, 2003

Reversal of Fortunes?

It's getting hard to keep up with the FIDE reality blender. According to our usually reliable Russian-speaking source in the Ninja message boards, the dear Penguin (as in Linux, not as in Ray Keene), this is a summary of what FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had to say upon his return to Russia in an interview with Yuri Vassiliev today.

Last week Ilyumzhinov was in New York and Washington. They want to have the computer vs human match in California next year. This December Kirsan wants to have the currently defunct FIDE Cup in New York City. 128 players, knock-out system, determination of the challengers for the new WC cycle. Also, NYC proposed to host the reunification final.

Buenos Aires organizer of the Kasparov-Ponomariov match Miguel Quinteros faxed his confirmation of the Buenos Aires plan to FIDE Executive Director Omuku. Omuku also says that Einstein has no money, and Budapest does not seem to be happening as a venue for Kramnik-Leko. However, Argentina now proposes to host BOTH matches! (These are the same guys who were saying they didn't have money for one match a week ago.)

Of course just a few days ago I heard from Einstein that they were absolutely positively cross their hearts and hope to die going to announce the Kramnik-Leko match for Budapest next Monday. (If you're keeping score at home that's the third week in a row with a promise for "announcement next Monday.")

I love all these guys, even if FIDE can't figure out PR to save their lives and Einstein keeps crying wolf. [Sorry Zena!] It's easy to poke fun at them, but they are fighting hard to put on great chess, so we owe them big time. Let's hope both matches happen this summer.

May 7, 2003

With Friends Like These...

It is with the usual sense of curiosity, elation, and horror that we read the news that another millionaire is trying to drag Bobby Fischer out from under his rock. The Mainz organizers were smart enough to call their shuffle chess events "Chess960" instead of "Fischerandom" but now they are trying to bring the man himself?

ChessBase has a translation of a German newspaper article about this that is part breathless and mostly erroneous. (Claiming Fischer invented shuffle chess, an ancient variant, although even some chess fans think this. That there is an "international arrest warrant" out for Fischer, which is untrue. (It's in the USA.) It's not as if he's in hiding if he's still getting checks and making radio appearances.)

They probably just want the publicity of Fischer's name. Be careful what you ask, the old saying goes. If he actually did show up in Mainz it would be a complete fiasco, of course, just like his last appearances. Fischer sightings (or rumors of them) put chess in the news, but anti-Semitic paranoid schizophrenics are not the publicity chess needs. Maybe the Mainz people could offer to pay for his medical and psychiatric care instead. Why give Fischer a stage from which to spew his hatred? Why use chess as a pretext to hand him a microphone to cheer the 9/11 attacks again?

Here's a link to his website, with a very serious warning about how offensive most people will find the content and profane language. It's still being updated with links about China dated April 13, 2003. Very scary, very sad. Actually, it makes me wonder if Fischer might be arrested for hate speech if he did his usual routine in Germany. They have very strict laws about that sort of thing in Germany.

Do Science Writers Think?

Yet another log has been tossed on the fire of computer chess related artificial intelligence writing. Yawn. This facile piece is a summary of human-machine matches with a few usual stabs about whether or not chess-playing machines are "thinking." Yaaaaaawn. Almost none of it will be new to you, most of it repeats the basic facts, although prefacing many with "rumored to.." in case he gets it wrong.

This doesn't help eliminate a dozen or so factual errors, but we're used to those by now. Even when non-chess writers bother to ask experts (not the case here) they often get it wrong before it makes it to the page. It's hard to write about something as technical as chess when you don't have the background. Knights become bishops, as in this article's description of Kramnik-Fritz match game six. The description of Kasparov-Junior game three is farcical (also game 5). Even when 90% of the information is rehashed, the wrong assumptions are made in the remaining 10%.

The rest of the article is occasionally correct history of chess programming, inaccurately summarized in most cases. Bizarre things like, "It’s the optimization of a chess program rather than the evaluation algorithm that affects the playing manner" are aplenty. And nonsense like, "Having played for a while against chess programs, I came to my own recipe: try to make the best move possible in every situation. When you just make a move that looks like good, without any plan in mind, it may bring you to trouble against the computer." Huh?

And to make his points about how computers don't understand some positions as well as humans he uses a purely tactical example. (Heissler-Kasimdzhanov, 1999). True, it's a deep combination that some programs take a while to find, but others, like Junior 7, find ..Re4 in a few minutes on my machine. Bad example.

May 10, 2003

Get Your Match Rumors While They're Hot

From sources around the world, some in print, some by phone, some by Speckled Jim.

Argentine organizer of the Kasparov-Ponomariov match, GM Miguel Quinteros, has been back in the news saying that the match is back on for June. He has also been quoted as saying he was contacted by someone from the organization of the Kramnik-Leko match about hosting it in Buenos Aires. This has been denied by Einstein.

This makes me assume that the manager of both Leko and Kramnik, Carsten Hensel, has been fishing in Rio de la Plata. He has said that he will give Einstein every chance to organize the match, but it would make sense to keep his eyes open. He may believe he can find a sponsor without Einstein's overhead. Kramnik has a contract with Einstein, but I don't know what it would be worth if they can't put a match together.

The Moscow News says something about Einstein turning down Budapest because they don't want to spend money in Eastern Europe, and that they have sought Dubai as a host. Their casting a wide net is to be expected. But I doubt they are turning anyone down if the money is right.

One of the curious things about this latest round of rumors is how much FIDE is talking about the Kramnik-Leko match. I'm not sure what to think about this apparent change of heart. I had thought they would be happy to let it die if Einstein couldn't put it together, but several FIDE people have talked about hosting the match together with the Kasparov-Ponomariov match. I guess that would be a coup of sorts, and two matches aren't much more expensive than one, other than the prize funds, which are probably dropping daily.

I think part of this is Kasparov wanting a shot another shot at Kramnik. The politicians find it easy to ignore the past, but a man who is releasing a series of books called "My Great Predecessors" (Everyman Chess) and who majored in history cannot. Although Kasparov has stated he believes Kramnik's title has expired since he was obliged to defend it in 2002, he badly wants to beat Kramnik in a match. Of course he'll take Leko if the Hungarian manages to beat Kramnik. Kasparov thinks often of his legacy and it would be Hollywood Goes to Baku if the 40-year-old recaptured the unified title he was the last man to hold.

May 13, 2003

GM in Trouble

According to many reports, including the Associated Press, Mobile Register, and the Baltimore Sun, American Grandmaster Alex Sherzer has been arrested. According to AP: "Sherzer was charged with interstate travel with the intent of engaging in a sexual act with a person under 18. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison." He is in jail in Alabama where the arrest took place.

The 32-year-old Sherzer is, by all reports – including several chess people quoted in the news stories – the last person you could imagine doing such a thing. I do not know him personally, but he was a good friend of several friends and they spoke highly of him and recommended him for lessons and articles. (Photo from 1998.)

Some of the reports prominently mention his chess career, others do not. Sherzer received a medical degree in Hungary and was back in the US where he was playing chess for the powerhouse UMBC (Baltimore, Maryland) but was currently not taking classes. In 1992 one game away from a stunning upset win of the US Championship. (He tied for second with Gulko behind Wolff after losing in the last round.) He has been playing regularly for the past year.

Tempting though it may be to immediately defend or censure, these are very serious charges and it is very early (the arrest took place Friday the 9th). The man is innocent until proven guilty and though it may be hard to offer unconditional support in these circumstances, he does not deserve our condemnation as of yet. At this early time I don't know of a way to contact him or his family to offer support at what must be a horrible time for them.

May 17, 2003

GM in Trouble Update

Several Alabama news organizations are reporting that GM Alex Sherzer will be released pending trial. He will be monitored electronically, but can go to his new job at, a medical residency at LSU. (A job that he might now lose.) Prosecutors wanted him in jail until trial, but they always do. Seeing that this was a crime of intent, releasing him makes sense to me. (I.e. nothing actually happened, making this a little like Minority Report. Although you obviously don't wait until something does happen in these cases.) He did have to hand in his passport.

A Resounding Silence

Repeated inquiries by various parties have resulted in no official word on the world championship matches to be. Einstein isn't saying anything about Kramnik-Leko. Rumors say Budapest has hit the rocks.

FIDE has not responded to questions. Meanwhile, two different sources in Argentina say Kasparov-Ponomariov will happen at the end of the year. One even gave a starting date, December 9! A Russian source says November, which is the first postponement rumor I reported a few weeks ago. That about sums things up. No official word about whether it will happen or not, but the rumors are getting more specific! Next we'll be hearing they've already drawn for colors.

The FIDE calendar still says it will start June 19, the original dates...

May 21, 2003

ChessBase Cafe

Coming to a monitor near you on May 28 and on the fourth Wednesday of every month after that: I am starting a new column dedicated to ChessBase software at the ChessCafe.com website. As explained in the weekly Chess Cafe newsletter:

Next week, on May 28, ChessCafe.com will begin a regular monthly column dedicated to the use and enjoyment of the many ChessBase products. It will be called ChessBase Cafe and will feature none other than Mig Greengard helping you use the world's best chess software to your best advantage. Mig's entertaining writing style has long been a favorite of chessplayers and he now brings his wit and expertise to ChessCafe.com. He will take occasional questions from readers and also provide free email tech support to ChessCafe readers who purchase their ChessBase software here. Don't miss ChessBase Cafe by Mig Greengard, debuting next week, May 28.

I'd blush, but I'm a shameless glutton for flattery. I'm hoping it will be entertaining even for you malcontents who have yet to purchase something from ChessBase. It's an honor to take a place among the many talented columnists at ChessCafe.com.

May 22, 2003

All We Need Is Lobe

From the esteemed magazine Psychology Today: "Chess: Not All About Logic? Spatial processing may be the key to a good game. Chess is not necessarily a game reserved for people with IQ scores on par with Einstein. In fact, chess strategy may rely more heavily on spatial processing than on logic and computational skills."

Doh. The research mentioned in the short article is based on doing MRI scans of amateur players' brains while they are playing. This is an interesting, but hardly a groundbreaking theory. From de Groot's many studies to the opinion of just about any chess coach you meet, spatial relationships and pattern recognition are the main elements of most "chess thought." Are these scientists really ignorant of all the prior research in this area? But it is interesting to have so much theory backed up by a brain scan. Next they should scan some Masters and compare their brain activity to the amateurs in their study. In most studies these are very different things.

Strangely enough I had a conversation about this two nights ago at a charity dinner hosted by the marvelous people at X3D Technologies, the company that made the Kasparov-Deep Junior match happen in January. A friend and chess tyro asked me and top coaches GM Lev Alburt and IM Michael Khodarkovsky if we saw "quadrants or triangles" on the board. A bit of a silly question, but we all agreed that an aptitude for applying geometric and spatial concepts is essential and a good indicator of talent in students.

Let's Make It Official

Sources say FIDE is close to making the new November dates for Kasparov-Ponomariov official. (This might be news to a few hermits without access to the DD.) All the delays in announcing the postponement have earned FIDE considerable ill will from journalists who need to have travel expenses and plans approved months in advance. If they don't think this hurts media attendance at future events they are very, very wrong. A free tip to them for next time: funding first, big press conference second.

GM in Trouble Update II

A discussion making the rounds has it that GM Alex Sherzer's arrest could interfere with his chess career even if it doesn't result in jail time. The administrator and organizer of the US Championship, the AF4C (America's Foundation for Chess) is engaged in many youth activities and if Sherzer is convicted he could end up on a watch list and/or probation that could preclude his interaction with minors. They and their sponsors might have a tough time accepting his participation under those circumstances.

Meanwhile the Mobile Register has a fascinating article on the myriad of contradictions present in the laws governing the types of crime Sherzer is accused of. For example, the girl involved was a few month away from the legal consent age in Alabama, where the arrest took place. But the federal laws say 18, and you can marry at 14 in Alabama. A local assistant DA says, "It's an area where the law is slightly schizophrenic."

May 26, 2003

Good Airs

Argentina just inaugurated a new president, and it looks like this one will stick around for a while. He's the sixth in 18 months, but this is a formal transition after an election. Chess fan Duhalde is out and Nestor Kirchner is in. One of the last things Duhalde signed, apparently, is approval for state financial support of the rescheduled (Novemberish) Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE world championship match in Buenos Aires.

The new vice-president of Argentina, Daniel Scioli, was a famous boat racer. He also claims to love to play chess, and to have played many times with Duhalde! (In this interview.) This would seem to be a good omen. But back in the 90's he was on a sports commission where he had several conflicts with GM Miguel Quinteros, one of the main organizers of Kasparov-Ponomariov. Not a problem, I hope. Scioli supported chess when he was the tourism and sports secretary, his previous job.

The latest rumor (god forbid someone from FIDE go on the record or make an official release) is that a $1 million guarantee from the Argentine organizers has been paid to FIDE.

So even if everything goes perfectly from now on (ha ha), unification is a year away at best. If there is no Leko-Kramnik match this year it may be irrelevant. FIDE might just declare that they can't wait any longer, at least assuming that their own plans go forward. The sides have taken turns accusing the other of breaking with the Prague reunification accords.

Playing with Matches

Where to begin? In this press release Einstein basically says they have failed to find a sponsor for the Kramnik-Leko classical world championship match. This is the confirmation of what we knew (else they would have announced one), but it's a good and honorable thing for Einstein to announce this instead of keeping the world wondering and the journalists wondering if they will have to dash off to Budapest on short notice.

I wish the good people of Einstein the best of luck in and out of chess. The idea of a company trying to make money from chess didn't pan out. The only model that has worked has been investing in chess for publicity (see X3D and their events). Trying to make cash from chess has been a bust at that level.

As I mentioned in DD 93, this leaves the door open for Carsten Hensel. He represents both Leko and Kramnik and in today's interview at ChessBase.com he sounds confident of finding sponsorship for the match himself. No doubt. I'd be shocked if Hensel didn't have Plan B, C, and W already in mind. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that a player's representative might think the best thing would be to wait until the Einstein contract expired. If Einstein can't put anything on the table, why give them a piece of the pie, the logic would go.

I expect a polite mourning period and then a Kramnik-Leko announcement in July for a match in December. It seems unlikely that the name Einstein will be attached to it in more than name only. Migstradamus has spoken!

I do wonder if both players having the same business representative helps or hinders the match. I would assume Leko's financial demands would be much less than Kramnik's. He wants a shot at the title, Kramnik already has it. But there won't be any pressure put on since one guy is handling the negotiations for both sides, so it comes down to what he is happy with.

June 3, 2003

Hitting the Books

From a Publisher's Weekly report on the poor book market comes a mention that Deep Blue designer Feng-Hsiung Hsu's book "Behind Deep Blue" was a commercial success.

"[Publisher] Princeton attributes its "rather solid year despite the volatile political climate and erratic economy," in the words of assistant director Adam Fortgang, to a combination of a broad list and serendipity. Its Behind Deep Blue by the inventor of the chess-playing computer, Feng-Hsiung Hsu, had a "phenomenal" run which was not hurt by the chess battle between the computer and champion Gary [sic] Kasparov."

I assume they are talking about Kasparov-Junior, played in January. But the book came out a few days before the Kramnik-Fritz match in October, 2002. My copy arrived from Amazon as I was waiting for the car to take me to the airport for my flight to Bahrain and it was the second-most borrowed item during my stay. (The first were the pair of floppy diskettes I always bring on trips. People always seem to need one no matter how much the industry says they are obsolete.)

Speaking of Amazon, Hsu's book has a 4.5/5 star rating there after 14 reviews and is ranked #29,806 in the sales rank. (For blue perspective, pre-teen classic "Island of the Blue Dolphins" is #1,081 and Dr. Seuss's "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" is #602. But "Emily Insatiable" by Blue Moon Books is only 57,246. Go chess!

I thought the information in the Deep Blue book was interesting, but I found the tone strident and the text halting at best and vacuum-cleaner-instruction-manual at worst. I know edited second-language writing when I see it, but if this is the best it could be he should have worked with a ghost writer instead of having so many chopped-up sentences. It flows like granite in many parts and that was for a computer chess fanatic like me. Still, it's a must-read even if you know much of the computer chess history parts. (I'm mentioned in the book but as "a chess journalist," possibly for my own protection...)

Read Jonathan Schaeffer's book "One Jump Ahead" about his creation of the top checkers program, Chinook. Great read, if overlong in parts. Plus, Jonathan is an A1 nice guy. (Now back into checkers after years away. He plans to solve the game once and for all.)

While I'm at it, Paul Hoffman writes on chess for the New York Times and a few other mainstream publications while paying the rent with popular books and articles on science and history. His new book just came out and it looks fascinating. "Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight"

June 4, 2003

Ubiquity R Us

I admit that I rarely spend more than eight minutes thumbing through "Chess Life" when it comes each month so it wasn't much of a surprise that I had to be told by e-mail that the latest issue contains a photo of me in it. I thought it might be in the coverage of the Kasparov-Junior match in NY where I was doing the official online commentary for X3D.

Nope, it's in the report on the Amateur East team even in New Jersey. (Yes, these events were way back in January and February. Now you can understand the eight minutes.) For better or for worse, I have attained the level of ubiquity at which my photo is captioned only with "Mig," with no last name. At last I have reached the status of my idols Cher, Sting, and Moses.

Bashing Chess Life is a tradition in the US but I'll be constructive. The report on the Kasparov-Junior match (by Robert Rizzo, with contributions by Jennifer Shahade and Brian Killigrew) is fine. They were there, they attended the press conferences, they talked to people. Good. But the first thing you notice is that the 7-8 page report in the USA's premier chess magazine does not contain an interview with Kasparov or the Junior team. Not only did they not bother to do one ("they" being the editors who should have assigned this) but they didn't ask around afterwards. For example, I have hours of post-match one-on-one material with Kasparov and Junior programmer Shay Bushinsky.

Of course maybe I'm just disgruntled. Chess Life filled page after page (and the cover) with my photographs from the Kramnik-Fritz match in Bahrain half a year ago and I still haven't been paid! Various e-mail and face-to-face promises about checks in the mail have gone unfulfilled. So let's say I have a bunch of great stuff their readers would be interested in, why would I pitch it to them? Sad.

June 5, 2003

Mark Your Calendars

Exclusive, just confirmed today by publisher Everyman: Garry Kasparov will be signing copies of his new book at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan on Monday, July 14! This is the first book of the "My Great Predecessors" three-volume set of Kasparov's opinions and game analysis of the 12 world champions that came before him.

The full info: Monday 14th July, 7.30 pm at Barnes & Noble. 2289 Broadway (at 82nd Street). Map here. I'll be there for sure and I know the only good Chinese restaurant up there...

The Everyman site has a "sneak preview," 12 pages of the book in Acrobat format.

This page has an early review of the book by a Russian chess writer/editor (in English). It's incredibly enthusiastic and you might be concerned because the site is partially under the sponsorship of one Garry Kasparov. (Yes, the on-again-off-again worldchessrating.com is on again.)

But Kasparov has been putting in a lot of work on this book for years, off and on, and I don't expect anything less than sensational. I've seen excerpts of the game annotations, some of which have been included in ChessBase Magazine in the past year or two. This first book covers Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine and runs 464 pages.

The article mentions a name you probably won't hear too often in the media blitz to come, that of well-known Russian chess writer Dmitry Plissetsky. He assisted Kasparov with research and it's good of the site to mention him. (Because his name sure ain't gonna be on the cover!)

It's both impressive and disappointing that Kasparov has so few books in print. He hasn't given in to pressure to capitalize on his fame by letting a publisher churn out dozens of books with his name. On the other hand a game collection or four is long overdue. He has always said he'll have plenty of time to write when he retires from active play, so we might have a while to wait.

Kasparov to Place or Show

Google searches can turn up some strange things. It appears that the horse "Kasparov" is still in the running, at least from this race report. (Scroll down to the 4:31pm race, horse #8.)

A few years ago there was a Karpov and and a Kasparov on the circuit. There have been quite a few racehorses named for chess players or with other chess-themed names. Anyone recall where such a list appeared? It's in this pile of books behind me somewhere...

June 14, 2003

The Henderson One

Seattle has become the home of Scottish chess journalist John Henderson, here pictured hard at work in his apartment.

(Yes, that is a copy of "Men's Health" magazine sitting on the table. Somehow I doubt that's where he picked up the recipe for his favorite bacon sandwiches on buttered white bread.)

Despite being ten thousand kilometers from Edinburgh John continues to put out his daily column for The Scotsman newspaper. This while consulting on chess matters for the AF4C and going to as many Seattle Mariners baseball games as he can.

Meanwhile, last week Seattle lost its greatest contribution to the chess world, GM Yasser Seirawan. He and his wife Yvette Nagel Seirawan just moved to her hometown of Amsterdam. The departure of the greatest American player since Fischer is a blow. Seirawan will stay active in chess and you might say that he's closer to its epicenter than before.

June 15, 2003

P-K$

The Daily Dirt hasn't been daily lately but with good reason. I'm on the road and in the United States all chess roads run through Seattle, Washington. That's because Seattle is the home of the AF4C, better known as America's Foundation for Chess. They run the US Championship as well as promote a major scholastic initiative.

I spent an hour interviewing multi-millionaire venture capitalist Erik Anderson, President and co-founder of the AF4C. He talked about future plans for American chess and his own chess interests. The video interview will run on an upcoming ChessBase CD-ROM Magazine. Excerpts will likely soon appear in Chess Magazine (UK) and possibly Chess Life (US) (although not unless Chess Life first pays me for the photos they published six months ago!).

This is a bit of a coming out party for the affable Mr. Anderson, who has been content to stay behind the scenes and dish out piles of money, mostly raised for the AF4C as well as quite a bit from his own pocket. (At the closing ceremony of the 2003 Championship he personally wrote Akobian and Shabalov checks for $5,000 each for having fought hard in the final round instead of joining the other four top boards in agreeing to non-game GM draws.)

At his gorgeous corner office practically atop Lake Washington he shared his thoughts on the success of the AF4C, and his opinions of the USCF, FIDE, and the World Championship. And what could this have to do with the New York Yankees? You'll have to find out in this don't-miss interview.

The Murder Variation

Chess again makes the news in a bad way with this item on a man killing his roommate with a knife during a chess game. There is no reason at all for chess to be mentioned in the story other than that it adds color. It seems clear from the story that they haven't disclosed what the argument was about, and the killer was apparently drunk and is claiming he doesn't remember anything. But a chess board was on the scene...

Speaking of ches and the law, GM Alex Sherzer was indicted in Alabama on June 2 and the combined counts have sentences of 5-60 years and fines of up to half a million dollars. His court date will likely be in August. Several lawyerly sources have said he is unlikely to go to jail.

Packing the Bags

When you think about the center of chess in the United States you think of New York City. Many of the country's top players live in and around New York and the histories of the Marshall Chess Club and the currently defunct Manhattan Chess Club have no equal.

On the other hand, the tiny town of Crossville, Tennessee has much to offer as well. It must, because it looks like it will become the new home of the United States Chess Federation. (Currently located in New Windsor, NY, an hour north of NYC.) Recently Crossville (population 7,000, but that doubles when you include the hound dogs and their fleas) was also selected as the fourth-best location in the US for retirement...

Apparently there aren't any buildings ready so they have some land on which to build. This even more bizarre when you hear that Erik Anderson and the AF4C floated the possibility of the USCF coming closer to them with two years of rent-free offices in Spokane, Washington, plus cash for relocation.

If Tennessee works out it could be dirt cheap in the long run, one reason why many US businesses have relocated to the South in the past decade. But this also means moving far from the chess culture of the Northeast. Anyone can tell you that Tennessee is checkers (draughts) country.

June 16, 2003

Play Ball!

Here I am hard at work in Seattle after watching the Mariners beat the Atlanta Braves on a beautiful summer day.

(Lest I be accused of treason, that's a NY Yankees cap I'm wearing.)

John and I spent most of our time here at Safeco Field. And you thought Erik Anderson had a nice office!

June 19, 2003

National Closed

The current format of the US Championship still has a few kinks to be worked out. Having most of the players come as qualifiers from the major Open tournaments is great because it encourages the top GMs to play in US events and it also allows for surprises to make it to the big show. To qualify you have to play a $75 fee before the event begins, all the money from these fees going to the Championship. (That is, even if your score is good enough, if you didn't play the fee, no qualification.)

So far, so good. Another rule is that you can't take any byes if you want to qualify. You have to play all your games. (In many big opens titled players are allowed full-point and half-point byes in the early rounds.) Sounds fine, take away the freebies. But what happens if you pay your fee, qualify, but it comes to light that your first round opponent didn't show up for your game, disqualifying you? In that case your name is Michael Casella. That's what just happened to the American FIDE Master at the National Open in Las Vegas.

After some debate it was decided that Casella will get his ticket to the Championship due to a precedent, especially since the forfeit win wasn't in the last round. It's up to the tournament director to find him an opponent but there's not much they can do if the clocks have been started and someone doesn't show up at the board.

Quite a few people finished ahead of him in the standings but all of them except for GM Joel Benjamin were either already qualified, not eligible, and/or didn't pay the $75 before the event. So Benjamin and Casella get the two spots. (Trivia: 21 players paid the qualifying fee.)

June 20, 2003

Not My Plan!

A strange document is currently making the rounds. FIDE's World Chess Championship Committee has sent out a sort of summary of their meetings during the Bled Olympiad last October. They want "the world's top 200 GMs" to send them feedback on the proposal. It also includes questions about which time control the players prefer.

Strangely enough, the godfather of this movement toward a new championship cycle, American GM Yasser Seirawan, didn't receive a copy until over a month after it was first sent out! He is troubled by the fact that they are referring to what they sent out as "the Seirawan Plan" despite how it differs in many respects from his original "Fresh Start" proposal. He was the secretary of the Bled meetings but he only recorded the comments made and the document he produced was not purely of his views.

One of the additions to the original plan is a "Last Chance Super Tournament" that would give high-rated players a second chance to qualify for the candidates matches if they didn't make it through the big KO. Sound silly to me. I'm also against having the incumbent world champion play in more than one match. Title succession is a very powerful symbol in chess and having a new champion never face the old champion sacrifices 90% of the drama and makes the final just another match.

(And no, I don't care if that's not the way it's done in tennis or golf. Think boxing. Chess world champions define eras and become legends. Why throw that away for the sake of a false "democracy"? What's wrong with the best player being champion? Trivializing the title won't help the chess world.)

Another suggestion is that the initial KO be at the rapid time control previously used but that they shift to classical controls for the matches and final. This is weird, sort of like running sprints to qualify for a marathon final. On the other hand the winner will have proved himself master of all different time controls. What do you think about mixing controls over the course of a world championship cycle? Perversion, improvement, or a necessary evil?

The full document and comments by Seirawan will be published later today at ChessBase.com and I'll update this link to go right to it.

Tic-toc-tic-toc

Speaking of the ICC, they have done the chess world another favor by putting Gene Venable's ChessWatch back on the air. The peripatetic review of online chess has had many homes and was the reason I met Gene online in 1999 and in person in 2000.

He started it himself on a free website and when I was put in charge of building site content and staff for the nascent KasparovChess.com I asked Gene to come on board as an editor-by-email. When KC opened an office in New York and I moved there I asked Gene if he would move from San Diego to join KC full time as an editor, and to continue Chess Watch under the glaring red of KC. (He couldn't really argue with the palette considering his own predilection for a painful shade of yellow.)

He packed his bags, moved to New Jersey, and commuted to our Broadway & Wall St. office each day. When KC started to shut down operations bit by bit and the NY office was closing (Spring 2001) it was suggested that I move to Moscow to work with the Russian content team. I declined and suggested that Gene go and sure enough he surprised us and jumped at the chance. He just needed to get a passport first! (For a few months it was just Gene, controller Anthony Milazzo, and me wandering around the large office, the other dozen employees having been let go.)

Gene continued work in Moscow until KC folded up shop completely and then decided he liked Moscow so much he would stick around! When the aforementioned Moscow content folks reappeared with the new Kasparov-supported worldchessrating.com Gene was recruited again but the site's financial backing was never on solid ground. Now he and ChessWatch are at the ICC website, which has never had any content worth speaking of before.

It's definitely worth a bookmark. Good luck to Gene, with whom I shared many a plate of bean dip at the Wall St. Bar and Grill (which followed the lead of KasparovChess and closed up shop over a year ago, RIP).

Here's a picture of Gene with some chess VIP visiting our offices in March, 2000.

For more nostalgia, try this:
(Yes, I save everything.)

December 26, 1999

Hello Gene,

This is Mig at the newly renamed KasparovChess.com. We're launching our completely new site early in the coming year and I'm looking for fresh contributors. I like the concept of your ChessWatch site and instead of stealing it I was wondering if you would be interested in doing what you're doing now, but be paid for it and get a few hundred times the number of hits!

Please write back if you're at all interested. GM Ronen Har-Zvi is my assistant here and will be following things up on this end. (Basically this means annoying you constantly until you acquiesce.) (No, there are no Kasparov tattoos or "we love Garry" brainwashing sessions.) I hope your holidays are happy ones, take care. Saludos, Mig

Internet Check Club

The grand old man of online pay-to-play chess sites, the Internet Chess Club (ICC) has written a big check to support US chess. They just put up $100,000 to become funding underwriters of the AF4C for the next four years. The AF4C (#110, 107 etc.) puts this money into developing its scholastic programs and the US Championship. There is no truth to the nasty rumor that some of it goes to support John Henderson's bacon habit. Kudos to the ICC for digging deep and giving back, even if my online chess heart is still with the new hotness, Playchess.com.

Get Out the (correct) Map Again

Mikhail Langer writes in: "Sport-Express (Russian sports daily) reports that Ponomariov and Kasparov received letters informing them that their match will take place in September in Yalta. The report also states that the official match anouncement is planned for late June - early July.

What's Ponomariov's oscillating frequency? Would he be able to peak again in September, so soon after his professed peaking in June? :)"

Hey, I'll do the jokes around here! You've heard of Yalta but can't remember why and have no idea where it is? It's the southern tip of Ukraine, in the Crimea region on the Black Sea and it's famous because of the 1945 War Conference that included Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. (Now shown in the correct, non-Microsoft map above. Thanks to the several people who pointed out the mistaken map.)

I guess earlier is better than later, although press coverage suffers every time the match site and/or dates are moved. The annual Prague event is scheduled for September and it would be a shame to have two great events conflict.

June 24, 2003

School Daze

A somewhat depressing story about a 7-year-old kid in England whose parents have pulled him out of school so he'll have more time to work on chess. The kid has already won several adult tournaments (!!) and so must be considered quite a talent, but really, out of school at seven to work on chess, or anything?

His 6/6 performance at the Central London Rapidplay in May was mentioned at the BCF website: "But the show stealer was 7-year-old Peter Williams, who swept all six games in the U120 Minor. Organiser John Weightman used epithets like 'outclassed' and 'slaughtered' to describe the Alton, Hampshire boy's treatment of his opponents, four of whom were graded over 100. His best win was against runner-up Adrian Riley (who won his other five games), and he won even in the final round when a draw would have netted £100.

Peter today appears on the Junior Prix leaderboard in 19th place, and he is currently third in the U11 Prix behind Subin Sen and Callum Kilpatrick. He already won the bottom section at Coulsdon Easter, but that was at U90 level.
At seven years two months, Williams is probably England's third youngest winner of an adult tournament, after Murugan Thiruchelvam and Jack Rudd who both won adult events aged six. He belongs to Richmond Junior Chess Club and is coached by Gavin Wall."

Duly terrifying no doubt. But even such precocity does not guarantee you are the next Polgar or Karjakin. Thiruchelvam is now 14 and is rated 2259 at an age when he would need to be a GM to impress a jaded chess world.

June 28, 2003

Opening the World

I don't want this to turn the DD into a personal blog, but the kind folks in the message boards have shown more interest than I have in my return to competitive chess at next week's World Open in Philadelphia. (Thanks for the support, guys!) After some initial confusion because of my ancient US rating and my much higher and more recent but still old Argentine rating (2300), I will be playing in the open section.

I figured that after a six-year layoff I might as well jump into the deep end and get some fodder for training. It will be painful but I decided I shouldn't worry about results until 2004. I hope that by then I'll have found time to study a bit. Either that or I'll have to start only including openings I want in my own repertoire in the Black Belt newsletters! (My "preparation" for the World Open has included trips to Seattle and now California and now my laptop is broken!)

Last February at the US Amateur Team I played my first six classical games in six years. It's a great event but hardly conducive to serious chess. My main goal in Philly will be to stay at the board for nine games and work so I have some decent material to analyze when it's all over. I'll try to post updates from Philly and also post photos and reports at ChessBase.com during the event.

July 8, 2003

Back in Action

Sorry for the long layoff and thanks to everyone writing in to ask if this should now be the Weekly Dirt or the Whenever Dirt. I didn't have the time or software to work on the site while I was in Philadelphia at the World Open with my broken laptop. And no, I didn't throw myself off a high rook because of my result! My nerves were a mess and my chess wasn't much better. I had to start somewhere, but I wish I'd played in a few more casual events in the month before jumping into the World Open. My stomach still has a few knots in it.

At least I got to see friends and make new friends, as well as meeting several Ninjas for the first time in person. (And having a few readers come up to have their picture taken with me or have me sign something, which is cool if weird. One guy told me I was a "cult figure" so I asked him if he had paid his cult dues yet!)

I'll definitely be updating the DD more frequently from now on. Not only am I home finally but there is a lot going on. Plus, a World Open report with many photos will be appearing at ChessBase.com later today.

July 9, 2003

Beat Him While You Can

This priceless picture of 11-year-old American wunderkind Fabiano Caruana was taken by ChessNinja message board moderator (den mother) inky1 during the World Open. Fabiano is already a FIDE Master. We scored the same miserable number of points in the Open section in Philly (3/9) but he's on the way up while I'm neither a wunder nor a kinder!

Here I was telling him to tell his parents that I got this tall from avoiding vegetables and eating only Twinkies and Pepsi. From the look on his face he has already learned to see through the media. Get in on the ground floor and join the Fabiano Fan Club now.

July 10, 2003

All Roads Lead to New York

Garry Kasparov and his manager are in New York City and there is more afoot than his much-anticipated book signing at Barnes & Noble next Monday. Some online chat events are being organized and announcements will be made as soon as the schedules can be worked out. (It took place on July 12.)

My refrigerator has orange soda in it and there are potato chips on the counter, what could this mean? Only that the Germans are coming! Well, THE German, Frederic Friedel of ChessBase, is invading my apartment tonight, along with Jeroen of the ChessBase technical staff. (He is Dutch, he would like me to point out.)

Hmm, ChessBase and Kasparov in the same city at the same time, what could this all mean? Something good, no doubt. The first time they got together a chess database was created. The last time they got together we got the Kasparov-Deep Junior match. What's not to like? But next time I hope they program the machine to say, "I think I'd like to play on a little longer, Garry" in an eerie HAL 9000 voice.

Ineke Bakker Passes on July 6


Originally posted in the Ninja message boards by Susan Grumer: " Ineke Bakker, former Secretary-General of FIDE, passed away last Sunday, July 6. She was a beautiful, warm person, and the backbone of the World Chess Federation for many wonderful years under the presidencies of Dr. Max Euwe and Fridrik Olafsson. I spent many delightful hours with Ineke, and will always cherish my wonderful memories of those times. She will be missed by all who knew her.

Here is a picture I took of Ineke Bakker at the opening meeting of the FIDE Commission for Chess Developing Countries in 1975. Also in the picture from left to right are Yuri Averbakh, Florencio Campomanes and Dr. Max Euwe."

July 11, 2003

World Tittle Match

Don't blame me, that's the way they spelled it in the Interfax "breaking news" story announcing that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has signed an order to organize the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE World Championship match. Dates mentioned are September-October 2003 in Yalta, as previously rumored. A shame, at least for me, because I'm going to be in Prague for the Eurotel event in September. Maybe a double dip trip? They'll probably have the Yalta match whittled down to a tidy eight or ten games by then.

July 13, 2003

Kasparov 3D Again

Breaking news was just released in Newsweek. Garry Kasparov will play another man-machine match in November, 2003 against Deep Fritz. It's a special X3D version of the ChessBase flagship program.

The project has been under wraps (under threat of a painful death) but now that the announcement has been made, we can reveal that Kasparov has been here in NY several times (including his current trip) to help perfect the software that will allow him to play against Fritz on a giant X3D screen! Yes, that means he will be wearing those black glasses and looking at a giant screen instead of sitting at a normal board. And he won't need a mouse thanks to voice recognition. This should be massively cool. Yes, it's a circus, but it's a massively cool circus! It's also great that X3D is sticking with chess.

Many more details will appear at ChessBase.com and X3dWorld.com soon.

Chat chat chat

On July 12 Garry Kasparov gave a live chat on Playchess.com. I served as moderator, question picker, and manic typist at Garry's hotel room. I'm glad I had the transcript because it was a fascinating discussion and I really didn't have a chance to pay much attention to it at the time!

It was hard to find good questions in the morass of chat coming in from the over 1500 people online. Challenges for a game, questions about his favorite eau de toilette, and those weren't the strangest of the lot!

Before publishing the whole thing at ChessBase.com here I edited the transcript down to the questions and answers and made additions and corrections based on the video we took. Some paraphrasing was necessary to keep up during the chat and a few times some good Kasparov comments didn't make it online during the chat.

If you want the raw feed of the chat as I saw it, here it is in a 124KB text file. Lucky for everyone else they could only see the questions and answers I sent. It was hard to find questions and comments in the mess, but it worked out pretty well in the end.

All of that on my trusty laptop on a 28.8 dial-up connection! Not exactly a dream scenario but it worked great. The Playchess.com Fritz 8 software worked just fine despite the low bandwidth.

July 18, 2003

They Say They Said

According to the well-connected Russians at worldchessrating.com, FIDE has given September 19 as the starting date of the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE championship match. They quote FIDE President Ilyumzhinov's assistant Berik Balgabaev.

The often comically out of date FIDE calendar has even been updated with new dates for the match: 19/9 – 10/00 [sic]. I'm guessing that means October 10. That means a 20-day event with maybe a dozen game dates. That the number of games hasn't even been mentioned (decided) should illustrate how far this thing still has to go before we should get really excited. The Ukrainians still don't have any money. Politics first (Putin and Kuchma are on board) and then they can shake some money out of the regional oil/gas barons. As usual.

The match will coincide with a summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), basically the Soviet Union Lite. Unfortunately these dates conflict with the final two days of the Prague Eurotel event I will be running. Sigh.

I doubt Kasparov and Ponomariov were told of these new dates before the announcement was made. Kasparov hadn't heard anything from FIDE in months (!) as of yesterday and the players still don't have contracts. Word to the wise: don't book your flight and hotel until there are signed player contracts.

July 21, 2003

My Kinda Town

In this Ninja message board thread BlkSabb quickly posted these links (here and here) to some interesting posts on another board from someone who played Garry Kasparov in his Belzberg simul in Chicago last week. At least the guy was supposed to play Kasparov. It turned out his rating was too high for the event but this wasn't noticed by Kasparov until the game was underway. (The other links go to a fun story of how Kasparov made it up to the guy.) There is a 2000 rating cut-off for most of Kasparov's promotional simultaneous exhibitions, something that surprises many people.

This is discussed in more detail in the thread at the first link above, but the bottom line is that these are promotional events and the organizers are on a tight time schedule. The Belzberg simul at the Stock Exchange here in NY earlier this year included dinner and drinks and had to be wrapped up on time.

This is not serious chess and the addition of just one or two strong players can slow things down dramatically. When time isn't such a factor and the players are there just for the chess (at clubs and against juniors, etc.) I've seen many large Kasparov simuls with players rated over 2300 FIDE.

I suppose that Kasparov could simply try to play faster regardless of the strength of the players. He would lose and draw more games, something he despises even in simuls. Some of the great simul players of the past didn't mind losing so much and played more to the gallery. Alekhine would experiment with wild gambits and unsound defenses, Capablanca played with unbelievable speed against everyone.

Kasparov doesn't want to have fun in these events. He plays conservatively and classically and feels that he should have a shot at a perfect score each time out in the time allotted. He believes that's what the sponsors (and players) want from the world #1. This is probably true in these promotional simuls. No one there would appreciate that he played a few spectacular games (most players don't even keep score) They would only understand the final score. Of course WE prefer a few brilliancies to a 20-0 score, so it's really a greater loss to chess. To have that shot at 100% in a two-hour exhibition (or any fixed, short, amount of time) some rating limit is required.

I think this is more of an example of how Kasparov sees his role and image as standard bearer than anything else. He believes losing is simply not acceptable and that others feel the same. Is it too late for him to change?

Buy the Book

Just a day after Kasparov's book signing in New York, the NY book dealer Julian's had this up on the web:

"ON MY GREAT PREDECESSORS PART 1 - STEINITZ, LASKER, CAPABLANCA, ALEKHINE. by KASPAROV, GARRY LONDON EVERYMAN CHESS 2003. AN/AN. ... Small 4to; 464 pages; Signed by Author. First Edition. Binding is Hardcover. The price of the book is US$ 175.00"

And the London Chess Centre is selling "signed" copies of the book on Ebay, the first of which went for a hundred dollars. (Retail cover price is $35, most online sellers seem have it for around $27.) The odd thing is that according to the auction the books weren't signed by Kasparov. They have a signed label affixed to the inside cover!

No doubt someone from Julian's was one of the many people in line with a dozen or more books for Kasparov to sign (but not personalize, which would harm the resale value unless it's to someone famous). It's a good case for limiting the number of copies per person because there were dozens of disappointed people who didn't get a book before they sold out (after 15 minutes). Of course that's an even better case for the bookseller to have more books!

July 25, 2003

One Ukrainian as Good as Another?

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has made it clear that FIDE won't be paying Ponomariov a dime in compensation for the postponement of the his FIDE title match with Kasparov.

"Ponomariov addressed me in a letter and stated that he’d lost out financially. But as far as I know, he was training in the Crimea, and flying far didn’t suit him. But how many trainers and masseurs he needs to pay out for, well, that’s his problem. He had his prize money and divided it up accordingly. That’s the way business is carried out in the sporting world. Solving Ponomariov’s problems is nothing to do with FIDE."

Masseurs! A cheapo from the Prez. He also said that FIDE would be taking its customary chunk of the prize fund despite Ponomariov's objection. In a spiky interview with the Russian paper Sport Express, Ilyumzhinov also talked about the unification match, the next championship cycle, and the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match. (It won't be considered a "serious" match by FIDE.) And if Ponomariov balks?

"You want me to tell you what will happen if Ponomariov refuses to play Kasparov? This is a point of law under FIDE rules. If the champion or contender refuses to take part, the next in line gets to play. In this case, Vassily Ivanchuk. If not Ponomariov, then Ivanchuk."

Kudos and thanks to Ninja message board stalwart jackiechan for her quick translation of this important interview.

July 28, 2003

Anand by Vote

There is a poll in the Ninja message boards where you can vote for the Dortmund 2003 winner and post your opinions. So far Vishy Anand is a heavy favorite with 50% of the votes to take the top prize. Leko and Kramnik are even behind him. Leko has had the most activity lately, playing in Budapest, where he came third. Radjabov also had a mediocre result in his most recent event, Enghien-les-Bains. The only shame will be if all the games between Leko, Kramnik, and Anand are drawn. Go vote and post your thoughts.

July 29, 2003

But Can She Cook?

2002 US Women's Champion Jennifer Shahade is the subject of a long, interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine. The author is Paul Hoffman, a player himself who also writes on chess for the NY Times and is working on a book about his obsession with the game.

There is a short excerpt with some photos here. At the bottom of that page there is a link to a PDF file (Acrobat) with the full text of the article. It appears with some larger photos (some by me) in the August issue, which should be available in bookstores and magazine shops. Great read.

Jen is hailed as the strongest American born female chessplayer ever. The article centers around her exhibition match against Irina Krush at a NY art gallery earlier this year. (My short report on it here.)

August 3, 2003

A Snip for Chess

Just when you think you've seen it all, the innovating fund-raising methods of Seattle-based America's Foundation for Chess strike again. I suppose a well-manicured hand could intimidate an opponent. Maybe a set of those long, twisty dragon-lady nails, too.

"Join us for a $20 pedicure, manicure and/or haircut at the Aveda concept salon Euphorico in Seattle’s Belltown and $10 of every purchase will help bring chess to children. During the months of August, September and October, Euphorica Salon is designating America’s Foundation for Chess as the beneficiary of its First Time Fridays/Fabulous Mondays program. Guests can choose from a $20 service menu for first-time visitors:

• precision hair cut with a stress relieving treatment or an aroma therapeutic towel • manicure • pedicure • o precision hair cut with a manicure ($20 each) • precision hair cut with a pedicure ($20/each)

50% of all proceeds benefit the Scholastic Initiative at America's Foundation for Chess – where bringing chess into the classroom is improving problem solving skills and self-confidence in children.

Call 206.256.9900, visit www.euphorico.com, or stop by 2505 2nd Ave (on 2nd Ave and Vine St.) to set up an appointment. Make sure you mention AF4C and remember to do well for yourself and a child!"

August 5, 2003

Book of Matches

I just finished reading Garry Kasparov's new book for the second time. The first time it was as a reader, the second time as a reviewer with a pile of other books next to me for reference. (The full review will appear at ChessBase.com in the next day or two.)

My overall impression is the same as my first impression: "My Great Predecessors, Vol. 1" is an amazing book and you should buy it immediately. It's an enjoyable read with tremendous breadth and depth of content. There is a huge amount of analysis from Kasparov and historical sources. The overview of Kasparov tracing the development of chess from Philidor through Alekhine is very interesting and I expect it will only get better in the next books as he begins to write about more modern players whom he knew and faced.

The first time through I found some of the writing stilted and there are definitely too many grammatical errors and style violations (ellipses, exclams) for a work of this magnitude. This could be improved but is hardly a fatal flaw and I barely noticed it the second time.

The lack of a bibliography and the degree of insufficient attribution of analysis are more serious issues (although this doesn't affect the enjoyment of the book for the reader, just the integrity/thoroughness of the authors and editors). In at least a few games there are swaths of analysis taken from other books that go unmentioned. This means the Russian "Chess Stars" series in most cases, which is somewhat ironic because they do the same thing in most of their books. (Those books are just dense variations without text for the most part.)

Obviously two, or ten, analysts can come up with the same lines, and they often do. But when the same lines begin and end on the same move over and over for entire blocks, that's rarely a coincidence. This occurred in several Capablanca games I looked at carefully. (I don't have the Chess Stars Alekhine books.) But as dubious a practice that may be, it doesn't mean it's not a fantastic book. A beginner won't get much from the annotations, although it would still be a fun and informative read.

August 6, 2003

Chess (Not) in the News

The Dortmund supertournament is halfway through. The German event is obviously the biggest from Linares to the Ponomariov-Kasparov match in September. The whole chess world is watching Kramnik, Anand, and Leko battle with outsiders Bologan, Radjabov, and Naiditsch. There is even a great man bites dog story with Bologan scoring 4/5 in the first half and leading the tournament a full point ahead of Kramnik.

And I know my friend Rob Huntington, who does chess for the Associated Press, is there because he called me right before leaving for the airport! And of his reports, exactly one has been circulated by AP, that from the first round. Since then it's been radio silence for what we usually call "the mainstream press." Some newspapers have daily or weekly columnists, but they often ignore current events and aren't enough anyway.

What would it take to get AP and its outlets to run more chess stories? Upset wins haven't done the trick in Dortmund, what would? This is YOUR cue to write your favorite news source and ask, no, TELL them to publish more chess coverage. Your newspaper, your newspaper's website, whatever. They all have feedback links for e-mail or forms. Write them and say, "where the heck is your coverage of the Dortmund chess tournament?! AP is covering this, run the story!" Write them now, before you forget! They don't know unless we tell them what we want! Now, now, now!!

August 9, 2003

Games in the Home

A local paper has a little story on the increasing popularity of games in the US home, including chess. This is apparently based on the increase in sales of fancy game tables. The given causes include everything from 9-11 to an aging population choosing more sedentary leisure activities.

I spent a lot of time with dozens of board games with my sister and friend when I was a kid. Even when computers and video games started taking over when I was around 12 the game closet was visited regularly to pull out things like Stratego or Monopoly. We also played card games all the time. I won't criticize video games because not all of them are mindless, and few of the board games I remember required much in the way of thinking. (Lots of spinners and rolling dice.)

They say that Americans are going out less after 9-11 and so are spending more time at home with the kids. When is the last time you and/or your family spend an evening at home playing a game together? What was it? Most people learn chess from a family member, do you play with your family?

August 12, 2003

The Last Train to Crossville

(With apologies to the Monkees.) Speaking of monkeys and trains, the United States Chess Federation has been doing their best impression of a train wreck this month. Little of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has watched them in action over the past, oh, forever, but what they thought was going to be a small profit for the last fiscal year turned into an audited loss of $365,000. A tidy thou per day.

Oops! Now wait, just a sec, where did I put that three hundred thousand dollars? Gosh. Maybe it fell into the sofa cushions. The USCF now begins a struggle to avoid bankruptcy, having lost money for the last seven years in a row despite its captive audience. (You can't play a rated game in the US without signing up for $50/year, which may now increase.)

This mess has led to a massive shake-up, as well it should. My friend Beatriz Marinello, who was only just elected to the Board, has hastily been made the new President of the USCF and a new VP Finance and Secretary have also been named. Executive Director Frank Niro (insert "fiddled ... burned" joke here) has resigned for those time-honored health reasons and a replacement is being sought. Maybe if Schwarzenegger doesn't win the governorship of California...

From my limited knowledge beyond the excellent Ms. Marinello (with whom I had the pleasure of working at KasparovChess where she consulted and helped with our world school chess championship) this seems like a competent group. They've been dealt a very bad hand, however, and cleaning house isn't just a case of tossing out the rascals. The official magazine (Chess Life) needs a lot of work and new ideas if it's going to drive membership and not drive it away. Meanwhile, here in Ninja land we've been profitable since we opened the doors...

This happens just as the USCF plans its move from New York to the tiny town of Crossville, Tennessee. But they're excited down there, let me tell you. This article proclaims Crossville the new "Chess Capital of the World" now that they'll host the USCF. (Notify Moscow.) The locals also seem amused in this column on the "mixing of cultures." Reserve your ad today!

August 18, 2003

Black(out) is Okay

Well, as David Mamet said, that happened. In February we had a newsletter delayed by a blizzard when I couldn't get home from a tournament to send it. Last week it was the largest blackout in US history to delay Black Belt. My area of Manhattan (East Village) was one of the last in NY to get power back, around 29 hours after it went out Thursday afternoon. Chess in the parks benefited, however, because public spaces were full of people who didn't want to stay inside without air conditioning on a hot, stuff day.

August 19, 2003

GMs Draw

You would think the sheer ignominy of pathetic non-games nicknamed "GM draws" would be enough, but no. John Henderson brings to our attention this tidbit from the interesting notes of Jerry Hanken on the just-finished US Open in Los Angeles:

"We had our first test of the draw rule Monday in the 6-day schedule. In accordance with the Rulebook, we are requiring that players stay at the board and play at least 15 moves and 1/2 an hour before they can agree to a draw. This is not a new rule. The Rulebook says "It is unethical and unsportsmanlike to agree to a draw before a real fight has begun." Penalties for such behavior are at the discretion of the TD. In keeping with this rule, we wrote and posted a notice to all players that this would be the way we enforced the rule.

Two GMs chose to ignore this rule and tried to draw in 1 move! Admonished by International Arbiter Carol Jarecki, they returned to the board, played four more moves, and disappeared without turning in a scoresheet. marking the result as a draw."

For the rest of the story, go here and scroll down to August 13. What I really don't understand is why Mr. Hanken over-politely declines to name the culprit GMs. Why? Name them, shame them, nothing wrong with that at all. If they choose to do it they should live with the repercussions of their actions. Why protect them from their own destructive (to the game) behavior? Celebrate them when they fight, criticize when they don't. It's the only way.

It would have been history repeating itself if the game in question had been Shabalov-Ehlvest, which is in the books as a 20-move draw. At the World Open in July they were almost double-forfeited when they phoned in a draw. The "castling" score (0-0) was even on the initial results page but it turned out the arbiters (one of whom the same Carol Jarecki who was in Los Angeles) let them come down and "play" a short draw at the board later.

August 21, 2003

A Fine Whine

Speaking of interviews and expired titles, Ruslan Ponomariov finally got a contract from FIDE for his FIDE world championship match against Garry Kasparov scheduled to begin in Yalta on September 19. And he's not happy about it. No specifics were given in this article (in Russian, translation in the Ninja message boards by her highness jackiechan here with a few corrections and additions below it) by the sympathetic Ukrainian GM Komarov, but Ponomariov's manager, Silvio Danailov, says his young charge isn't happy with FIDE's statement that no changes will be made to the contract and that he must sign by Aug. 25th or be replaced by Ivanchuk.

Things like this are why I haven't bought my ticket to Yalta yet and it might just be too late soon. I think Ponomariov just thinks that he is supposed to protest everything or he "loses" somehow. Danailov says, "It seems to me that FIDE blatantly wish Kasparov to win in Yalta, and is fulfilling all his requirements." But he doesn't mention any specifics and I don't see how Kasparov could be gaining an advantage as long as the rules apply to both players equally. True, Pono didn't get the time control he wanted, but that was decided a long time ago. I wrote to Danailov asking about what items Ponomariov is unhappy with.

I still think this match is a big, fat gift horse to both Ponomariov and Kasparov, but Pono seems intent on giving it a dental exam. Nobody likes to be bullied or treated like a stepchild, but a gift from heaven is a gift from heaven.

Interviews a Go-Go

A set of interesting new interviews and news items from the world's elite has hit the web in the past few days. A few weeks ago Anand spoke about the current world title mess. Nothing new and Vishy is always polite. There's really nothing new to add. It's been a mess for a long time and everybody knows who is who. Some comments from Dortmund winner Viktor Bologan are here at Chessbase.com, from an upcoming Europe Echecs article. A longer Bologan interview by Loeffler and Tischbierek includes this sage advice:

What do you think about the poor showing of Kramnik, Leko and Anand?

Bologan: "This is bad news for these top players: the youngsters and myself played more interesting games. The new faces refreshed the tournament. The truth is that Kramnik and Anand are tired from all these big tournaments. They don´t feel the pressure to perform any more, they need some new challenge."

Word up. That's another reason why the classical world championship cycle is so important. It wasn't just another tournament. The tension, the preparation, and the level of chess simply make it better when it's for real.

Speaking of Kramnik, after his one win, nine consecutive draw result.... ZZZzzzzz huh, oh, sorry, I drifted off there for a moment. Kramnik did an interview after Dortmund and he talks about his style and his increasingly fictional match world championship match with Leko. (NB: The Associated Press has ceased referring to Kramnik as world champion.) Vlady is always thoughtful and interesting, although a couple of things were not convincing. 1) Blaming your opponents for your nine consecutive draws when you are rated 2800 is disingenuous at best. To a certain point I agree when Kramnik says Kasparov wins more because players try hard to beat him and he gets more chances. On the other hand, Kasparov has been wiping people out for 20 years and style does matter. A lot.

2) Kramnik saying he couldn't help much with setting up the Leko match while Einstein was still in the picture doesn't make any sense. It's not as if Einstein didn't need or want help from anyone this side of magic elves. In a perfect world his manager and his sponsors would have found something, but we all know the chess world is far from perfect. He should have been busting his butt to make something happen.

I still think they will end up playing it in Budapest or Dortmund or Paris or anywhere that will pay the organizing bills. They will play with virtually no prize fund (but they'll say it's a million dollars, the big round number du jour). Rob Huntington suggests they pay the loser from the share the winner gets from the unification match against the winner Kasparov-Ponomariov. It would be hard to write a check on that promise, but since Leko and Kramnik have the same manager (Carsten Hensel) it's a reasonable suggestion in a desperate situation. Every day that passes makes the match less marketable, in part because of Kasparov-Ponomariov-FIDE.

A New Chapter for the USCF

There's a new chapter in the USCF rulebook and it might be Chapter 11. The United States Chess Federation – fresh from board elections, the discovery of a massive fiscal shortfall, and a spate of resignations (DD 135) – just laid off 40% of its staff, 17 people. I've been in charge of such mass head-chopping myself and it isn't pretty for the choppees or the choppers. Drastic action was obviously called for. New El Presidente Beatriz Marinello will try to step through the landmines and in a press release she spoke of the "daunting challenges ahead." Apart from the disasters that have been made public, sources say there are several more scandals yet to be unveiled. Maybe they thought Arthur Anderson was Erik's brother?! Plenty of her countrywoman Isabel Allende's brand of magic realism will be required for Marinello and the USCF to survive.

[ Don't forget to vote in our poll on how to save the USCF! ]

The USCF's line of credit at the bank is soon to be cut off and the line of vendors and others who are owed money is long and getting longer. (John Henderson applies a Dennis Miller line: "They're more overdrawn than M.C. Escher's doodle pad!") This means the USCF might not be able to afford to move to their new location in Tennessee. (My "last train to Crossville" joke in #135 appears to have been prescient.) Revelations about contracts signed regarding the US Women's Olympiad training squad are also expected and I very much hope that program is not harmed. Apparently former executive director Niro was pulling so much wool over so many eyes that he must own his own sheep ranch. (Maybe his own eyes? What did he know and when?) The phenomenally named Grant Perks is now serving as office manager. No word if his assistant Ivana Steele is coming with him.

The casualties included most of the senior staff of Chess Life magazine, which to be honest has been a joke of long standing to much of the US chess community (the magazine, not the staff). Now there will be much less to laugh about after unavoidable cutbacks. Will they bring in someone with experience who can also move things toward a significantly cheaper web magazine presence? I'm sitting by the phone...

August 25, 2003

Pono Says No-no

Quick update to DD141. Ponomariov has refused to meet FIDE's deadline to sign the player contract for his FIDE world championship match with Kasparov, according to a Russian sports site. Siberian posted this Russian news link in the message boards and summed up: "Pono didn't sign. Ponomariov officially notified the organizing committee of the match that the rigidity in FIDE's position forces him to consider the possibility of asking the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, to revoke his decree about conducting the match in Yalta."

Pono is seriously overestimating his influence from what we've seen so far. The last world championship match that went off as planned was 1990. Sigh. Will it be postponed? Will Ivanchuk be dropped in? If yes, will they reschedule or have Ivanchuk play on the same schedule? (Sept 19-Oct 5)

This may end up with another marathon negotiating session with Ponomariov signing in the end late tonight. Stay tuned.

America, America

The biggest current chess event you probably don't know anything about is the American Continental Championship going on in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Most of the top players from Canada all the way down to Chile are fighting for slots in the next FIDE world championship (whenever that is) and $72,000 in prizes.

US champion Alexander Shabalov is there, as is recent emigre Alexander Onischuk, the top seed. But after six rounds it's another Russian-speaking American Alex, Goldin, who is in the lead. He's tied on 5.5 with Cuban Lenier Dominguez. American teen sensation Hikaru Nakamura is showing his stuff too and he moved up to clear third by beating leader Granda Zuniga with the black pieces in the sixth round.

Then there is a massive pack at 4.5 that includes Shabalov, Onischuk, and Gulko. There are four rounds to play. Check out the round six games here. Official site in Spanish here. Some players apparently didn't make it. De Firmian, Lesiege, and Ashley are all listed as "loss by default" for each round. Strange. Irina Krush is currently the top-scoring woman with 4.

If Nakamura continues his rapid rise he will enter the top 100 next year. If so he would be the first American-raised player to do so since, ummm, since, well... who? Maybe Patrick Wolff in 94? To further illustrate the dearth of talent and opportunity for young US players in recent decades. (Richard Ehrman writes in to point out that Maurice Ashley got his GM title just a few years ago. But he had only needed time to work on his game and at 37 can't be called an up-and-comer anymore, I'm afraid!)

There is only one other American player under 20 years old rated over 2500, Akobian. Going down to 2400 adds just two more names, Krush and Pixton. Dropping to 2300 adds four more. Ouch. After Nakamura America may be waiting for Fabiano Caruana (see DD120), rated 2160 at 11 years old.

Don't Book that Flight!

Oy. An interview with FIDE Prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in the Russian paper Sport Express explains some of Ponomariov's protests (see DD140 below) and really makes it sound like the Ponomariov-Kasparov FIDE world championship match will not happen as scheduled. Here is the original article in Russian and here is a quick English translation posted to the ever-more-essential ChessNinja message boards by new member Siberian. Thanks to him and Penguin for their timely assistance in making the Dirt the place to be for your daily dose of disaster.

To sum up: 1) Ponomariov wants to eliminate the rest day before a potential playoff if the match is tied. 2) Wants to keep his title until the end of the unification process. 3) Wants $100,000 as compensation for the cancellation of the match, which was originally supposed to take place in Argentina in June. 4) He wants all of these items reviewed in a Yalta court, or even in a European court in Strasbourg.

Bizarre, really. Items 2 and 3 have already been categorically rejected by FIDE and Ilyumzhinov loudly and clearly. Item 1 convinces me further that Pono is protesting just to protest as a form of gamesmanship. Threatening not to play because of a rest day?!? With such trivial claims and delays and such rapid recourse to the court system to keep his title for a few hours more, Ponomariov really does seem to be a combination of Fischer and Karpov, but not at the board!

Ilyumzhinov also states that Kasparov signed the contract already, "without any clauses or remarks." Well, you would expect that if he helped draft the thing as Ponomariov seems to suspect!

All in all I do feel sorry for Ponomariov. He feels pressured (IS pressured) and wants to hit back to show he's not going to be pushed around. But he's picking his fights poorly thus far and is very much outgunned. I suppose it's easy for outsiders to wonder why the 19-year-old wouldn't just say, "Cool, a match with Kasparov to prove I'm the top dog and a pile of money too, and all in my home country! Fantastic!"

Ponomariov clearly feels that this off-the-board fight is an important part of the psychological over-the-board fight. Maybe he's right, but so far he has barked up the wrong trees. Fischer could do this against Spassky, among others, because he was Fischer. If Kasparov started pulling these stunts it would also be taken more seriously because he's Kasparov. Off the board silliness is only tolerated when your credibility and indispensability have been established on the board. Ponomariov's win at the FIDE knock-out never gave him that credibility and it seems no one is taking him seriously. FIDE believes that they can put in Ivanchuk instead of Pono and the resulting winner will be just as credible.

That may or may not be true, but since this was supposed to be a quickie extracurricular match to unify the title, I'm inclined not to care. I'm far more interested in unification and the real cycle that follows and would just love to have this charade over with. The deadline for Pono to send in the signed contract is today, the 25th. If he doesn't sign, says Ilyumzhinov, "If needed, I'm obliged to change the player that did not obey to the regulations of the General Assembly and the Presidential Council."

August 29, 2003

A Losing Endgame

In ten years of chaos in chess politics this may be the most bizarre storyline yet. The FIDE championship/unification semifinal between Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov has been cancelled. Now things move to the next cycle with 128 players in December, and with the winner playing a match with Kasparov next year to qualify for the unification match against the winner of Kramnik-Leko, which FIDE is now helping to put together. Sigh. Details here. FIDE press release here (Word format). (It actually says that Ponomariov signed "with reservations," so at least he's alive.)

Several sources in his circle told the Russian press that Ponomariov would, or even that he already had, signed the contract and sent it in. His final protests had an air of desperation about them and made me wonder if there was something going on behind the scenes.

Rumors of health problems have been discounted. His final two issues with the contact were 1) he didn't want any language in the contract that would allow FIDE to remove either player. This is saying, "I'm going to hold the match hostage unless you make remove the part that can punish me for taking the match hostage." 2) The original schedule formulated months ago did not have a rest day before the potential play-off day required if the match was tied. One was later added. Ponomariov wanted that rest day removed. Huh?

These are not things over which to scrap the big-money match of your life. They make so little sense that it was almost like he was trying to make a point of some sort. I guess he made it.

September 2, 2003

You Say Mumbai...

Srini Karri writes in to point out this announcement in The Hindu about a supertournament to be held in India next December. Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, and Karpov are listed as participants, as well as most of the top 20. And the big FIDE KO world championship, touted by FIDE as taking place in December?! It looks like the players aren't going to listen to FIDE's cries of wolf. But from what I can find out, this participant list is far from confirmed. Some of the parties named have agreed "in principle" but some haven't even been contacted yet (!) and no dates are set.

Rules, Schmules

When Ponomariov refused to agree to the player contract, FIDE cancelled the match with Kasparov, breaking their own rules. In Bled the FIDE Congress decided that if someone didn't play he would be replaced by Ivanchuk. Instead, they dumped the match entirely and say that Kasparov will face the winner of the next KO instead. Why?

Word on the street says FIDE Prez Ilyumzhinov still needs Ukrainian cash for the KO. Canceling the match lets Ponomariov keep his title, for whatever that's worth. The KO title was barely worth anything anyway and it's certainly not worth two years. I'm certainly not calling him the world champion anymore! He was the last FIDE champ, but he's nothing now. If the KO depends on some of the same Ukrainians that sunk the Ponomariov-Kasparov match, they may have an equal incentive to sink the KO too. Without transparency this is the way it's going to be.

We've put all our eggs into the basket of shadowy politics and funny money and are reaping the painful rewards. When the sun was shining on Ilyumzhinov in the late 90's all was well, but now that he's out of money we're screwed. There is no infrastructure for bringing corporate sponsorship into the game, and who would want to put money into the mysterious black hole FIDE has become?

On the Road to Nowhere?

The American Continental Championship is over in Buenos Aires. Victory was shared by Goldin (USA) and Vescovi (Brazil) with 8.5. Seven players qualified for the next FIDE world championship, supposedly to occur in December 2003. The rest were Morovic, Nakamura, Bruzon, Onischuk, and Shulman. Notable misses include Granda Zuniga, Shabalov, and Kaidanov.

Charbonneau had already qualified from the Canadian zone. It looks like there will be a quite a passel of Americans in the next KO. Nakamura will be 16 by then (or maybe 26 with the mess FIDE is in these days) and might be the youngest player unless Karjakin is there.

September 11, 2003

Kasparov in Crete

The Dirt is back from vacation and with news about a Kasparov match. No, not against Ponomariov, but against the current European Champion, Zurab Azmaiparashvili. They will play four rapid and four blitz games in Crete on 23th-24th September as a warm-up for the 2003 European Club Cup. Both will also be playing in that, Kasparov a late addition to the already powerful "Ladia Kazan 100" team from Russia.

FIDE gave Kasparov and Ponomariov special exemptions to allow them to play in the ECC as the cancellation of their match came after the deadline for naming team members. Khalifman played first board for Ladia-Kazan last year but this year their listed top board is Rublevsky. Pono didn't play for Donetsk last year and I don't know if he will play in this event or not.

Azmai, as he is known, is also a FIDE politician and was a member of Kasparov's team during several of his world championship matches against Karpov. According to the organizers the games will be broadcast live here: http://www.venizelia.gr/clash/

September 13, 2003

Chess in Schools, Da!

If you thought that chess already was a school subject in Russia, this article from Pravda (in English) will disabuse you. Getting chess into the curriculum, and not just as an after-school or lunchtime school-sponsored activity, has been a holy grail for many groups. In 2001 I went to Mexico with some other people from KasparovChess Online (including the now new president of the US Chess Federation, Beatriz Marinello. Hey, I did tequila shots with the USCF Prez!) as part of a KCO initiative to put chess into Mexico. Garry had been there earlier to meet with all the government education bigwigs and there was a great deal of fanfare. (Photo) In the end pomp didn't lead to pawns and things petered out along with KCO.

The most amusing part of that trip for me came after my requisite trip to the fantastic Fine Arts Museum in Mexico City. (I lived in Guadalajara for two years and visited this museum whenever I came through the capital to commune with the murals.) There are a huge number of chessplayers in the large park in front of the museum. Not just on little chess tables, but with covered areas and clubs that organize tournaments.

Of course I had to stop by for some blitz and was warmly greeted, especially when they found out I could speak Spanish. I told them I worked for KasparovChess and showed them my card. A few moments later I heard that "an advisor of Garry Kasparov is here to play blitz!" over a loudspeaker! Suddenly there was a big crowd around my board and a line of people waiting to play me. I was trying to explain that I ran his website, I wasn't his coach, so my chessboard exploits shouldn't be held against me. But it turned out well in the end when I managed to go undefeated with a few draws and even a win against a local IM (admittedly IMs in Mexico have a 50-50 chance of being rated around 2100 due to a title-giveaway scandal a few years ago).

September 14, 2003

Kasparov the Director

In my recent article on his book I compared it to Spielberg writing about great movie directors. Perhaps Garry Kasparov might be interested in writing that book himself. The documentary film "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" just debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and the early reviews are excellent. In fact, they might be better than Kasparov's own opinion of it, although not for reasons of content.

"I could be a little tighter, shorter," was his summary, although he said he enjoyed the film and thought it "a good look at human ego and corporate greed." The Vikram Jayanti directed film is feature length at 86 minutes instead of the usual hour for a documentary. Kasparov hopes it might be edited down a bit for its upcoming release on the BBC to make it more dramatic.

It hasn't been released in NY yet but I don't think you mess with success! As Kasparov himself pointed out, he is so familiar with the facts and the story that all the background info needed for someone who isn't makes the film drag in parts for him. I don't know, for the rest of us familiar with the details (or who are actually IN the film, ahem ahem) we'll be so excited to see a chess documentary we won't notice a bit, I'm sure.

Watch Nigel Read

English GM Nigel Short's latest column in the Sunday Telegraph is dedicated to some recent books, mostly Kasparov's "My Great Predecessors, Part I." In short (ha ha), he loves it. The Nige shows himself to be a GM of the blurb: "It is probably the most enjoyable chess book I have ever read. Here is a master artist deftly painting the giant canvas of chess history with broad and powerful brush-strokes."

September 19, 2003

GM on Trial

The trial of American GM Alex Sherzer has begun in Alabama. The entire thing is sad and confusing, and I won't be keeping tabs on it here in the DD. The Mobile Register appears to be your best bet if you want to follow things. The case has several of the cliche ingredients US papers like: the supposed dangers of the internet, a prominent citizen fallen (Sherzer is a doctor), and sex. So local news coverage shouldn't be lacking. I heard that Judit Polgar, a friend of Sherzer's, was planning to visit the trial to support him but I can't confirm that. (I know she was just in China.) Any Mobile readers want to wander by and send in a report?

The case has become a hot topic in the message boards if you'd like to find out more or participate in the discussion.

September 20, 2003

Dutch Corus

The field for the 2004 edition of the Corus Wijk aan Zee supertournament has been finalized. At a time when events are being cancelled left and right, having one confirmed over three months in advance is nice. The field: Kramnik, Anand, Leko, Shirov, Svidler, Bareev, Adams, Akopian, Sokolov, Morozevich, van Wely, Zhang Zhong, Bologan, Timman.

Fantastic field, as always. Kasparov, winner in 99, 00, and 01, said the invitation didn't fit his schedule. The last time Kasparov had a similar long layoff due to a cancelled world championship match was in 1998. Wijk aan Zee 99 was the beginning of the road back from his relatively poor 1998 Linares and the start of a 10-tournament win streak. Quite a few parallels there to the current situation. That streak ended in Linares this year, so you might think Corus 2004 would be a good chance to try and continue the symmetry for Kasparov. If not, he's waiting for Linares in February, which hasn't been confirmed yet.

Coming to a Theater?

The new documentary "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" will likely be seen by British audiences on the BBC before anyone in the US or elsewhere sees it. Barring festivals, the BBC has first dibs on showing the film. I spoke with producer Hal Vogel and he said that they would definitely show the film in New York at some point. He's sending me a copy, but I just want to see my shiny head on the big screen.

A friend suggested that if it is released here I should take dates to go see it without first telling them that I'm in it. That would be funny, but if you are taking your dates to chess documentaries you aren't going to see them again even if you are in the chess documentary. Or maybe especially if you are.

September 27, 2003

Computers and the Buddha

"The person who makes a program for playing chess naturally needs to know how to play chess. So if a mediocre chess player makes a program for the computer, and the computer could come around and beat the mediocre player, doesn't this suggest that the computer is thinking?"

Umm, no. No it doesn't. But if you're up for more about western science and eastern philosophy, this article on a Tibetan website has lots more. We'll add here that FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's republic of Kalmykia is a Buddhist nation.

A Match Uncancelled

From Dublin Chess Club Secretary Jonathan O'Connor: "I'm amazed that you missed the new business model FIDE have cooked up. Being the world chess federation, they have always had a monopoly on mating. In a remarkable effort at improving their finances and taking advantage of their traditional strengths, FIDE have gone into match making. The first couple to tie the knot are Ireland's Mark Heidenfeld and Kalmykia's Dzhirgal (Dzhiga to her friends) Ulyumdzhieva. Kirsan brought the happy couple together in 1998, and they finally married in Dublin on September 8. We all wish them long life and happiness together. Further details and a photo of the bride and groom with some friends can be found here: http://www.fide.com"

Of course FIDE has been in the matchmaking business for decades unofficially, the Olympiads in particular. There are so many chess couples the main point of interest has been trying to determining the highest rated one. Of course many of them don't last long.

Sherzer Acquitted

For the past week, half of the news searches for the word "chess" have turned up updates from the trial of American Grandmaster Alex Sherzer in Alabama. Kudos to the Polgars and Sofi's husband Yona for traveling to Mobile to serve as character witnesses for their friend. Now that he has been declared not guilty maybe the news searches will go back to finding references to how every football game, car race, and political debate is like "a chess match."

October 2, 2003

Nigel Walks

As given in phenomenal detail at Isle of Man Online here, GM Nigel Short walked out of the 12th Monarch Assurance Isle of Man Chess Tournament. After his opponent didn't show up, he notched the win but was then told he would be paired with another opponent. I can understand re-pairing someone, but after they had sat at the board for an hour waiting for someone else?! What kind of rule is that? More details and the conclusion are now posted at ChessBase here.

October 3, 2003

Fact Check, Mate

Garry Kasparov will be giving another simul on behalf of Belzberg Technologies on October 20 in London. Traders and stock market people like chess, and Belzberg uses these events to showcase their trading technology. The full press release is here, and you would think they would have the facts straight about Kasparov by now. But no. Just off the top of my head I can see a couple of gaffes. Kasparov was 22 when he won the world championship title, not 21. And he hasn't been the highest-rated player since 1984. Karpov briefly retook the lead in early 1985 (as a result of their marathon first match). So Garry has been #1 for 18 straight years, not 19. Okay, my Edward Winter moment is over.

The simul will be at the Cafe Royal, but it probably isn't open to the public.

Caught 22

After starting out with 4/4 and an incredible performance rating at the Euro Club Cup, Garry Kasparov lost his round six game in 22 moves!! He had black in a complicated position against the Israeli Huzman and simply blundered a knight fork of king and queen. He bailed out, but that cost two pawns and he resigned.

Kasparov has just played 20...Bc8?? A White Belt tactics puzzle here: White to play and win...

Obviously there is some rust on his brain after not playing since February, despite the 4/4 start. Much more on this and the event will be at ChessBase.com soon.

Meanwhile, this game enters the very short list of games lost by world champions in so few moves. Certainly there aren't many in this century. Karpov has famous losses in 19 and 12 (!) moves, so Garry is far from the record at least. He lost in 19 against Deep Blue, but counting that is a little absurd. This is, no doubt, the shortest loss of Kasparov's career in a classical tournament game. The previous "record" was his loss to Kramnik in 25 moves in the 2000 World Championship, game 10. This is also the worst Kasparov blunder I can recall. Amazing.

The winning move is 21.Rxd5.

October 9, 2003

Strange documents

Soon after I wrote my summary of the collapse of the Ponomariov-Kasparov Yalta match last month I exchanged e-mail with Pono's manager, Bulgarian IM Silvio Danailov. Despite the fact that I largely blamed FIDE for the disaster, Danailov criticized my article as somehow praising FIDE and Kasparov and putting on the blame on Ponomariov.

Even for the typically shrill and black-and-white (no pun intended) world of eastern European chess politics it was a bit over the top and it gave the impression that either he hadn't actually read my article or hadn't understood it. (I get this a lot from GMs who aren't English first language. Wordplay and sarcasm don't translate well and several times I've received with things like, "how dare you say that about me and by the way, what did it mean?") I pointed out that I had criticized FIDE and saw no reason to criticize Kasparov, since he hadn't made much noise during the entire affair.

To make a long story short, his next message included a letter that he said had been sent to FIDE right before the match was finally cancelled (after the second deadline, or was it the third?). Several things caught my eye. It was in English, the internal Word document properties showed it had been created well after the date he said it had been sent, and it was apparently written by Ukrainian chess journalist Komarov.

I don't know what that all means. The original was in Russian and they were just translating it for me? Regardless, it's four pages of rambling complaints and accusations of injustice. You would think that Pono was being burned at the stake as a martyr instead of being handed the chance of a lifetime. Ponomariov says he signed the earlier agreement, which is sort of true. He signed but he had crossed out several provisions!

As I stated in my article, the agreement itself was a horribly written document and it seems reasonable that Ponomariov would want clarifications and Russian translations. (See 3a in the document.) But why would such things take weeks? Was FIDE dragging its feet? Then (3b) there is bluster about adding the off day to the original schedule and I still say this is a total joke. Nobody in their right mind risks canceling a match because a rest day is added.

Most of the document seems to be about complaining about how FIDE has treated him and used language that he doesn't like. All in all it's a poorly written as the FIDE player agreement, maybe worse. He constantly wonders what Kasparov says, no doubt with the intent to press for the opposite. Ponomariov makes new demands in random spots, guaranteeing more confusion. Overall, it adds to the original impression that FIDE acted in bad faith. But if this is the sort of silliness Ponomariov and his people were sending, there was never any hope of a match. On the other hand, FIDE kept saying that Ponomariov never communicated with them directly until this after-the-last-hour message.

That brings me to the final point about this thing. I've been trying to get confirmation from FIDE that this letter was received by them, and find out when and by whom. So far, no dice. Parts of this letter were released in the press as quotes from the Ponomariov camp. You can download the letter as sent by Danailov with his approval for publication. It's in Word format. If I hear from FIDE I'll write it up at ChessBase.

October 10, 2003

X3Dchess.com

The official site of the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match in now online. The pretty homepage design was done by the talented Tanja Schissler in Germany, I believe for the design company Morgenrot. I am to blame for the rest of the site and its contents and I'll be running the site and the live online game commentary. The only thing left is the ticket registration page. (The page design is done, but the folks at X3D have to hook it up to a database on their server.)

Tickets to attend the match in person are free with a limit of four per registration. There shouldn't be a problem getting tickets. The venue at the New York Athletic Club is quite large and people come and go during the games. The page should be up today or tomorrow.

Most of the news content currently up at the site are versions of the X3D-related stories that appeared at ChessBase.com, but plenty of original material will be added on an ongoing basis. We'll have interviews with the Fritz team, Kasparov, and comments and predictions from various GMs. I'll be running polls and taking questions for the GMs, Garry, and the Fritz programmers. (Frans Morsch, Mathias Feist, and Alex Kure on book.)

I spent an enjoyable three weeks with them in Bahrain at the Kramnik-Fritz match last year (where I ran THAT site and commentary). They are much more forthcoming with inside information than the secretive Ban and Bushinsky team behind Junior. Shay Bushinsky is a good friend and former co-worker from KasparovChess Online. But they were very tight-lipped about the goings on inside their program even after the match. Trade secrets!

October 14, 2003

Developing Moves

Anyone who regularly uses the fantastic Google News search to look for chess news might have noticed an interesting tendency. A majority of the stories are from India and there are an ever-increasing number from Africa. India has a remarkable number of newspapers and a well-known national and regional chess infrastructure. Africa is more of a surprise. News stories from Nigeria, Malawi and South Africa are currently in the results list.

Does this mean anything for the future of chess? Success at the highest level requires support for both youth and professional chess, unless you have a once-in-a-generation prodigy like Mecking or Fischer. Major media attention can result in both. Kids and parents are exposed to the game as a healthy sport and sponsors see it in the news and can imagine associating their company with it.

October 21, 2003

National Chess Week

12-year-old David Howell is flying around England in a helicopter to promote chess. The young hope's tour is part of "National Chess Week," which has included several events with Garry Kasparov. Quoth Howell: "Chess is a very exciting game and unlike football it can be played in all weathers. Anybody can play chess and winning a game is a great feeling."

The "cool" thing has always been a major topic of discussion, mostly in the UK and the USA, where chess is often seen as geeky. Particularly in the US there is an anti-intellectual undercurrent that makes some people distrust any game or sport that doesn't involve tackling. You see this as early as elementary school, where kids who get good grades are made fun of by their peers for being nerds and eggheads. This is so common in the US that people here are often surprised to hear it doesn't happen everywhere in the world, at least not at the same level.

Harry Potter, a prototypical "geek," plays chess, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone or anything considered cooler right now. Kudos to David Howell and to the initiative overall in the UK. The USA is bit big for a helicopter tour, but National Chess Week would still be a great idea. Young stars like Nakamura and Caruana make good ambassadors.

How is chess promoted in your country or city? Have you contacted anyone to suggest such things? Written local papers, government representatives? Libraries, schools? Don't wait for it to happen; make it happen! It starts with you. Go to the websites of your local newspapers and write them, too. If you have contact information for good places to propose more chess in your country, send it to me and we'll put a great page together. If you're in the US, contact your state representative here.

October 31, 2003

Say Hello to Bollywood

Even if you aren't an aficionado of Indian film you should be happy to have star Mahima Choudhary in a movie about chess. She'll be paired with major star Anupam Kher. The short news item says the film will be launched in India, so your chances of seeing it may be limited.

The ever-marvelous Internet Movie Database lists over twenty films with the word chess in the title. But that doesn't include recent ones like the big Hollywood production of Nabokov's "The Luzhin Defence" (aka "The Defence") or "Searching for Bobby Fischer".

Nor does that list include the mediocre "Knight Moves" a serial killer thriller with a Grandmaster protagonist. Decent performance by Christopher Lambert. You can find those and more by going to the IMDB special search page and looking for chess in the plot description. Pudovkin's silent classic "Shakhmatnaya goryachka" (Chess Fever) from 1925 is available on DVD. Capablanca himself cameos capably.

Chessplayers are usually equal parts delighted and frustrated by chess in the movies. It's great, but they get so many things wrong it can drive you crazy. The preposterous Hollywood cliche happy ending added to Nabokov's brilliant book is a good example.

Chess in Public

Do you have guy like this in your town? Chess is played in parks and other public places around the world. Washington Square Park in New York was celebrated in the book and movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer. The parks of Moscow and St. Petersburg are known for hosting players of GM strength. Then you have the people who star in these places and others who take it a step further. Many New Yorkers are familiar with this guy near Columbia University. Master Jude Acers in New Orleans has played tens of thousands of people over the years. Have you thought about ways YOU could take chess public in your town? Offer classes at a library?

November 9, 2003

We Call It Work

It's hard to keep things updated around here now that the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match is about underway. I'm running the official site, www.x3dchess.com and doing live online commentary there during the games. It will be a lot of fun so I hope you have internet access at work since the games start at 1:00pm EST.

You can also watch the games live on ESPN2 (a separate channel) with commentary by GMs Seirawan and Ashley plus writer Paul Hoffman. Initial announcements said they would carry five hours of the games on the 11, 13, and 18, with 2.5 hours of coverage of the Sunday game on the 16th, making 17.5 total hours. But now that the event is listed at the ESPN website it shows far less time.

It's listed as "2003 MAN VS. MACHINE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP
NEW YORK ATHLETIC CLUB NEW YORK, NY USA". The listings show 1-4pm on Tue, 1-3pm on Thu, 1-2:30pm on Sun, and 1-4pm on Tue.

That makes, umm, 9.5 hours total if it goes as scheduled. More relevantly, it's extremely unlikely that any of the games will be completed on TV! No exciting time scrambles either. The ESPN producer seemed unaware of this, although they said they would show updates throughout the day.

November 10, 2003

Were They Speaking Russian?

On the way to the airport to head to New York for the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match, some members of the ChessBase Fritz team had to stop by their offices in Hamburg first to pick up some tablebase CDs and a laptop. When they arrived they found the building surrounded by heavily armed police. The building had been robbed and they police weren't letting anyone go inside.

"But we have to catch a flight to go play a match against Kasparov," they told the police. The thieves were believed to still be inside and, as the saying goes, armed and dangerous. Eventually they negotiated a SWAT escort up to ChessBase office, which was found to be completely destroyed and looted. The thieves had smashed their way in with a heavy metal manhole cover and taken every computer in the place other than the server, which was bolted in.

The laptop was gone and there were CDs all over the place. They decided it was better just to leave, but the police said they had to stay and fill out reports. Inventing some story about needing a key from the car downstairs, they walked out, got in the car and drove to the airport! No word as yet on whether or not the thieves have been captured and/or the computers recovered.

Also unknown is if the the bandits were speaking Russian. Maybe Garry really wanted to make sure he had the the latest version of X3D Fritz?! On a serious note, to our knowledge no one was hurt.

November 17, 2003

Put Yer Glasses On

It's been hard to find time for the Dirt while running the x3dchess.com website and doing the live online commentary at the match. But I've been storing up lots and lots of good stuff for when I catch up on my sleep! We'll have dozens of exclusive photos from behind the scenes, plus:

  • Inside the ESPN broadcast, or, the joy of not going to the bathroom for many, many hours.
  • The mystery of X3D Fritz's opening in game three, or, why would it play something that earlier versions of the program were forbidden to play?
  • Who's on second, or, a conversation with Kasparov's analysts, Yuri Dokhoian and Mikhail Kobalia here in New York.
  • The Great Ninja Party, or, what happens when you toss a bunch of Ninja, chess stars, and adult beverages together?
  • The future of chess on TV, or, surely this beats bass fishing.

November 30, 2003

And Now These Commercial Messages

The ESPN2 broadcasts of the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match were a big success by any standard. The only complaints I've heard are from chess fans who, while delighted to see chess on TV and live coverage no less, were disappointed by the "light" chess content. Most of the talk was about Kasparov's psychology and how much time each move took. In other words, things that non-players could understand

GM Seirawan was the go-to analyst to give variations, but little was shown that would interest even a club player. The reason for this is obvious; the broadcast goes out to the lowest common denominator and they try to make it at least comprehensible to everyone. Chess fans will watch anyway and get the more serious commentary online or read it on the web later.

ESPN was scrambling to think of interesting graphics, statistics, and other things to inform and entertain the audience, with mixed success. Pieces captured: useless and boring. Time taken per move: good. (My father, who taught me to play but should be considered a non-player for our purposes, found this very interesting.) They should have amplified this with Bronstein's "chess cardiograms," which the Fritz interface can generate automatically anyway. They also should have done much more with the computer's own evaluation of the position. I have a long list of suggestions for better TV chess and I'm sure you have some too. I'll be putting an article about this up on ChessBase.com this week so send me your suggestions.

December 1, 2003

Another World Championship Mess

Even the computers are making a mess of the world championship these days. The WCCC just finished in Graz, Austria. The program Shredder beat Fritz in a playoff to take the title this year. The controversy came in the final round of the tournament. Fritz and Shredder were tied for the lead and both were beating their opponents. Then the amateur program Jonny announced a three-time repetition against Shredder in a totally losing position! (Much more on this at chessbase.com.)

Most programs have code to detect repetitions and so avoid them in advantageous positions. A bug in Shredder allowed it to repeat three times although it was close to announcing checkmate. Basically what happened after that is that the programmer of Jonny, embarrassed at getting a draw this way (and a draw that would keep Shredder out of the playoff and therefore make Fritz the champion) went to the arbiter to ask to continue playing (and losing). The arbiter didn't understand and after some confusion, the game continued and Shredder duly won.

The game was continued because the machine didn't claim the draw correctly by FIDE rules. It made the move instead of claiming first. Of course this is the way the interface is programmed, not in accordance with FIDE rules. Clearly this is idiotic since a computer is perfectly aware of a repetition, unlike a human. (In human play the rule is designed to make you confirm the repetition on your clock, hard to do in time trouble.) So either all the programs have to change to giving notification before they make the third repetition or the ICGA needs to discount FIDE rules that are irrelevant in comp-comp play.

Then there is the problem of the operator/programmer stepping in to throw the game that was drawn. If he didn't want to lose on a programming bug in Shredder he should have resigned earlier, or perhaps not played at all and forfeited the game to make a sincere gift of the full point. Since when are bugs invalid reasons for winning (or not winning)? Isn't a bad move a bug? If Jonny had claimed the draw according to FIDE rules would its operator have been allowed to voluntarily throw the game anyway?

Can You Forfeit Me Now? Part II

Paul Hoffman was engaged in his addiction to watching live GM games online, viewing Nakamura-Dominguez from the Santo Domingo Open Great Cup Nazir Atallah from yesterday's round four. The game ended rather abruptly in a pawn-up endgame for Nakamura. Word came through on the ICC that Dominguez's cell phone had gone off and he had been disqualified. No other confirmation of that, but if so it follows Ponomariov's disqualification a few months ago for the same offense. Players are usually sharp enough to turn their cells off, spectators are another story. Unfortunately they can't be disqualified so easily.

X3D Fritz Doesn't Hit the Books

Game three of the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match was a horrific display of the worst of computer chess. (From one perspective. It was also a nice control game by Kasparov.) The game was basically lost on move five when the computer, still in book, played 5...a6. This allowed Kasparov to close the game and although the machine was in book for a while longer, it could have easily been determined in advance that X3D Fritz was hopeless in this position. Basically that's what the computer's "book trainer" is supposed to do. It's not about finding stunning novelties, but get the machine safely to positions it can play well.

Alex Kure, the Fritz Team's book guy, has a very tough job. Imagine trying to prepare for Kasparov and ruling out thousands of variations that could lead to: 1) positions with locked centers, 2) trading the queens, 3) static pawn structures in which the human can pick the machine apart in the endgame.

Much of this goes into the massive opening books that are included with every program. The books are tuned and tell the program which lines to play how often and which moves to avoid completely. It was therefore interesting to find that 5...a6 is prohibited in the book that is included with Fritz 8. (See image) Kure was hoping Kasparov would play a line he had played before, but was outfoxed.

December 8, 2003

Predecessors Successor

Get ready to plunk down another $30 for a chess book because the massive Part 2 of Kasparov's "My Great Predecessors" series on the world champions is coming into stores now. The English version already available in the UK but probably won't make landfall in the USA for a few weeks. Probably not in time for Christmas unless you can get an IOU or gift certificate from Santa. Kasparov will be back in the USA at the start of 2004 but no word yet on any book signings.

Part 2 covers Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, and Tal. That Kasparov was Botvinnik's prize student and was close to both the man and his way of thinking adds an extra dimension. That Kasparov played many games against Smyslov and Tal is another big difference between Part 2 and Part 1.

USCH

It sounds like the next US Championship is close to being announced and it will be on the move to San Diego, California. December 2004 is the likely time slot. The original plan for October ran into trouble with the change in the Olympiad dates. This will make it almost two years since the last championship, in Jan. 2003. That's a significantly longer delay than when there wasn't a championship at all in 2001. (Oct 2000 to Jan 2002)

This is no small thing when you consider how important the Championship paycheck is to US professionals. How they schedule their year can depend on how well they do. On the other hand, since the AF4C took over the event, one tournament pays out more than three or four did before they took over.

FIDE Filches Photos

While they're doing their best to make things bad for the players that doesn't mean FIDE has forgotten about the rest of the people in the chess world. They've moved on to taking player photographs from around the web and reproducing them without permission in their online player profiles.

Chess journalist John Henderson needed only a few minutes to find dozens of his photos at fide.com, including most of the top American and Chinese players as well as Vladimir Kramnik. All were apparently taken from various reports at ChessBase and The Week In Chess websites. No photo credit is given and no one contacted the easily contactable Henderson to negotiate a purchase or ask permission.

Copying content on the web is so easy that many people sincerely believe that it's legal. But copyright infringement is just as serious online as off (just ask the RIAA what they think of MP3 file sharing). FIDE can't hide behind the "criminal or stupid" defense. It is also very unlikely that each player submitted his own photo and it happened to be one taken by Henderson. (FYI, the subject of a photo does not own the rights to that photo, particularly if they are a public figure or competitor in a publicly viewed event. On the other hand I don't know of any photographer who wouldn't give his subject a copy for personal use.)

I suggested that Henderson just submit an invoice to FIDE for all the photos he can find on their site. If someone uses one photo accidentally and removes it when asked, you can be more understanding. I was on both sides of that situation several times when I was editor-in-chief of KasparovChess.com. But FIDE ripping off chess journalists is sad. Photo credit and a link is all most would ask, but FIDE seems to be intent on poisoning the water of ever well it can find. They continue to make enemies of the people that could help them.

More amusing is that they can't get the photos right either. Sergey Shipov has replaced Alexei Shirov!

December 16, 2003

Author Anand

An interesting article announces that world #3 Vishy Anand will be working on an autobiography to be completed in 2006. The piece has charming tidbits about how his parents miss him and cook his favorite foods when he is home. (He and his wife have long lived in Spain.)

Anand is 34 and has many good years ahead of him if you look at Kasparov, to say nothing of Korchnoi and Lasker. I remember reading something about the youngest players to write a game collection (I think it was Pomar but I don't recall). Few players have the fame to write an autobiography and Anand is definitely one of them. It might end up a bestseller in India, although it's not likely to sell nearly as well to non-Indian chess fans as a chess book penned by Anand would.

His straightforward collection of games ("My Best Games of Chess") is a routine collection of notes without much in the way of insight. To be fair, few active top players can devote the time and energy to the introspection and research a top-notch game collection requires. And not everyone is a naturally gifted and entertaining writer like Tal was. Maybe it's something about Latvians. Shirov's "Fire on Board" remains the best modern "auto-" game collection in the past decade, perhaps two. (Amazon.com inexplicably lists Mark Taimanov as a co-author of "Fire on Board.")

Kasparov's fine "Test of Time" is outdated and out of print and we won't see him look in the mirror for a few years, when the fifth volume of his "Predecessors" series comes out. Kramnik's "My Life and Games" was hastily produced and is too often given over to an obsequious third person (Damsky).

Staying with contemporary players, I strongly recommend Yermolinsky's "The Road to Chess Improvement" and both John Nunn game collections. His original "Secrets of Grandmaster Play" was my first "serious" chess book and it took me years to really dig into it. Great book.

Getting back to autobiographies, Kasparov has various iterations of his bombastic but revealing book. Botvinnik's "Achieving the Aim" is a guarded chronology. Smyslov's "In Search of Harmony" hasn't been translated into English. Korchnoi and then Karpov both liked "Chess is My Life" for a title.

Russian is probably the only language that can support such books consistently these days. Maybe an Indian reader could inform us as to how many languages popular books there are usually translated into.

Chilean Exchange

New US Chess Federation President Beatriz Marinello is reported to be back at home in Chile due to a serious illness. Of course you want to be near family in such situations, but being in a country with guaranteed universal medical care doesn't hurt either.

[When I lived in Latin America it often surprised Americans to hear that these supposedly "backwards" countries had things like free universal health care and free university education. Such things are also normal in Europe but are viewed with suspicion by "get what you pay for" Americans. That the corollary is "if you can't pay you get nothing" doesn't bother them until they need it. But we have a nice military.]

Meanwhile, another Chilean has come to the US, if just to visit. GM Ivan Morovic is playing in Kansas along with Karpov and Onischuk. (Karpov won the all-play-all rapid.) Morovic has long been one of the top players in Lat.Am, coming up in the 80's with Cuban Jesus Noguieras and the Brazilian Milos.

December 22, 2003

Where in the World is the US Championship?

San Diego. (DD #175 below) After three years in the rainy northwest, the US Championship is leaving the home of its sponsor group and getting some sun in Southern California. The Swiss-system tournament will take place during the first two weeks of December at the new NTC Foundation's Promenade Centre.

The NTC Foundation is a nonprofit corporation in charge of renovating and developing a large area that used to be home to the Naval Training Center. The space will be used for civic and cultural purposes and the 2004 US Championship will be the inaugural event of the flagship Promenade Centre. (Why they spelled it wrong I've no idea. Americans using "quaint" British spelling intentionally has always bothered me. Why not "Ye Olde Promenade Centre"?)

NTCF will co-sponsor the Championship with organizers AF4C, which is A-OK. The prize fund stays at the world's largest: $250,000. (Rumor has it that the Aeroflot Open (January) is trying to squeeze some more money out of the airline to take the prize fund title. AF4C honcho and sponsor Erik Anderson says that would be great because then he could use that to raise even more! Now this is a US-Russia arms race I can get behind!)

Quoth Anderson in a press release scheduled to come out in full this week: "AF4C has been looking for a partner whose mission is aligned with ours: NTC supports creative education and believes in the value the U.S. Chess Championships can bring to the national expansion of the AF4C classroom chess curriculum."

I believe there will also be chess tournaments open to the public running alongside the Championship. This will create a great festival atmosphere like you see during many of the summer events across Europe.

ChessMaster is again a sponsor and I believe the ICC is already committed as well. It will be interesting to see if the organizers decide to have a serious web presence for the 2004 event or if they will continue to basically outsource coverage and analysis to ChessBase (and ChessNinja...) One thing I've found while running the official sites for major events like the Kramnik and Kasparov man-machine matches is that quickly releasing media-friendly reports dramatically increases coverage in the general press.

When one game of the 2002 Kramnik-Fritz match in Bahrain match went late and I wasn't allowed to stay and publish a report, the next day the news coverage had dropped dramatically. Few news agencies will bother to have a specialist figure out what's going on and write a chess report based only on the gamescore and result and the non-chess writers don't know what's going on. But if you spoon-feed them a nice summary in plain English with a little drama they'll copy-paste and run the story. In San Diego perhaps this should also be done in Spanish to increase local coverage. Did I mention I'm fluent in Spanish?! Chess, sun, and good Mexican food. Sign me up!

December 27, 2003

Kalmykians to the Barricades

jackiechan sends in a link to this Moscow Times report on civil unrest in Kalmykia, the Russian republic ("republic") led by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Choice quote from a reformist party ("Yabloko") leader: "Over the past 10 years of Ilyumzhinov's rule, an elections system has been formed under which the candidates favored by him always win."

Funny, sounds just like Ilyumzhinov's rule in FIDE. The rulers of the Russian satellite republics get support from Moscow only insofar as they get out the vote for the ruling party come election time. We may use this latest flare-up to remember the 1998 murder of journalist (and Yabloko party member) Larissa Yudina in Kalmykia. Former bodyguards of Ilyumzhinov were implicated.

Another Moscow Times column sums up nicely: "In a society where the primary asset is control of the government machine, some owners of this invaluable resource -- notably the regional leaders -- could encounter a few problems. Judging by the demonstrations in Kalmykia and the runoff election in Bashkortostan, their problems are just beginning."

Problems for Ilyumzhinov inevitably mean problems for FIDE. Since he can buy any FIDE election we may be waiting for him to lose power in Kalmykia before his hold on FIDE loses its grip.

January 6, 2004

Moro Out, Topa In

World #7 Alexander Morozevich has dropped out of Corus Wijk aan Zee with the flu. He will be replaced by #6, Veselin Topalov. If Morozevich dropping out of supertournament sounds familiar, you have a good memory. The Russian star was hotter than hot in 1998 and everyone was looking forward to seeing how his dynamic, unorthodox style would do in a supertournament. He was scheduled to play in Dos Hermanas in 1999, but bowed out at the last second.

As I wrote in Mig on Chess #114 way back then: "World number five Alexander Morozevich of Russia has bowed out of the Dos Hermanas tournament at the last minute due to illness and will be replaced by Belorussian Boris Gelfand. This is a great disappointment to all of us who were eager to see the young Russian tested against the world's best after a year of amazing results. Expectations had been high so maybe nerves had an effect on the wispy lad's immune system? Whatever it is it seemed to come on fast because Morozevich had already arrived in Dos Hermanas!"

Moro is one of many top players to claim retirement in the past few years, while playing just as many games. Mostly they seem to do this to protest the decline in big-money invitations and the loss of the FIDE KO in the past two years. That's it, guys. When the going gets tough, the tough, umm, whine and say they're going to retire.

Topalov has stronger claims on inactivity. He played in many rapid events in 2003, but his only classical games of the last year were back in the last edition of Corus in January.

January 7, 2004

Speaking of Books

Through insider sources I've been keeping tabs on the best-selling chess books at one of America's largest online and offline booksellers. (No, not just checking their popularity rankings online, which vary dramatically due to complex and rigged formulas.) "Chess for Dummies" outsells the rest, with the classic "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" close behind. Both of these outsold the new Kasparov "My Great Predecessors" book if you take the average of its first few months of availability. Of course the massive "Predecessors" hardback costs two to four times as much as the others.

There has been a great deal of conjecture over which chess book is the best selling of all time, with most plumping for "Fischer Teaches..." That would certainly seem to be fair claim based on how well it still sells. Chess historian Edward Winter has discussed the various claims in his Chess Notes column (ChessCafe.com) and compilations.

The top chess books far outsell the top bridge books. On the other hand, the top-selling non-fiction book, "The South Beach Diet," sells 250 times the top chess book, "Dummies." The good news is that the Dummies book, by Jim Eade, is an excellent primer. Even better is GM Patrick Wolff's book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess". Put decorative paper dust-jackets on them if you're embarrassed to read them on the bus.

Shabalov Writes

Mentioned in this brief interview with US Champion Alexander Shabalov is that he plans to begin work on a book. "I want to write something entertaining about modern tournament life, the life of a tournament player."

Chess anecdote books have been out of fashion since the Chernev-Horowitz heyday three decades ago. I'm sure the light-hearted Shabalov is a fine candidate to pen one, although of course he'll be expected to fill most of the book with his exciting games and analysis.

January 8, 2004

Seeds of (un)Change

The US Championship is forming slowly but surely. The field is 64 players, up from 56 in 2003. There will be 16 women and 48 men in the nine-round Swiss and a stunning $250,000 prize fund, still the largest in the world. The top six men and the top five women on the February, 2004 USCF rating list are automatically seeded into the Championship. Then you have the junior champion and the former champions. The rest are from the many qualifying events, usually the top opens. Players pay $75 pre-event to be eligible for qualification. This turns out to have become quite a nice earner for the championship as dozens of players in each event have paid the fee despite only a handful of slots being available. The qualification system adds many new (and hungry) faces to the usual suspects every year.

January 10, 2004

Chess on the Screen

The American cable channel A&E is releasing a television movie Fall 2004, on inner-city kids who play chess and revitalize their school lives. No doubt more than loosely based on the many success stories from dedicated coaches like GM Maurice Ashley in Harlem. Speaking of, Disney has optioned "I Choose to Stay," the 2003 book by Salome Thomas-EL who used chess as a tool to inspire inner-city schoolkids in Philadelphia. There have been many such films in recent years, not all of them with soundtracks by Coolio, but chess is new ingredient to the usual "tough kids with hearts (and minds) of gold" Hollywood line. (Stand and Deliver comes to mind.)

January 16, 2004

Chess Trailer

You know how the trailer for a new movie often turns out to be better than the movie? They take all the funniest jokes and best special effects and put them into a one or two-minute clip to suck you in. Then you go see it and it just sucks, period. That you've already seen the best bits doesn't help.

In a documentary about chess you don't get many special effects or jokes, so the trailer is likely to be a pretty good guide to the movie. If that's the case, start lining up now for tickets to "Game Over: Kasparov versus the Machine." It's about to be released (Friday, January 23rd) in theaters in the UK and the new trailer is out and on the web. It's incredibly cool.

The film's producer sent me three links directly to the streaming media files (.asx format) for different connection speeds. Pick the one that works for you. The file should launch in Windows Media Player.

Broadbandhigh speedlow speed

I was interviewed extensively for the film but only appear for a minute or two, which makes sense no matter how cute I am since I wasn't one of the pricipals. (It wasn't until the third time I watched the trailer that I noticed it's my voice at the start saying "here comes this 17-year-old..." Funny how you can't recognize your own voice. Skull vibrations, so they say.) Members of Kasparov's team and the Deep Blue team are interviewed, and of course Kasparov gets a lot of screen time. The film isn't as dramatic as the trailer, of course, but we both know you'll see it anyway. Probably twice.

There's no date for release in the US yet and negotiations are still up in the air.

January 29, 2004

Wijk In, Wijk Out

I'm coming up for air after doing the daily round reports and analysis on Corus Wijk aan Zee for ChessBase.com for the past few weeks. Argh. So much analysis only to show a a couple of diagrams and lines, but you don't want to miss any of the decisive moments. That's always embarrassing. Is this where I can yet again tell my story about showing a win that Short and Radjabov missed in analysis of Radjabov-Anand, Linares 2003? It was in my report the same day of the game, for goodness sake. A few days later Short gives an erroneous draw in his Sunday Telegraph column. A few weeks later Radjabov himself gives the same nonexistent draw in New In Chess. Months later GM Krasenkow writes in to New In Chess to say some students of his found 'this amazing win for Black" blah blah. Same thing I gave the day of the blooming game. But I'm not bitter.

I think even GMs are so dependent on computers these days that many of them don't really know how to use them for analysis. They scroll through the moves expecting a few second to illuminate the secrets. This isn't true even in very tactical positions. I find out more things because I often use Fritz and Co. to explain to me why my ideas don't work. On rare occasions they DO work and it's something the machine would have needed a long time to find on its own. After I use Fritz to auto-check games for blunders I always have to spend a few minutes going through the score to remove some of the silly evaluations it gives. Trust them for most tactics, and you have to love endgame tablebases, but it's not going to revolutionize chess looking each move of a super-GM game for five seconds.

This is what drives me crazy about kibitzing live games at Playchess.com, and it's no better on other chess servers. Having 800 amateurs shouting about how Anand and Kramnik are "blundering" because their moves are rated -0.34 worse than what their chess engine wants to play. This is a joke. Unless the eval drop is more than a full pawn (1.00) after a good five minutes of computer time, skip it!

Here's an experiment you can try that proves my point. Take a handful of super-GM classical games. Have Fritz auto-annotated them with the analysis threshold at 60, so it will only add variations if it thinks its suggestion is that much better (over half a pawn) than what was played in the game. Give it five or ten seconds per move. When it's done, have it do the same games again but with one or two minutes per move, or even more if you can let it run overnight.

The result? The more time you give it the LESS analysis it adds. That is, Fritz comes around to agreeing with the GMs instead of finding more so-called mistakes. Viva la humanidad!

January 30, 2004

Show Me a Sign

Garry Kasparov is scheduled to sign copies of his "Great Predecessors Volume 2" in New York City on Wednesday, February 4. It's not at the same place as his Vol. 1 signing last summer. It's at Borders 461 Park Ave, Manhattan on February 4 at 6.30 pm. It's on the corner of 57th Street in a large complex. Many subway lines stop nearby, including the 4, 5, 6, N & R at 59th Street and Lexington.

As for the book, it is unlikely it, or any book, will attract the incredible attention that the first volume received, both positive and negative. I think it's great, but then again I try to look at it as a chess fan and not as a critic who owns over 500 other books. This remains the biggest point of contention I have with those who write things like, "And that is the main shortcoming in this book’s handling of history: too much recycled, standard, easy-to-find material, too little effort to go beyond."

That was penned by Taylor Kingston at ChessCafe.com regarding Volume 2, but it could have come from any number of reviewers about either book. He and others also talk about the "overly familiar" games in the books. Overly familiar to whom? Easy to find for whom? Talk about ivory tower! Taylor's is an informed and informative review, as are many of the others, but most seem to miss the point of the book.

Continue reading "Show Me a Sign" »

February 4, 2004

Hey Garry...

I'll be at Garry Kasparov's book signing today and will be working with him on the weekend. If you have some questions for him I'm always happy to pass on a few good ones and report back. Of course subscribers to White Belt and Black Belt get first priority! Try to skip the stuff that has been asked a million times already, please. He's playing in Linares in a few weeks, the Leko-Kramnik match has just been announced, and most relevantly the second volume of his "My Great Predecessors" books is out.

"More Black Nerds"

I didn't manage to post this on the weekend when it would have been of more use to you, but the new PBS documentary "America Beyond the Color Line" showed yesterday and today. It's on at 9pm in most places. Americans should check their public television schedule. I mention it because the film includes a look at American GM Maurice Ashley and his activities teaching chess in Harlem. One of the many news stories out online that mention him is this one in the Denver Post.

Chess won't draw kids away from basketball until its champions make the millions of dollars NBA players do. Maybe the sneaky tack of telling kids that playing chess will make them better basketball players is worth a try. There are enough famous athletes who play chess and talk about it to give this some credibility. Then the mental and psychological benefits of chess will be acquired, which will come in handy in the classroom and elsewhere when that one-in-a-million shot at the NBA doesn't work out...

Priest Holmes, arguably the best running back in American football, is a chess nut. He has a "chess room" in his house, although with all those aforementioned millions he probably also has a Nintendo room, a Chinese checkers room, and a room just for keeping light brown shoes. An unofficial biography of Holmes on a kids' website includes this: "Priest Holmes used the strategy of chess to make him a better football player. Just like a chess player needs to figure out the best plan to attack the King, Holmes reasoned that a running back needs to plot the best strategy to maneuver through defenders to reach the end zone." Good stuff. Holmes also founded and sponsors chess clubs.

February 15, 2004

Despot Chess

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has once again shown that he's willing to rent chess out to aid the legitimacy of any two-bit dictator. First it was trying to hold the FIDE WCh in Baghdad, then actually having the final in Tehran in 2000, now this report says Tripoli, Libya is next.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as forgiving as the next guy. Far be it from me to hold weapons of mass destruction, blowing up airliners, and hijacking cruise ships against a guy. Let bygones by bygones, I always say, and apparently many of the world's governments feel the same way. "The Lockerbie Memorial Cup" would be such a nice name for a trophy.

This is a disturbing trend if only because Ilyumzhinov is slowly running out of potential despot sponsors. There's only one axis of evil member left to approach, so Kirsan had better hurry before some clever person figures out that North Korea's nuclear program is a hoax and takes out Kim Jong-Il. If that happens FIDE might be stuck looking for honest corporate sponsorship.

Then there are the practical matters. Even if UK players can stomach playing under the auspices of someone who bombed flight 103 and gave weapons to the IRA, what about the Israeli players? Like most Arab and/or Muslim nations, Libya has many official restriction regarding Israelis and even people who have visited Israel. (My US passport was actually issued in Israel after I lost one while living there in 1999. This caused no end of panic when I went to Bahrain to run the website for the Kramnik-Fritz match in 2002. It apparently had to go all the way up to the office of some prince or other, although that may be true with parking tickets.) Many countries, including the US, have special requirements for visiting Libya.

I suppose it would be a positive thing if hosting this event broke down some of those barriers, but this seems unlikely. FIDE is usually the one making the concessions, not visa-versa. Wouldn't it be lovely, if symbolic, if Ilyumzhinov came out and said they would only host the event in Libya if leader Khaddafi lifted such restrictions? If Khaddafi is serious about bringing his country in from the cold it could be an opportunity. But a repeat of the Dubai/Haifa Olympiad fiascos seems more probable.

February 19, 2004

A Hydra By Any Other Name

The world of computer chess long ago moved beyond a room full of programmers eating pizza while their creations battled it out. Since Kasparov matches against Deep Blue in 96 and 97 is has been in the public consciousness.

The nationalistic aspect of computer chess has receded since Kaissa and CHESS played out the cold war in the 70's. It's still a coup for some small countries – who find it hard to compete in major sports – to find a geek champion. The Israeli world champion program Junior and its programmers Ban and Bushinsky are an example of this.

Now we've have an interesting case of carpetbagging. The ChessBase hardware project Brutus is now being sponsored by a Pakistani-run company that is bankrolled by a Saudi. This has led to a name change ("Hydra") and a change in the nationality of the program in tournaments to the United Arab Emirates although Austrian Chrilly Donninger of Nimzo fame is still in charge of the project. Hydra just won the strong Paderborn event ahead of Fritz and Shredder but it's play wasn't all that impressive.

That bottom line is that people aren't going to pay the $200+ for a piece of chess hardware unless it is much, MUCH stronger than $40 software that gets stronger every time you upgrade your PC. Hydra is far from being that strong despite the use in Paderborn of a distributed system with eight specialized chess cards on four dual Xeon servers, hardly something you would have in your home unless you live at NASA.

20 years ago Ken Thompson's Belle made it clear that the best hardware money could buy would beat the best software on the fastest CPUs. Deep Blue was further proof of this, even though its win over Kasparov practically guaranteed there wouldn't be another "money could buy" situation and hardware chess pretty much disappeared while software kept getting smarter and microprocessors kept getting faster.

Brutus/Hydra is sort of like Deep Blue on the (relative) cheap, using upgradeable FPGA cards that piggyback on PCs. There doesn't seem any reason to doubt that with continued investment it will dominate the computer chess circuit for a while. Will it be good enough to reach the big time, meaning a match against a Kasparov or Kramnik? (Call me a polemicist but with the Palgames sponsor being mostly Pakistani, India's Anand might not be on the menu.)

To reach that level Hydra will have to utterly dominate. The comically hyperbolic press release at the Hydra site is not a good start. It also seems more than a little disingenuous to go on about this as a triumph of UAE development when all they are doing is signing checks to the original creators. (It even says "created by PAL Group," which is simply false.) True, the sponsor gets what the sponsor wants on the sponsor's website, but it's a little like my buying a BMW and calling it a triumph of Mig technology.

But new money coming into chess is rarely a bad thing and if PAL wants to wrap itself and its new toy in a big Arab Emirates flag and use it for national publicity, that's their right. If they have any sense they'll stay close to ChessBase, who know computer chess and promoting it and who developed the product to begin with.

February 20, 2004

New York Calling

My first serious ChessBase Radio broadcast was yesterday during the first round of Linares. It's done via Windows Media Encoder built in to the Playchess.com server. You can download a free demo at that link and you may also need to install Windows Media Player 9. (If you subscribe to a ChessNinja newsletter you get a six-month subscription to Playchess.com.)

Install the software, launch it, click Playchess.com, create a new account, and when you enter the interface go to the Broadcasts room in the list in the bottom-right pane. You might need to go the Windows --> Panes --> Chess Media System and click the > Play button.

We had a guest star during round 1, GM Nigel Short. The world #17 and former world championship challenger shared some thoughts about the wild Shirov-Kasparov game and talked about his recent globetrotting and tournament successes. Nigel disagreed with my recent criticism of FIDE's idea to hold its championship in Libya under the auspices of Khaddafi. (See below and Mig on Chess #200.) Short reminded me and the listeners that he went to Tripoli last year for several appearances including a simul.

Short has not only become the true chess tourist , visiting 70 countries at his estimation, but he is also playing better chess than he has in a decade, or at least more successful chess, which isn't always the same thing. He admitted, and admitted it was hard to admit, that he'd been working very hard on his chess in the past year.

March 7, 2004

Linares 04 Stock Exchange

After more than two grueling weeks, the Linares supertournament is over. At least it was grueling for me. Live radio commentary and analysis during the rounds and then a report at night after analyzing the games. The real problem was that in the middle of the tournament I moved to a new apartment. It was only across the river from the East Village in Manhattan to Brooklyn, but packing, moving and unpacking during the middle of event coverage wasn't the best timing.

Now it's over and from looking at the crosstable it was one of the most boring supertournaments on record. 79% of the games were drawn, likely a modern record at this level. I remember the 98 Groningen Festival, a respectable category 16, had only seven decisive games out of 30, or 81% drawn. But the crosstable doesn't tell the whole story and it wasn't that boring for the most part.

The worst part for chess fans is that the worst culprit of the short draws, Vladimir Kramnik, also won the tournament. This tournament success at the expense of the game and the fans and the sponsors can only encourage other players to imitate this style, what Kasparov deprecatingly calls "stock market chess" because of the way Kramnik plays the percentages. If you offer a draw the moment you have a roughly equal position against a strong opponent, even if it's at move 18, you save your energy for when you get an good edge out of the opening and/or are playing someone weaker.

Kramnik played four non-game draws to start Linares. In the fifth round he was pressed by Kasparov with black and had to work for 44 moves for the draw. The he caught Topalov out in the opening and won a nice game for his first win. Another short draw followed, then a real game draw with Shirov and an attempt to beat the lowest seed, Radjabov that finished drawn. In the 11th round he was close to a loss against Leko only to find an excellent tactical shot to turn the tables in time trouble and notch his second win. He concluded with two more non-game draws.

Kramnik averaged 26 moves per game in Linares, and that must be close to a record too. Leko averaged 31, Kasparov 39. With opening theory running into the middle teens on the average this made for seven games in which Kramnik played maybe five original moves. This philosophy can be summed up as "if the game is probably going to be drawn anyway, why not get it over with early and save your energy for a better chance?" The answer, one that doesn't seem to occur to most of these guys, is "because you are ripping off the fans and sponsors and destroying the game and its future as a serious sport." They whine about lack of events and sponsors; do they think people will pay to watch 26 moves? To not know if they'll get to see a real game or not each day?

It's not fair to single Kramnik out; he's only the top exponent and happened to win this recent event, which on the whole just happened to epitomize this philosophy. The table shows Kasparov as the drawing master of the event with one win and 11 draws. But if you watched the tournament or look at the games you see Kasparov drove the event round after round with aggressive play and long, hard-fought games. He missed three clear wins (documented in Black Belt #64) and got into time trouble in just about every game. He had two short draws, one on his account against Leko and one with black against Kramnik in round 12 when Vlady was trying to force a draw from the start.

Kramnik again lived up to the "Mister Plus Two" sobriquet I gave him years ago. He won the tournament, but hearts, minds, and sponsorship aren't going to follow. 26 moves per game!!

Fischer Goes to Cliche

Reviews continue to multiply of the new book on the Fischer-Spassky 1972 match, "Bobby Fischer Goes to War". I wrote some comments on early British reviews at ChessBase here. Now that the book is out in the US we've been inundated with reviews and commentary, all of them rehashing the already stale hash that the book covers. The New Yorker even weighed in. Here's the NY Times review at a site that doesn't require registration. (I used to deliver that paper, the Contra Costa Times!) Then the SF Chronicle, and NY Newsday.

I didn't have my hopes too high, but it seems like fears have been confirmed. Judging from reviews, respected authors David Edmonds and John Eidinow have produced little new and, even worse, have used just about every old canard and urban legend that Horowitz and Chernev ever saw fit to confabulate.

The long-debunked bit about Morphy being found dead surrounded by women's shoes is dusted off, as is the ancient and untrue tale about a 300-page book for chess spectators with 300 blank pages and "SHUT UP" at the back. Har har. These are all funny anecdotes but there are plenty of good chess stories that also happen to be true. I don't blame them too much for repeating a good story from a book, no one has limitless sources. But it's still sad.

The book may well be useful to bring an interesting old story to a new general, audience. But chess fans and Fischer fanatics who know the story are unlikely to find much of interest. I'm still waiting for my review copy so I shouldn't be so categorical. Non-chess reviewers are likely to repeat the same "sensational" bits and make the same errors.

March 8, 2004

Shores of Tripoli

I'm still on the fence regarding FIDE's announcements that they are planning to hold their 2004 world championship tournament in Libya. Money to chessplayers is good. A tournament that could move us toward unification is good. Using sport to encourage the opening of political doors is good. Being a sport USED by a dictator to fool people into thinking he is opening doors is bad.

Imagine this press release: "As a gesture to the global community and to chess, Libya will welcome players from Israel and those who have visited Israel to the 2004 world championship. These restrictions will henceforth be lifted in the spirit of FIDE's motto, gens una sumus."

Great! Let's go to Libya! I'm still not shaking Khaddafi's bloody hand, but it would be an achievement of sorts. Still ridiculous, still damaging to the sport's reputation, still harmful to bringing serious corporate sponsorship into the game, but progress.

But it appears that instead of that, FIDE may stick its head in the sand. They are prepared to split the event into two: one in Libya and one in Malta where the Jews will play. How nice of them. So chess concedes morality for a few bucks yet again. Right now FIDE is asking for three special visas to let Israelis into Libya to play. No word about those who have visited Israel, who are currently forbidden entry as well.

Many countries are now making moves to welcome Libya back into the fold despite Khaddafi's continued control of the country. (In other places at other times they might have demanded the dictator in question relinquish control at least symbolically.) In light of all the movement inside and regarding Libya I'd be willing to support the tournament in Libya if they lift the visa restrictions for the tournament. Without even that tiny concession, what's to support?

March 15, 2004

Dueling Rapids

For the second year in a row we see two powerful rapid tournaments scheduled for the same week, this week. This will be the 13th Melody Amber tournament in Monaco and as usual it includes most of the world's top players. Anand and Kramnik top the list. The Spaniard Vallejo gets his first invite to this pleasure cruise of chess tournaments. Fantastic conditions with every need catered to, a $200,000 prize fund, short work days, and no rating points in play so you are free to take risks and bomb out.

Each day you play a match consisting of one rapid game and one blindfold chess game against the same opponent. The blindfold game allows us to chuckle when the world's best players make foolish mistakes and occasionally marvel when they play a grand conception without sight of the board. But I've never seen the point of watching 2700s play like 2400s with a 1400-style blunder tossed in every once in a while. "Ooh, you could barely tell this game was blindfold!" isn't a big deal when we have plenty of such games. At the end of the day it's just a dancing bear show. But with such conditions the players certainly aren't going to complain.

The other rapid event is in Reykjavik, Iceland, and it boasts Garry Kasparov's participation. Kasparov has never played the Melody Amber (named for the daughter of the tournament's patron: the rich, amiable, and charmingly eccentric correspondence chess GM J.J. van Oosterom). Kasparov considers blindfold chess a sideshow not for serious competition. Karpov and Short are also playing in Reykjavik, making it a sort of 80s-early 90s reunion. I don't think they have played against each other in the same event since Linares 1992. Showing that talent ages well, they are the top seeds in Reykjavik.

March 16, 2004

Chess Education in the News

Much of the chess that pops up in the chess news searches at Google and elsewhere is of the scholastic variety. Most is of the little Timmy wins first prize in the Sasweego Elementary tournament variety. This one on America's Foundation for Chess is more interesting.

The AF4C is the Seattle-based group that has sponsored the last three US Championships. The 2004 championship will instead be in San Diego and there are rumors that the organization itself might head down to the border too. The dates for the championship have been in flux due to some construction and scheduling messes at the originally announced venue in San Diego. (Moving the Championship from Seattle was apparently contingent upon a commitment from the mayor to introduce chess in schools.)

It's now looking like it will run through Thanksgiving and into the first week of December, almost two years after the last championship (Jan. 03). Official announcement is expected this week.

Speaking of the US championship, I am again hearing things about controversy around the 04 US women's Olympiad team selection process. The rules seem to change weekly, for one. The main question is still whether or not Anna Hahn will be given an automatic spot as reigning US champion. It seems the rules have recently been altered to say that the champ does get put on the team EXCEPT in 2003-2004! The Anna Rule?

In both national and world titles, whenever the winner isn't one of the top-rated players there is controversy. Basically, if you're going to whine about the results, don't play the tournaments and just go with the rating list. "That's why they play the games" is the wholly correct platitude.

March 17, 2004

A Chessplayer by Any Other Name

The China View news service is reporting that 2001 FIDE Women's World Champion Zhu Chen is involved in a battle to retain the rights to her name. Apparently a foreign (non-Chinese) company tried to register the rights to the 28-year-old's name without her knowledge.

Maybe she should also have a talk with a Mr. Carlos Moreno, who registered zhuchen.com a month ago! (Earlier here I mistakenly identified the registrar as the registrant due to fine print and laziness. My bad. Thanks for the corrections.) It can take time, but it is now fairly routine for well-known individuals and brands to get their name domains taken away from other people. Carlos would have to make a good case for having zhuchen.com for something other than reselling it to prevent a court from handing it over to Zhu Chen. (Loads about this in the case regarding sting.com here.)

The unsavory practice of cyber-squatting also popped up in the chess world in several places. When we started work on KasparovChess in 1999 one of the biggest behind-the-scenes battles was about how some nut was squatting on kasparov.com. He'd met Garry years earlier, done nothing with the project, and ended up causing no end of trouble until it was finally awarded to Kasparov in a long and expensive court battle.

We went on a domain-buying spree back then and many of those I registered for the now-defunct company still show the old contact information. Back then I noticed that a Spanish chess group had registered the domains of the names of many top players.

There are some other curious ones out there. vishyanand.com, vladimirkramnik.com, and peterleko.com are owned by my friends at the London Chess Centre (who also have the coveted chess.co.uk). kramnik.com is owned by his friend Miguel Illescas's chess school in Spain. KasparovChess offered big bucks for chess.com, but in the net madness of the late 90s the fellow at Chess Mentor turned down enough to retire on. Whoops.

It's interesting that the LCC has registered so many full names, which could likely be taken away by their namesakes in court. (Even if they make peterleko.com into a Peter Leko fan site a court could still call him the rightful owner as a public figure in need of protecting his name and earning power.) Meanwhile, paulmorphy.com is still available!

March 18, 2004

It's a Date

(See March 16, 04) From America's Foundation for Chess: "America’s Foundation for Chess (AF4C) and NTC Foundation have set the dates for the 2004 U.S. Chess Championships. The national title tournament will take place from November 24 through December 5, 2004, at the Hilton Torrey Pines in La Jolla."

"This will be the fourth year that AF4C has hosted the annual tournament and its first year doing so with a co-sponsor. Expected to maintain its $250,000 prize fund, the 2004 U.S. Chess Championships will be held over 12 days and is expected to attract attention from around the world. Chessmaster® is returning as a 2004 corporate sponsor."

Allow me to say "Yay!" More good chess, more good money, more of a good thing. It would also be nice to see some serious live coverage of the event this time around. I'm sure their sponsors would appreciate it. Thousands of Americans get up early to watch the top European events; I'm sure many more would love to watch the US Championship live with commentary at a decent hour!

Instead of having sponsor-free rebroadcasting by the ICC, Playchess.com, et al, they could have a nice page with information and links for their sponsors and their own agenda. The design wasn't the most subtle thing I've ever done, but you can't deny that X3D got their money's worth of name recognition from this!

Or we could show all the games at Playchess.com and have audio commentary like we did during Linares. I'd promise to mention the AF4C, the sponsors, and a mission statement every 30 minutes or so on the air. And now for these messages from our sponsors....

March 20, 2004

Alternate Reality

News clips about chess are often incorrect and are usually stilted at best. The difference between a game and a match confounds most wire services, although it's quite similar to the same terms in tennis. Then there's the fact that they are usually getting incorrect or contradictory information from various so-called official sources. FIDE politicians are rarely willing to admit they don't know or, more to the point, that they have no authority on a matter. Then things trickle down to regional politicans who further mangle the news before issuing a statement, which is then picked up by the news services. Argh.

Still, you have to wonder how many mistakes can be crammed into a single small item when you see things like this. The first paragraph: "HANOI: Russian chess king Garry Kasparov has agreed to play his countryman and official world number one Ruslan Ponomariov in Vietnam, the Vietnam Chess Federation said Friday."

About the only thing they got right was that Kasparov is Russian. He's not going to play Ponomariov unless the Ukrainian (not his countryman) wins the 2004 KO in Libya. This is unlikely since Pono has already said he won't play in the next FIDE championship, considering himself king for life a la Fischer. Nor is Pono the number one anything, although I believe he officially retained the FIDE title after dodging a Kasparov match last year.

March 28, 2004

Chess Edumacation

It has become commonplace to hear references to how playing chess improves kids' performance in school, helps them concentrate better, and does just about everything this side of eliminating cavities. Data to back this up is important when it comes to things like getting funding for chess clubs or adding chess to the curriculum. Groups like America's Foundation for Chess and Chess-in-the-Schools know that school districts prefer thick piles of charts and test scores (that they will likely never read) to mountains of anecdotal evidence from teachers, parents, and students. (I speak as a former teacher and the son of a teacher. School systems are just like any other bureaucracy.)

This recent Press-Enterprise story is a typical one, although it actually mentions two studies instead of just acting like it is an intuitive step to say that playing chess improves student performance in other areas. That site requires a rather onerous registration process, so an excerpt:

"The connection between chess and math, reading and critical-thinking skills is well-documented. In the 1980s, researchers studying chess in Pennsylvania schools during a five-year period showed that critical thinking skills improved by 17 percent for students in chess classes, compared with a 5 percent improvement for students in other classes.

Similarly, a study in 1996 by educational psychologist Stuart Margulies showed a marked improvement in reading skills for students learning chess in New York schools."

The Margulies study is mentioned in more detail here. An interesting summary of that and many other findings regarding chess and thinking is here. The evidence is strong that regular chess play improves cognition in various ways, likely differing from child to child. One problem with several of the studies, at least at first glance, is that old bugbear correlation vs causation. Kids who take to mind games like chess seem likely to have greater aptitudes for other mental disciplines, including test-taking, problem solving, reading, etc. Even if selection is random, kids who stay with a school chess program are likely to be ahead of those who drop out of one.

Of course it's not a coincidence that many of these experiments were created and conducted by chessplayers, who would have at least a mild interest in putting a positive spin on the game. Someone with no knowledge of chess is unlikely to come up with the idea. (Margulies was co-author of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.)

But when the rate of improvement increases with the introduction of chess into group, you've got something, and this happens consistently with high correlation. And I'll take the word of teachers, parents, and kids over statistics any day. Hundreds have testified to the many positive effects on individuals and groups.

March 29, 2004

Georgia On My Mind

I hope someone out there understands what went on with this chess tournament in Karabakh. The Petrosian Memorial recently finished in Stepanakert, Karabakh. I can't say exactly where that is, which seems to be the problem. This story at an Azerbaijani news page doesn't help much. Apparently the Azerbaijanis are annoyed that a Georgian played in an Armenian tournament because it was being played in a region that is claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia. Got that? (More on the conflict here.)

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov apparently warned the Armenians that the tournament wouldn't be recognized. 21-year-old Georgian GM Jobava was caught in the middle of all this and has been punished by his national federation (although I somehow doubt he will really be forbidden from playing, as if that were possible).

I bet if the Armenians were putting up, say, 1.5 million dollars for a FIDE event Ilyumzhinov would have no trouble overlooking any troublesome political issues.

Blair Watch Project

Speaking of political issues, with Tony Blair going to Libya the door is wider open for the 2004 FIDE KO championship to be held in Tripoli this summer. I'm all in favor of Libya coming in from the cold, making reparations, and selecting a new, sane, leader in at least a vaguely democratic fashion. But if they don't let the Israeli players participate it's a joke, especially considering the FIDE motto is "Gens Una Sumus" or We are One Family. Maybe someone who had more than one semester of Latin can tell us how to amend the FIDE motto to "We Are One Family, Except the Jews." At one point the FIDE site said that they were hoping for a special dispensation to allow the Israelis to play, but the latest FIDE reports on the event don't mention this.

I'd love to go cover the KO like I did the last one in Moscow (2001). But since my passport shows I have visited Israel I won't be allowed into Libya to do so. While I have disagreed with most of the directions Ilyumzhinov has pushed chess (time control, KO, political instead of corporate sponsorship), I believe he thinks he is helping chess with his actions. I also think FIDE can be worked with and transformed and doesn't need to be discarded and/or replaced, as many suggest. But is this really the best we can hope for? Places that radically restrict event attendance for profane racial, religious, and political reasons? Background and current status of Libya and its relations with the US here.

April 19, 2004

New Look, New Dirt

Thanks to the good folks at Movable Type there's a whole new look here at the Daily Dirt. We'll be tweaking and designing for a few days yet, as well as importing all the old dirt, which is still available here. I'll be getting to all the interesting material you've been sending in, as well as the usual rants. Thanks for your patience.

April 20, 2004

Georgia on My Mind II

There used to be something in the water in Georgia that turned out great women chessplayers. Now the rivers of the former Soviet republic seem to be tainted with the famous local wines. The past week has seen a barrage of news reports about the 2004 women's world championship that is scheduled to take place in Batumi.

The gist seems to be that the Adjarian region, of which Batumi is the capital, is semi-autonomous and the Georgian capital wants to give the impression that it is violatile and too dangerous to host a prestigious sporting event. This doesn't seem to be much of an exaggeration, especially when a Georgian news site reporting the chess story links to the mutiny of a local military leader.

The Georgian government has said they can't guarantee the safety of the participants, which in my opinion puts them in good company with the men (and Judit Polgar) off in Libya. Not that I have much faith in the proclamations of the US government, but they list Libya as one of the most dangerous places to visit and anecdotal evidence for this isn't lacking. The Arab world is a rather dodgy place to be American these days, for obvious reasons. (And an even dodgier place to be an Arab, according to the casualty lists.) This is why the US Chess Federation has asked FIDE if its players can join the exiled Israelis in playing in Malta instead of Tripoli.

I just stumbled across this new fascinating and horrific depiction of Khadaffi (pick your own spelling). Ah, the chess world sure can pick'em.

April 21, 2004

The Anna Hahn Memorial Tournament

Don't worry, she's still alive, but it's hard to imagine more being done to bury a player than what the US chess scene has seen this year regarding Hahn.

In January, 2003 she committed the terrible crime of winning the US Women's Championship. She didn't break any rules or legs and won fair and square. She finished the regular tournament tied with past winners Irina Krush and Jennifer Shahade and then beat them both in a rapid-chess playoff to take the title and the $12,500 first prize put up by Erik Anderson and his fabulous America's Foundation for Chess (AF4C).

As I documented in my report from Seattle, the three finalists played very different tournaments. That's the nature of the event, a Swiss in which the women are mixed in with the men. The top women finish in the middle of the pack and the middle of a Swiss system is incredibly random. But Hahn shouldn't be blamed for winning just because she is rated lower than Krush and Shahade.

The problems started when a US women's Olympiad training squad was formed a few months later and Hahn wasn't on it. As the 2003 US Champion she was automatically seeded onto the team for the 2004 Olympiad in Spain, but the organizers of the team believed, and still believe, Hahn is too weak to play on the team. (Susan Polgar and her business partner Paul Truong are behind the training squad and have done a huge amount of work on it.)

Hahn has played on the national team before, but this time around several high-rated women have parachuted into the picture. Anna Zatonskih (2444) has moved to the US and USCF rules were changed and new FIDE rule exceptions are being requested so she can play for her new country despite playing for Ukraine in 2002. The biggest news was that former women's world champion Susan Polgar (2565, inactive) was considering coming out of retirement to lead the team.

Continue reading "The Anna Hahn Memorial Tournament" »

April 22, 2004

Samford and Daughter

Rusudan GoletianiTo continue with the Yanqui-centric theme of the week, the US Chess Federation today announced that Rusudan Goletiani has won the lucrative 2004 Samford Chess Fellowship. My congratulations to her. The 23-year-old from Georgia (the country) is the first woman to win the Samford in its history. Joel Benjamin was the first recipient of the Samford, in 1987.

I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list of all the winners, but I described it as "lucrative" instead of the cliche "prestigious" for a reason. It means $32,000 per year and the ability to hire a trainer and work exclusively on chess instead of flipping burgers. It's a great idea that helped US chess legends like Benjamin, Dlugy, and Kamsky. Winners include two world junior champions, I. Gurevich and Shaked.

That's all good, but when it comes to recent winners, "where are they now?" is a tough question. Not that they aren't lovely people and not that they don't do good things for US chess, but if the point is success at the board then names like Shahade, Ippolito, Mulyar, Waitzkin, Kreiman, and Finegold aren't going to ring a bell for most. (Dmitry Schneider just won a year ago so we'll give him some time.) Akobian, the controversial 2002 winner who had just arrived in the US, is considered to have more promise but hasn't gotten his GM title yet either. Playing a heavy diet of big American open tournaments makes those GM norms hard to find.

Continue reading "Samford and Daughter" »

April 23, 2004

The Road to Heck

Saint Francis probably said it first, but Shaw said it best: "Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well." The hailstorm of e-mail and comments about the April 21 entry on Anna Hahn and the 2004 US Championship included some new information and reflected a few misconceptions.

The first relates to an omission on my part. Hahn made it very clear to me that the AF4C has been very supportive of her throughout. I was aware of this and should have made it clear that the AF4C's intentions have been very much in the right place. They consistently went to bat for Hahn with the USCF to make sure Hahn was on the Olympiad team.

All of this left incoming USCF Executive Board President Beatriz Marinello in an impossible position and she already had a massive financial crisis on her plate. (Full disclosure: she's a friend and former co-worker at KasparovChess Online.) She wanted to keep the A4FC happy and do right by the US title and Hahn. On the other side she was suddenly presented with a paper signed by the disgraced former executive director (Niro) changing the rules for Olympiad team qualification.

My beef is with the solution and my point was to highlight how secrecy (and stupidity) led to a disaster. The AF4C ran into the USCF's burning house to try and save a messy situation, but the blaze was already out of control by the time the facts came out (assuming they are all out now). The solution we are left with, an ad hoc US championship with convoluted rules, is a tough pill to swallow.

The irony is that according to the current (new) qualification rules, Hahn isn't on the team and this tournament is being held as a compromise to give her a chance to be on the team. This is a surreal twist. Two months ago she was told she was on the team and now she's asked to defend her spot and her title on two month's notice. (I guess 'A' for effort, and the AF4C is footing the bill. [Actually it is not the organization itself, but some of its founders making personal contributions. Erik Anderson, Yasser Seirawan and Yvette Nagel Seirawan.])

Everyone was pushing so hard behind the scenes that it apparently never occured to anyone make a public statement. Of course it's easy to criticize with 20/20 hindsight, but that's pretty much the job description around here and no one asked me a year ago anyway. (Although I did write about it. Scroll down to #69. (Dude.) And various others on that page.)

April 24, 2004

USCF Watergate?

I don't believe in the black helicopters, the second gunman, or crop circles. But I stumbled onto something more than curious while I was looking around for the current and previous qualification regulations for the US Olympiad teams.

I'd heard that the so-called secret agreement between former USCF Exec Director Niro and Susan Polgar may have been known to other members of the executive board, something they have, to my knowledge, denied. I know these matters were discussed during the March, 2003 meeting of the Executive Board. It was controversial because they changed the policy regarding residency required to play in the US Championship and the Olympiad. (The "secret" part specified that the 2003 champion wouldn't play on the 2004 team. The Hahn Rule.)

So I headed to the USCF website where they archive all the minutes from these meetings, which even include digital audio downloads of the open sessions. Great! Here we'd find the details. Was Hahn's 2004 Olympiad participation discussed or not? Was anything other than residency requirement on the table?

I found the page and scrolled down to the March 15-16 meetings. This is when things got weird. The files for that meeting are gone! All the other links on the page work fine. But the minutes and audio links for the March meeting are 404, page not found, content removed! Coincidence? (The link to the agenda is still working.)

The link names on the page are not standardized. That is, the files were there at some point and were removed. Does anyone have the minutes or the recordings? Will they reappear with suspicious edits a la Nixon? Calling Woodward and Bernstein!

I've written a few USCFers about this; I can't wait for the answer. I hope they just put them back up and pretend this never happened.

Sam Sloane attended the meeting and posted a few of what were highlights in his opinion, but only mentions the well-known residency requirement changes. (I'd link to it if it weren't for the obnoxious music that plays when you go to the page.)

It seems unlikely the Olympiad requirements were discussed vis-a-vis the champion, but, as usual, when it looks like something is being covered up your imagination starts to run wild.

[April 25: The minutes from the meeting are found in the Internet Archive here. Thanks to Richard for finding and posting the link. From the minutes it appears the Board did not discuss the Olympiad seeding of the champion so we can continue to assume they were unaware of the agreement between Niro and Polgar/KCF. So why were these minutes removed from the USCF site? And the audio files?]

Calm in the Eye of the Hurricane

You might have missed the eloquent comment from US Women's Champion Anna Hahn that she posted today to the April 21 story, so we give it here in full:

Anna Hahn The statement published by Mig has stirred up quite a furor. Mig's article has brought to light, if abruptly and antagonistically to some, an unfortunate situation which has been going on quietly for over a year, and at last it must be resolved. No doubt, I am saddened and angered to have been at the center of this preposterous controversy.

Although I cannot ethically endorse the final decision of the 2004 tournament, both AF4C and USCF have been supportive in trying to resolve the crisis, and I would like to thank them for that. Perhaps there was no better solution, given the regrettable deals that only came to life in the middle of the discussion.

United States chess has greatly suffered. Let us look at the lessons engendered by our actions and build a better, united, and open system which can help to build rather than destroy, our efforts as a community. Like Mig said, the AF4C has "done so much to add much-needed luster" to US Chess. I sincerely hope that they will not be discouraged from continuing to offer their much needed support.

Personally, I will continue to play chess for the pure joy of it.

Anna

April 24, 2004

April 28, 2004

Get In, Yes. Get Out?

Score a point for constant harping. It looks as though Libyan leader Khaddafi may let the Israel players into Tripoli for the 2004 FIDE world championship. (Here on March 8 I wrote "In light of all the movement inside and regarding Libya I'd be willing to support the tournament in Libya if they lift the visa restrictions for the tournament.")

Not that I think the Lockerbie bomber himself was reading, but it appears that FIDE has managed to get them to agree. We posted the Libyan invitation (not explicitly to Israelis, but to "all 128 players") at ChessBase today. Congratulations to veteran FIDE arm-twister Makropoulos for getting it done and FIDE for expressing will for the good for the first time since Euwe was President.

The Jerusalem Post has more on this development. (Also here and here.) It also brings up the obvious problem with this success, quoting an Israeli chess federation official: "Even if we get permission from security officials and the Foreign Ministry, we are not sure that we will go, since the players are afraid," one official said. "If the Libyans agree, however, to allow us to travel with armed security guards, then that might prove to be a determining consideration for the players."

Oh, that. Yes, hmm. Getting your head into the lion's mouth isn't the hard part. I could understand the players not wanting to risk life and limb while trying to play chess at the same time. I hope they can get security guarantees. It would be a step even though it's likely Israelis would still be banned the day the last one was out of the KO.

So the next question: if the Israelis feel it's too dangerous (and the other players might not even want to be around them) will there still be an alternative venue available to them? FIDE say no. ("No parallel event will be organized in Malta and all the games of the Championship will be played in Libya.") Other countries were already lining up to request to play in Malta instead of Libya, which would have been a publicity disaster. I don't doubt that's why FIDE and Khaddafi finally realized it would be better to have only one event.

No Sign of Anand

This Times of India story reveals that world #2 Vishy Anand is one of the invited players yet to sign and submit his player contract for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Tripoli (June 18-July 13).

Today FIDE announced that 114 of the 128 invitees had signed. A few days ago they posted something about extending the signing deadline until April 27 because their website was down.

Of course they desperately need Anand to play. He's a former champion and will be the favorite in Tripoli. In the Times story Anand said he wasn't yet ready to reveal his reasons.

April 30, 2004

Objectivity Under the Microscope

My recent Mig on Chess (the "Back-scratch Fever" part) caused a flare-up of that old bugbear, accusations of not being objective. Apart from the obvious "no one is, not even in calculus," I've always said opinion is what I'm giving. Facts can be found scattered all over the ground; I try to make some sense of them.

Someone professing to be objective is far more dangerous. Fox News is probably the best example of this, but obviously anything other than someone's birthday is subjective. It's not just how you report something, it's what you choose to report.

Anyway, I recently read the excellent Michael Lewis book "Losers" about the 1996 American presidential campaign. Its afterword is all about writers and journalists who get "too close" to a subject and much of it rang familiar to my situation with Kasparov. I have posted below a lengthy excerpt from it with intro notes on how it relates to my situation with Kasparov. Food for thought.

Continue reading "Objectivity Under the Microscope" »

Call of the Mild

MIA FIDE champion (de jure) Ruslan Ponomariov and/or his spokespeople in the Ukrainian sports federation have popped up with another letter. (Given in full below.) This time instead of just complaining he wuz robbed, they suggest an alternative unification solution.

In short, it's a 1948-style match-tournament "in which could take part the best chessplayers: Ruslan Ponomariov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Peter Leko and the winner of a tournament which will take place in Tripoli (Libya) .... TWIC editor Mark Crowther has been suggesting variations of this off and on for a long time.

It has immediate attraction for the fans because it "settles everything over the board" and that's what we want most: chess. But just about every player would have complaints about why they had to play and why others were being allowed to play. Now that both the FIDE KO and Kramnik-Leko have sponsorship there is zero chance of this happening. (Down from the 0.0000001% chance of a year ago.) Speaking cynically, everyone but Ponomariov (and maybe Anand) would have more to lose than to gain.

Continue reading "Call of the Mild" »

May 1, 2004

We Aren't the World

Thirteen players who qualified for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Libya have failed, according to FIDE, to sign and submit their player agreement contracts and so have been replaced by reserves. We knew Kramnik, Leko, and Ponomariov weren't showing up. The first two have their own classical championship match in October and Ponomariov is too busy sending out press releases.

More surprising are the absences of Vishy Anand and Alexei Shirov, who played in the final of the 2000 FIDE KO in Tehran, Iran with Anand winning the title. Also on the no-play list are stars Peter Svidler, Evgeny Bareev, Boris Gelfand, Anatoly Karpov, Judit Polgar, and 1999 FIDE champion Alexander Khalifman. Two top American players, Gregory Kaidanov and Joel Benjamin, complete the list.

That's hardly a list of nobodies and the Tripoli KO definitely loses much of its already limited appeal. Topalov, Morozevich, and Adams are the only top-ten players left, and there are no previous winners in the field. I've written to half of the drop-outs, but it seems obvious that there will be as many reasons as players. It's a long, grueling event in a location many deem unsafe. The prize money is good but far from what it used to be. The $80,000 first prize is 20% of that of the 2000 event.

Anand has long spoken of his desire to get another piece of Kasparov and a chance to avenge his 1995 world championship loss. Perhaps the prospect of a month in Libya just isn't worth it?

Meanwhile, the women's event was, inevitably, moved to the Kalmykian capital of Elista, home town of FIDE President Ilyumzhinov and perpetual venue of last resort.

May 3, 2004

Bad math and FIDE's Disappearing Players

I've spent a few days trying to get a straight answer about FIDE's latest excursion into the twilight zone, but so far without success. One of my favorite admonishments in the White Belt training newsletter is "DO THE MATH!" Many amateurs are afraid of complications and shy away from lines that require calculation, so they never get better at it. It appears FIDE needs to do the math as well. Even more troubling is the impression that the breakthrough of Libya accepting the Israeli players (see 28/4) might be a sham.

FIDE published a new list of players for the 2004 FIDE KO world championship to be held in Tripoli, Libya. They removed those who didn't send in their player agreement forms and added reserves. They gave the list of the 13 players removed and the 113 who qualified. Umm, that makes 126, not the 128 they need. The two who disappeared are Israeli Emil Sutovsky and American Alexander Goldin. FIDE now says that 115 have signed, so they seem to feel free to add new players to the main list without touching the reserve list. This gives them room to negotiate behind the scenes with marquee names like Anand and Svidler despite being past the signing deadline.

GM Sutovsky posted below: "Hi Mig, thanks for raising an issue. In fact, I signed the contract conditionally (''my confirmation is valid only if I am allowed to play all my matches in Malta''), but FIDE added my name to the list of confirmed players. I protested, they removed me from that list but didn't add to the list of those who refused. Suddenly, my name is just absent at all... But you could confidently enlist myself among those who refused to play in Libya :) Basically, according to the laws of Israel, I'm just not allowed to go there... So, Israeli players (Gelfand, me and Smirin - who is second reserve and would definitely get a place) are just ignored by FIDE and left out of KO. Quite an issue, isn't it?

This means that before FIDE announced that Libya would accept Israelis, they knew no Israelis had submitted signed agreements. Ouch! As Woody Allen put it, "No matter how cynical you are, you can't keep up." Just when I thought FIDE had done something decent and achieved something, it turns out they may have told the Libyans "don't worry, there aren't any Israelis on the list anymore so go ahead and welcome them. You'll get positive PR without having protests, security problems, or ticking off your Arab neighbors." Ow ow ow. There's no way to know this for sure, but the timing is very suspicious.

FIDE puts their event in a country to which it is illegal for one of their member federation's players to travel. They arrange an alternative venue for those players. Then they pull that venue out from under the players' feet. All in all this highlights the insanity of holding an event like this in such controversial location.

May 4, 2004

Bobby Fischer Goes to War

We mentioned this new book by Edmonds and Eidinow in the March 7 entry. Harper-Collins was kind enough to send a review copy so I could confirm most of my suspicions. The book tells the story of Fischer-Spassky 72, its run-up and post-mortem. It is told well and in great detail. It adds perspective but little new information to the well-known facts.

Chess fans who have a few of the match books will still enjoy the new focus on Spassky, who is usually in the distant background. The day-to-day haggling behind the scenes of the match is presented in great detail, probably too much detail. The appendix on Fischer's parentage and family has the most new information.

Of most value is how well the book reconstructs how the match was seen at the time. The post-script is suprisingly hasty, even considering how little solidly sourced information is available about Fischer since 1973. His 1996 appearance in Buenos Aires is not mentioned at all, and I don't bring that up just to say that's where I met him. The incredible attention his brief resurfacing received speaks volumes about Fischer's legacy, but the authors don't seem much interested in that.

The book doesn't alter the convention wisdom around the match and the players. But it's thorough and a good read and not intended for those who are familiar with the story. I just wish they hadn't gone and perpetuated that idiotic bit about Morphy and the shoes...

May 5, 2004

Wayback Machine

I've now added ALL of the old entries to the archives from the old DD pages. It now goes back to December 22, 2002 with 221 entries including this one. Many of the links to newspapers and such are no doubt broken but are preserved for posterity. (And because I'm too lazy to check them all.) You can browse them month by month. The most useful aspect of the transition is the handy search feature on the left of the main page.

Libya Denies Inviting Israelis!

In stunning, if not surprising, news, Libya is denying they ever invited the Israelis to Tripoli for the FIDE WCh and insists they are not welcome. An alert reader sent in this link to an Israeli news page (in Hebrew) and this translation: "Muhammad Gaddafi, son of Libya's leader, denied inviting Israeli chess players to the international tournament that will be held this summer in Tripoli. He said: "We did not invite, and will not invite the Zionist enemy to this tournament." Also here where it adds: "[Muhammad] Gaddafi said today that his country will not allow Israelis to participate in the tournament, even if that will result in Libya losing the right to host the event."

Now that sounds more like those lovable nutcases. (Chess pundit John Henderson wonders, "Who's Ghaddafi's chess advisor, Bobby Fischer?!") It was noted before that the invitation "to all 128 participants" sent out by aforementioned son, who is in charge of sports in Libya (much the same way Saddam Hussein's son Uday was in charge of sports in Iraq, coincidentally enough) did not explicitly invite anyone or mention Israel. But FIDE was quick to say that this meant the Malta venue wasn't needed anymore because everyone was welcome in Libya. The Israeli newspapers and chess federation talked about this breakthrough.

As mentioned below, at least one qualified Israeli GM, Sutovsky, signed and submitted his player agreement with the understanding he would be able to play in Malta, as FIDE promised. It is blindingly obvious that an alternative venue is still required. Of course for the Israelis but also for anyone else whose federation deems it unsafe for their players to go to Tripoli. Imagine if it was "no Russians" or "no Africans"!

Another Sponsor Lost

The BBC reports here that Aslan Abashidze, leader of the Georgian region of Ajaria and thug-of-all-trades, has fled. This just days after the FIDE women's world championship was moved out of his capital for safety reasons. Nice of him to still hand over the money to sponsor the event while he was busy looting the treasury and packing his bags. Let's hope Ilyumzhinov cashed that check quickly! Ilyumzhinov is running out of friends and sponsors. First it was Saddam and Uday, and now his buddy Aslan.

May 6, 2004

The Garry Speaks

I just had a long talk with Kasparov at his home in Moscow where he's doing prosaic things like playing Warcraft with his son and trying to get over a cold. We talked about the progress, or lack thereof, of unification, the ACP ("all they could do was reverse the letters") and corporate sponsorship in the chess world past and present. Tomorrow a full article based on this interview will appear at ChessBase.com. I guarantee you will be surprised. I digitally recorded the whole thing and will put up a few MP3 clips here and there, although the sound of a long-distance call from someone with the sniffles isn't exactly audiophile conditions.

May 7, 2004

Libya Says No, FIDE Says Libya Says Yes

FIDE is trying to tap-dance around the recent denunciations by Libyan Olympic Committee President Mohammad Khaddafi that "We didn’t invite nor will we invite the Zionist enemy to the competition." In today's press release FIDE insists that the "LOC invitation to all WCC 2004 participants, dated 26-4-2004, is still valid."

Umm, hello? Which is it? The LOC President was quoted by the Associated Press saying "We know the Zionists will seize such occasions to enter the Arab society ... but we will not give up our principles even if that leads to canceling holding the tournament in Libya." That doesn't sound very welcome to me, or like it has anything to do with whether or not he extended a personal invitation to Israelis.

Nor does FIDE explicitly say that Israelis will be welcome to play in Tripoli, for an obvious reason: they can't because they aren't. They use the same weasel-words the Libyan invitation used. "All 128 players are welcome" when we know the only real question is whether or not the Israelis will be allowed to enter. They are hoping that by removing the Israelis from the list because they didn't send in their agreements, this dilemma will be swept under the carpet. FIDE wants to have its cake and eat it too. Or maybe that should be matzah.

May 9, 2004

What About Bent?

Vishy Anand just won his third Chess Oscar for his near-total domination of the rapid chess circuit in 2003. He also won Corus Wijk aan Zee at the start of the the year. Peter Svidler also had an incredible year and I actually put him first on my ballot, classical chess snob that I am.

The news was deservedly trumpted in the Indian press, but many of the reports talked about Anand being "the only non-Russian other than Fischer to win the award." One even quoted Anand saying this. I thought this odd, because legendary Bent Larsen of Denmark won the first Oscar in 1967 and this is hardly unknown. Then I discovered that the "official" Chess Oscar site starts its list at 1968 with Spassky! No doubt the Indian journos got their info from that site and while trying to come up with a stat to further glorify their man, came up with the Fischer bit.

Oscar voting used to be a fairly closed affair, mostly people who knew the editor of the Russian magazine 64, Alexander Roshal, who runs the prize contest. Now it appears it has been opened up to all and sundry, not that it wasn't mostly a popularity contest anyway. For a long time Kasparov didn't even bother accepting his string of awards.

May 11, 2004

Libya, Oy

If someone was going to break the omerta around FIDE's decision to hold the world championship in Libya, Boris Gulko was a logical candidate. (GM Sutovsky and the USCF have also spoken out.) The US GM and answer to the popular trivia question, "who is the only player to win the US (94) and USSR (77) championships?" has written an open letter to FIDE prez Ilyumzhinov. (See in full below.) Gulko is no stranger to speaking truth to power. He and his chessplayer wife Anna were famous refuseniks in the USSR and their hunger strike drew much attention. They were finally allowed to emigrate to Israel, where Gulko still holds joint citizenship.

The powerful letter protests staging the event in a country whose leaders denounce the "Zionist enemy" even while FIDE says all is well. Gulko and four other qualified American Jewish players will be absent from Libya, over half of the US contingent. (Goldin, Kaidanov, Stripunsky, and Benjamin are the others, although they have not stated their reasons to my knowledge.) Add Israelis Gelfand, Sutovsky, and Smirin and you have what should be a proper scandal.

Continue reading "Libya, Oy" »

May 12, 2004

Kasparov Goes Fischering

Garry Kasparov is on his way to Italy for a book signing event. His "My Great Predecessors" series is coming out in a remarkable number of languages. With the third book headed to the printers now and two more on the way, in a year or so there will be over 100 editions of the series in print around the world.

He is quite excited about the Fischer section in the third book. "The first serious modern analysis of his games." Ah, such modesty. Kasparov says much has been overlooked even in the 1972 world championship match, about which many dozens of books have been written.

I'll have more from Garry on Volume Three in a week or so. He's coming by to give testimony to the prestigious Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Washington DC. They are having a hearing on human rights in Russia and Kasparov leads a pro-democracy reform group.

May 14, 2004

Mickey Mouse Chess

Actually it's Aladdin, not the Mouse. This Disney press release talks about new chess software for kids. There is an "Aladdin-themed Adventure mode" and you can play against another person or the computer. No mention of online play. This might make for stiff competition for ChessBase's acclaimed Fritz and Chesster title. On the other hand, too often do software companies know far more about cool graphics than about teaching chess.

Mr. Kasparov Goes to Washington

This press release has been, well, released about the Helsinki Commission Hearing where Garry Kasparov will be giving testimony on human rights in Russia next Thursday. Note it calls him "World Chess Champion," which he seems content to use among hoi polloi (certainly not in chess crowds) as a sort of honorific instead of a sporting title.

There is precedent for this. National presidents usually keep that title, for example. But that's usually for retired presidents, and players. If I wrote "this variation is often played by world champions Karpov and Kasparov" it wouldn't sound bad. Having to write "ex-" and "former" all the time is annoying, especially when you assume 99.9% of your audience know what you mean. With Kasparov in front of non-chessplayers that's not the case, however, and "former" should certainly be used. "World's #1 chessplayer" would be a politically correct way around this since he still has the top spot on the rating list.

May 16, 2004

Ears to the Ground

A good reporter is always willing to make personal sacrifices to get the story. With this in mind I forced myself to hang out with Almira Skripchenko, Anna Hahn, and Irina Krush last Friday night. The occasion was the press conference for the ChinaCom.com (com.com.com?) match between French female #1 Skripchenko and her American counterpart Krush in September. You can read my report and interview with them here at ChessBase.com.

As is usually the case, the activities afterwards were more interesting than the press conference. The event was held at the Russian Samovar restaurant on the West Side of Manhattan and it is justly famous for Russian specialties and Russian vodka.

The latter is probably what led to the ear pulling. (Not to mention the photos of the ear pulling.) Of course I wasn't going to stand for this and quickly called New York's Finest. Photogenic Officer Robert Giannetta was quickly on the scene to sternly admonish the French ear puller in question, Almira Skripchenko.

US Women's Champion Anna Hahn came to her friend's rescue, as you'll see in the photo below.

Continue reading "Ears to the Ground" »

May 18, 2004

Grande Occasione

As mentioned below, Kasparov just finished a lightning-quick trip to Italy to promote his Great Predecessors book series. He set his new record for books signed in one day, 570! "They were organized like the Ferrari racing team," was how he put it. I stumbled into this page in Italian about his visit to Turin a day earlier to promote the 2006 Chess Olympiad there. I Miei Grandi Predecessori well illustrates the differences between the various editions and translations. Like the Spanish version it includes an incredible number of historical photos while the English editions have none at all. Meanwhile the Germans want to chop the books into smaller volumes. Who out there will collect them all in every language?! More on the Bologna book signing here.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the series is that Kasparov is insistent that the publishers add the volumes of analysis improvements (mostly in Vol. 1) in future printings. Many people will probably end up buying the same (not cheap) book twice, maybe even three times.

May 19, 2004

Do Not Adjust Your URL

We've successfully moved to a newer, bigger, and faster web server. No need to change your bookmarks/favorites, the numbers will disappear in a day or two and the link will continue to be www.chessninja.com/dailydirt.

May 20, 2004

The Neocon Opening

The clever capitalists at the Wall Street Journal rarely give away any content for free, but the May 19 editorial by Garry Kasparov was made their feature article and can be viewed by lowly non-subscribers (likely Communists) here. Those eager to dismiss his stuff as "celebrity politics" (Streisand for Clinton, Maradona for anything, etc.) should realize that Kasparov has been writing for the WJS since 1991, over 30 articles. Even when he's not giving press conferences, testimony (today in DC), or interviews on politics, he's always up to date and looking for an argument. I like to tease him that he's a step to the right of Reagan and goose-step to the left of Mussolini. Agree or disagree with his politics, his work for pro-democracy groups in Russia is all good. But can he do both this and chess full time? His results of the past year or so suggest not. I think he should spend the next five years just on chess and then he'd still be young for politics. He's in danger of doing many things poorly instead of one thing well.

May 21, 2004

Women Live Online!

FIDE has hastily slapped together this site for the hastily slapped together women's world championship in Elista, the Kalmykian capital and hometown of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. There's a nice photo report that doesn't explain who anyone is and none of the players are visible in the photos. Lots of Ilyumzhinov though, and the inevitable folkloric dancing. The website mentions live games, but doesn't say when they will start.

The top seeds are an interesting contrast. Former Soviet stalwarts Galliamova, Chiburdanidze, and Matveeva are at the top along with teen stars Koneru of India and Lahno of Ukraine. But there are plenty of powerful Chinese there as well, and they have held the title since FIDE stole it from Susan Polgar in 1999. Those champions, Zhu Chen and Xie Jun, aren't playing, however. It should be an interesting event, full of the usual so-called upsets that are just business as usual in a knock-out format with fast time controls. Trivia: Judit Polgar is rated over 200 points higher than the top seed in Elista.

May 22, 2004

Fritz .00001?

mack posted an interesting clip in the message boards. A 1972 book "Mathematics" has this amusingly antiquated photo of a chess-playing computer. This was just a passing puff-piece reference, if a revealing one. The earliest literature on chess machines is composed mostly of academic journals full of technical language and equations. Huge strides in improving the chess algorithms were made every few years, quite a contrast to today.

Most of the programmers you talk to today say that it's all about steady incremental improvements in the search and evaluation. When a new version is sufficiently stronger than the last - and at least on par with its peers - it is published. Rather boring stuff, really. It is eternally interesting to watch how programs with roughly the same performance level play significantly different stylistically just as humans do. It makes you wonder how much style difference between human players is personality and how much is simply different math.

May 24, 2004

Remember the Memorial?

A while back I wrote about a big Petrosian Memorial event to be held in June this year. (Not the controversially located one held in March in Stepanakert. Nor the one scheduled for Armenia in November.) Amazingly, nothing more has been heard about it. Even more amazingly, it's still on! I got the scoop from Kasparov last night.

It's in Moscow from June 9-15. It's a Scheveningen-format team tournament, classical chess (yay). Each of the six players on the "Petrosian team" will play each member of the "World team." The Petrosian team is Kasparov (half Armenian), Gelfand (Petrosian's top student), Leko (married to a Petrosian. His father-in-law Arshak will be the team's coach) and the top Armenian players Akopian, Lputian, and Vaganian. The World team is Anand, Svidler, Adams, Vallejo, van Wely, and Bacrot.

Great event, despite the lack of rest days due to the FIDE WCh starting in Libya on the 18th. It's going to be at the Hyatt Ararat hotel, bonus points if you know why that's fitting. It was to have finished on June 17, which would have been Petrosian's 75th birthday. He died in 1984.

May 25, 2004

Plan of the Week

Over at ChessBase.com we've basically given up trying to keep up with all the plans to save the chess world and are forced to post them in packs of three or more. As well-meaning as Seirawan, Ponomariov, Levy, Kasparov, and Lautier may be, most of these plans are utopian. They willfully ignore how certain participants would have to go against their own best interests to make these plans work. And for the most part they are putting the cart before the horse, or the format before the cash.

The 2002 Prague agreements were remarkable because they were made without any money on the table. Everyone committed in principle to unify the title for the greater good. We now see how far you get in the chess world relying on principles. Despite a two-year delay, as soon as he got sponsorship for his match with Leko Kramnik was quick to threaten to bail on Prague and FIDE. Of course now he's talking through the Kramnik Association of Chess Professionals, but the message is the same.

You have to wonder how many dues-paying (K)ACP members are going to be in Tripoli taking FIDE money while the ACP leaders declare FIDE and its titles irrelevant and invalid. As always, it's going to be about money. If the ACP can put together serious cash for a qualifying event, the players will play, just like they all showed up for the FIDE KO events when the Ilyumzhinov money was flowing freely and just like they played in the PCA events back in the mid-90's. Most players aren't ideological about it, they just want to play and get paid. That makes the ACP's haste to abandon FIDE misguided at best. If FIDE can get the money together for unification and a new world championship cycle, why not take it? [I meant that from the players' perspective, not mine. As long as FIDE can scratch together some money, the players will be there.]

May 26, 2004

Libya, Oh Libya...

Does that remind anyone else of an old Groucho Marx song? (MP3 here) And it's something like a Marx Brothers movie, too. "A Day at the Camel Races" maybe. GM Joel Lautier of the ACP took a break from promoting the Kramnik-Leko match to write this strongly worded letter castigating FIDE and Ilyumzhinov for having the event in Libya, where Israeli players will be at a serious disadvantage if indeed they are allowed into the country at all.

Great, if a bit on the late side. I started ranting about this in February, about two months before "Libya" was mentioned by the ACP, and that was only in regard to the player agreement. If the ACP has any clout at all, which is still an open question because their members seem to prefer to sacrifice the other guy's pieces, so to speak, it needed to be exercised immediately, the moment FIDE announced Libya. If you can show overwhelming resistance to something this stupid quickly enough you can get results. (E.g. Ilyumzhinov backing down from playing the 1996 FIDE WCh in Iraq.) Waiting three months allows FIDE to say it's too late to make changes and gives the impression you really don't care that much.

Of course FIDE did use the bait-and-switch with the Malta alternative venue in order to gain time. No one said they were stupid. No, wait, I just did. But they have been crafty. American writer Paul Hoffman is determined to attend the WCh in Tripoli and has been jumping through an amazing number of hoops with the State Department to do so. The best part? You can't use American credit cards or traveler's checks there, so it's cash only. Then they warn you about the high level of street crime! Libyan thieves, take note!

May 28, 2004

Making a List, Checking It Twice

FIDE has released the "final" list of players for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Tripoli, Libya starting on June 18. No Israelis are on the list. Smirin was the top reserve and had sent in his agreement so I hope this will be explained. Perhaps he was a little put off by the tournament organizer calling him the enemy. American Boris Gulko is on the list, something of a surprise after his impassioned letter. I'm not sure he answers e-mail on Shabbat but I'm hoping to get the full story from him this weekend. Perhaps he felt that FIDE had done all it could to let his fellow "Zionist infiltrators" into the event, even if it is being run by a lunatic. Or maybe the list is simply wrong; it would hardly be the first time.

[ Update 1hr later: GM Gulko just informed me he will NOT be playing and tells of his e-mail exchange today with FIDE veep Israel Gelfer. FIDE seemed to be of the opinion that all of the issues Gulko raised in his letter were invalid ("denied" is the word they use). Gulko disabused them of this notion, and writes "until the Libyan authorities renounce the notorious statement of the President of the Libyan Organizing Committee, Mohammad Qaddafy, I will not be participating in this tournament." ]

Even without Kasparov, Kramnik, Karpov, Khalifman, Ksvidler, and Kbareev, there are 19 (!) Russians on the list of 128 players. The USA is next with seven six players. Kasparov opines that there is a 99% chance of one of the top six "heavyweights" winning the event. Topalov, Morozevich, Adams, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Short. For FIDE the dream is for a Russian to win, making it much easier for Ilyumzhinov to negotiate unification plans with a Kasparov match in early 2005. The FIDE wet dream is for FIDE VP Azmaiparashvili to win!

It's a little early to start handicapping, but Adams always comes to mind in these events. It's a lottery, especially when you have very strong players like former Russian champion Lastin seeded 53rd!

Brissago Sighting!

When the Kramnik-Leko world championship match was announced for Brissago, Switzerland, I hope I wasn't the only one whose first reaction was "Where?" I consider myself geographically informed for an American. I can name the leaders of Canada AND Mexico, something fewer than 10% of my countrymen can do. (Weep weep.) I've even been to Switzerland, but the tiny (population 1,981) resort town on Lake Maggiore stumped me. It wouldn't have had I remembered my Hemingway. It's the town where Frederic and Catherine escape to from Italy in A Farewell to Arms. (My memory was refreshed when the 1932 film version with Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper was on cable today.)

Brissago looks charming and I hope a chess match there will receive at least as much attention as the 1999 FIDE KO did in that other chess Mecca, Las Vegas. For cigar-maker sponsor Dannemann the Leko-Kramnik match is a boutique highlight for their various cultural sponsorships. They aren't trying for the major media coverage and PR a bigger sponsor would want. So they are holding the match in their backyard. According to the Brissago website (conveniently in Italian and German) one of the main attractions in Brissago is the old tobacco factory. For pure chess PR purposes, a larger metropolis would be nice, but some great matches have been played in out of the way places. Reykjavik, for example.

May 30, 2004

More from the Garrython

It's been all Kasparov all the time here in New York over the past week. From fundraisers for the Kasparov Chess Foundation charity to teaching sessions for the US women's training squad to appearances and interviews about chess, Russia and Iraq, Garry Kasparov has been a whirlwind in the Big Apple.

Free time he spends with his daughter or hunched over his laptop looking at analysis of Bobby Fischer games for the upcoming third volume of his "My Great Predecessors" books. "These Fischer games are incredibly complicated," he says, "but we are finding all sorts of amazing stuff." He showed me several examples - including one from the Karpov section - of famous masterpiece games that have flaws that have gone undiscovered for decades. I won't spoil the surprises, but I did dig through my own over-large collection of books without finding the main lines Kasparov was talking about.

One of these, in a Fischer win that won the Informant's best game prize, a natural move leading to a draw late in the game has apparently escaped notice. (I say "apparently" because there are countless chess books out there and you can't have or read them all.) In a way it's always a shame when an immortal game meets a refutation. The canon of golden games took a beating when computers and their ruthless objectivity came fully into effect in the 90's. Now Kasparov and his co-author (with help from the latest and greatest from Intel and ChessBase) are grinding the mill finer than ever before. That is, after a lamentable lack of rigor in the first edition of the first volume.

June 2, 2004

Shabalov withdraws from FIDE WC

From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania comes the announcement by US Champion Alexander Shabalov (pictured with women's champion Anna Hahn) that he will not travel to Libya for the 2004 FIDE World Championship. He writes,

"The reluctance of FIDE to deal with the issues raised in the ACP open letter of May 26th and the publishing of "final list of participants" with my fellow chess players and friends excluded based on their nationality makes it impossible for me to participate in WCC in Tripoli."

A classy move of solidarity that follows a protest from the USCF, the withdrawal of Boris Gulko, and the refusal of many American qualifiers to send in their player agreements. It is rumored that top American qualifier Alexander Onischuk will also withdraw. [Update 19:00: His withdrawal is now confirmed. American/Polish GM Wojtkiewicz is one of the replacements. At least one of my old Argentine pals might make it in as well. Dale Ariel!] It's a terrible shame that FIDE's decision to hold its championship where all players cannot participate equally has cost Israel all of its qualifiers and most of the Americans as well.

When Gulko confirmed his withdrawal four days ago FIDE hastily took down their "final" list of players and put up a bizarre list of "candidates to replace him." Huh? What happened to the reserve system? Are the four players listed supposed to play for the spot, or does the first one to sign the agreement get the spot, like a radio call-in contest for AC/DC tickets? (Two of the players, D. Gurevich and Novikov, are Jewish and may have their own concerns about playing in Libya.)

June 4, 2004

Women's Chess

The term "women's chess" has always bugged me. I figured now that the FIDE women's world championship final is underway in Elista, Kalmykia it was a good moment to share. The games in top women's events are more aggressive, more tactical, and have a much higher percentage of decisive results than top open (i.e. "men + Judit Polgar") events. This fact is occasionally trotted out to say that women players are more aggressive than men.

What is ignored in these arguments is that the average rating in top women's events is over 200 points lower than that in top open events. Open events of similar average Elo (2450) are just as tactical and decisively inclined as women's events. 2400-rated players are simply more aggressive and make more mistakes than 2600-rated players. That means more tactics and more excitement, if that's the word.

The FIDE time control and the tension of a KO and a world championship makes for more errors, as we saw in game one of the final between Stefanova and Kovalevskaya yesterday. White throws away a pawn for no compensation and loses a horrible game (if well played by Stefanova). When someday we look back and list the crimes of the current FIDE administration, let us hope we do so from a day when world championships once again mean great chess.

June 5, 2004

Oh Pair

FIDE has released its no really it's final final list (Word format) of players for the 2004 FIDE World Championship. They even released pairings for the first round (Excel format). You can't expect too many upsets on the first 20 boards, which are mostly devoid of GM vs GM play, but in a two-game mini-match with a fast time control we'll probably have a few anyway.

I still remember the look on Frenchman Olivier Touzane's 2368-rated face when he beat Vishy Anand with black in the first game of his round one match in the last FIDE KO in Moscow, 2001. (That's him on that very day on the left. The arm around him belongs to his fellow French representative Vlady Tkachiev.) It was a fun but short-lived celebration as Anand wiped him out the next day and then won the rapid tiebreak. Leko also lost a first-round game, to Watu Kobese.

Getting back to the Libya pairings, only the Kazaks have the bittersweet certain knowledge that one of their three representatives will be eliminated and one will make it to the second round. Amazingly with 19 Russians in the field, none will meet in the first round.

June 6, 2004

Rated X

X for canceled, that is. The long, troubled tale of worldchessrating.ru (and .com) seems to be over, and this time for good. The site and the concept behind it was a Garry Kasparov initiative, fruit of his newfound association with FIDE in 2002. The rating system would be revamped, computerized, brought down to the amateur level, and include rapid and blitz games in the same rating.

Funding, which came indirectly from FIDE when it came, was always a problem, as documented hereabouts here and here. Now Ilya Gorodetsky posted below that the WCR doors were closed for good on May 6.

Continue reading "Rated X" »

June 7, 2004

Get Your Vote On

There's a poll in the message boards to pick the winner of the Petrosian Memorial team event that starts Wednesday. (I lobbied to get the name changed to the Mig Memorial since it starts on my birthday. [Actually it starts on the 10th, not 9th. Oh well, another strike.] This generous offer was declined because 1) my chess contributions fall a tad short of Petrosian's and 2) I'm not dead. I remember the Buenos Aires Herald calling the 1994 Sicilian Thematic the Polugaevsky Memorial, apparently unaware that Lev was alive and in attendance, although not playing.)

So far the Kasparov-led Petrosian team is leading the voting over the Anand-led World team. There are three top-ten regulars on each team, but I think many might underestimate the strength of the Armenian players. I'd say Akopian, Vaganian, and Lputian have at least as many major successes as van Wely, Bacrot, and Vallejo. They just don't appear in Wijk aan Zee and Linares.

June 9, 2004

Opening Letters

What would a week in the chess world be without an open letter or two? Resisting the urge to yell "Catfight!" I post below one from two Georgian WGMs from June 4 protesting the way the recently completed women's world championship was organized, or not organized. Today FIDE sent out a reply in the form of a letter signed by the event's winner, Antoaneta Stefanova, and the other finalist.

A cynical student of FIDE would wonder whether they received their prize money before or after agreeing to sign this letter, but of course we aren't that cynical yet, are we? Ahem. What was clear from the beginning of this mess was that FIDE and its leadership [sic] bet on the wrong horse in Georgia with Abashidze and had to save face in a hurry when their thug-du-jour had to run for his life. (Mentioned in the DD here and here.) It's great that they managed to get the event together at all, and from all reports it was run smoothly in Elista. But that doesn't mean they can sweep the entire disaster under the carpet. Full text of both letters below.

Continue reading "Opening Letters" »

June 11, 2004

FIDE, Israel, Libya

GM Ilya Smirin is still the missing link in the chain of events that has left all three Israeli players out of the FIDE KO. Roman Parparov, a board member of the Israeli chess federation, recently posted this:

"Israeli players have been invited. But, they are refused to a) verify their visa receipt before they step on Libyan land b) get a description of what security measures are taken to protect their safety c) bring their coaches and their wives along. Also the Israelis were forbidden to send their journalists and their federation officials to Libya."

My, how paranoid. After all, who wouldn't trust Ghadafi? Well, here's one possible reason. And here's today's poll question at CNN. I guess they didn't ask anyone at FIDE. Of course voting doesn't mean much, at least not here in the USA or we'd have a different president. Hmm, did Ilyumzhinov win Florida?

June 12, 2004

Kalmyk Kalamity

As linked to from ChessBase.com, the Russian newspaper Pravda ran a scathing attack on FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov today. (An unrelated tidbit here.) Few if any of the accusations are theoretical novelties. What is new is the coverage. As anyone following Kasparov's crusade against the Putin regime knows, every major media outlet in Russia is under Kremlin control these days. Pravda is almost as much of a state organ now as it was under Brezhnev. This bodes ill for Ilyumzhinov. Putin knows how to use the media to rally opinion before taking action. First the subject is vilified in the press, then the prosecutors move in. This is a choice (unsourced) quote.

"We don"t want holidays in poverty-stricken region. When you, participants of the chess championship, are enjoying yourselves with the concerts of the poverty-stricken performers and dinners in expensive restaurants, the majority of children in Kalmykia have no enough food. Poor Kalmykia cannot be donor and money-bag for FIDE!"

Not that I much doubt the veracity of the charges and the article has lots of quotes from the Kalmykian opposition. (The same folks who couldn't get a word published in the same papers when Ilyumzhinov was in favor in Moscow.) It's still worth pointing out that the article doesn't quote him at all. The stuff about making Kalmykia into a "second Chechnya" sounds like complete fantasy. That's just the sort of thing the Kremlin would whip up to excuse removing someone in a hurry and Ilyumzhinov isn't dumb enough to actually say something like that. It would be like the leaders of Iran saying "Hey Bush, we've got WMDs right here and we dare you to come and take them!" Either Putin is using this to fire a warning shot to keep Ilyumzhinov in line or the warnings are over.

It's long overdue to set up a sort of shadow government to prepare for Ilyumzhinov's exit from FIDE and the chess scene. Letting his lieutenants take over certainly wouldn't help. Who is out there setting up a reform ticket that could salvage some of the FIDE infrastructure? Does Seirawan have a day job? He even has rating list experience from when he set up the "active chess" list long, long ago.

June 14, 2004

My Great Annotators

I was just thumbing through my battered copy of Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess 1908-1923. Alekhine's notes include some droll gems.

Page 206, vs Muffang after move 22: "This move is not really an actual mistake. But in this laborious position all other moves would equally give the impression of being mistakes." Page 156, vs Rubinstein after move 20: "This move is not a whit better than those which precede it."

Leaving aside the best-known, do you have a favorite clever annotation? Post it in the comments below if you do, and please give the source.

June 15, 2004

Ratings, Damned Ratings...

and Statistics, to paraphrase Twain. Like many chess geeks I'm fascinated with ratings, but I'm also horrified by the fascination with them and what the list has done to the game and the culture of the game. Before the FIDE list debuted in 1971 the concept of world-class player was determined by results in important tournaments. Now you can score less than 50% in practically every event you play in but still stay in the top 20 and those invitations keep coming in.

Chess stats man and database dude Jeff Sonas has a new article up at ChessBase.com with statistical predictions about the FIDE world championship starting on June 18 in Libya. In it he tries to explain his concept of a player's "true strength" as compared to rating and TPR (tournament performance rating). All the explanation seems confusing, but the examples clear it up somewhat.

The point is something of a tautology, basically saying that if you win a FIDE KO, you are a strong player regardless of your rating and the luck often involved in two-game mini-matches at semi-rapid time controls. His example of Khalifman and Ponomariov both having excellent Linares results months after their KO wins helps distinguish between what Sonas calls "true strength" and what most people call "good form." Any top-20 player with good form and a little luck can win the KO. On the other hand, we knew Khalifman had been world class and that Ponomariov was a dangerous up-and-comer (and former youngest-ever GM ). The other two KOs were won by Anand, no comment necessary.

So how about the semifinals? 1997: Adams, Short, Gelfand, Anand. 1999: Nispeanu, Khalifman, Akopian, Adams. 2000: Shirov, Grischuk, Anand, Adams. 2001: Ivanchuk, Svidler, Ponomariov, Anand. Hmm! The lowest rated players on that list are the Vegas Boyz (aka "tourists" in Kasparov's now-legendary appellation). Khalifman has sunk again, but was always a top-ten talent. Akopian and Nisipeanu, relatively unknown in 1999, are now recognized as solid top-20 performers. So for all the talk (and evidence) of the KOs being lotteries, in the end the guys who are left standing can seriously bring it over the board. Of course the chess is usually crap, but that's hard to measure with statistics...

June 17, 2004

Kamsky Conundrum

So Gata Kamsky is back at the public chessboard. I wish him the best and very much hope his off-the-board combativeness has mellowed after eight years in the normal world away from the spotlight. (Apart from a three-day appearance at the Vegas KO in 1999.) It's easy to forget how young Kamsky was when he played Karpov for the FIDE world championship in 1996, having turned 22 the week before the match started.

Those who have become chess fans in the past eight years won't remember what controversial figures he and his father Rustam were. I'm all for new beginnings and whether he comes back to chess full-time, part-time, or not at all, Kamsky deserves to start again with a clean slate. Focused on his climb to the world title he wasn't involved much with American chess in his final years of activity. (Nor was I, of course, since I was living out of the country. I met Kamsky and his father in my old home of Buenos Aires during the Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic in 1994.) Perhaps the newly lucrative US Championship has attracted his interest.

Kamsky, who once reached #4 on the rating list (behind Kasparov, Kramnik, and Karpov), is probably the second-highest rated chess drop-out ever, after Fischer of course. Many other strong US players young and old have left the game, but none were forces on the world stage at the time. Morphy should also be mentioned. Is this a uniquely American disease?

Now No Moro

In the latest edition of TWIC, #501, it is casually mentioned that Alexander Morozevich, the number two seed in the 2004 FIDE KO world championship starting Saturday, June 19, has dropped out at the last minute. The exciting young Russian, always a crowd favorite, has a history of such behavior, and no matter what you think of holding the event in Libya, it's not kosher to bail out after the pairings are up, especially if you are one of the top seeds in a KO. At this point FIDE will probably just give a bye to his amateur Libyan opponent, screwing up the balance of the brackets and giving someone (either Smirnov or Bruzon) an easy ride to round three. At least Morozevich did it (assuming he did) without one of the long, incoherent open letters that are all the rage these days. I haven't seen any other mention of the dropout. Anyone?

June 18, 2004

The West Is Best

You may have to expand your browser to see it, but the Chesschamps website dedicated to Garry Kasparov's "My Great Predecessors" book series made an announcement today. An extra book will be added to the series, "Best of the West." This is because Vol. 3 was turning into a 700+ page monster. The much-awaited Fischer section has been moved to a fourth volume, one that will include subsections on Reshevsky, Larsen, and a new section on Miguel Najdorf. Vol. 3, already headed to the printer, covers Petrosian and Spassky. When I spoke to Kasparov today he said it would be hard, but "we still plan to have Fischer out before Christmas!"

I used to see Najdorf all the time and lost several rapid and blitz games to him as well. (Not exactly worthy of inclusion in the book, alas.) Even in his 80s he was a tough opponent for the young IMs and GMs at the Club Argentino. His habit of announcing a draw instead of proposing one didn't hurt, but who was going to argue with Don Miguel?! He was world class for decades and adding him to the series is a great move. If you have a nice, unpublished Najdorf anecdote send it in to me or post it here.

June 20, 2004

Hey, Chess!

With dubious location and years of shenanigans left behind, actual chess was played in Tripoli, Libya this weekend. The Israeli federation isn't going quietly and the noise is percolating around after being covered by AP last week. From today's UK Telegraph story:

"The exclusion of Israel is a severe embarrassment to Fide, whose motto is Gens una sumus - We are all one people. Mohammed Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, only landed the contest for his country after promising that Israeli players would be allowed in to play. Last month he went back on his pledge, however, describing the Israelis as "the Zionist enemy"."

Not that FIDE has shown any embarrassment or accepted any fault at all for the Israelis and the many, mostly Americans, sympathetic to them being absent. Speaking of embarrassment, the NY Times has a piece on Kalmykia today. We've become so used to how bizarre the place and its leader are that it's good to see it from an outsider's view.

"What is left - both inside and outside Chess City - belongs to President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the republic's whimsical strongman and, in a forking move, the respected leader of the World Chess Federation, known as FIDE, for its acronym in French."

"Whimsical strongman" is cute, but I'm not sure where he comes up with "respected." Ilyumzhinov has a sincere passion for chess, and I think FIDE is still necessary in some way, but King Kong had a sincere passion for Fay Wray.

June 21, 2004

Hate the Sin

In the latest of the dozens of open letters flying around the chess world these days, Ms. Nahed Ojjeh has fired one off criticizing the FIDE KO currently underway in Libya. Apart from sponsoring the the NAO Chess Club of Kramnik and Lautier, she is also active behind the scenes in their other activities.

While it's blatantly ridiculous to have the event where the Israelis cannot participate equally, attacking Ghaddafy seemed strange considering Ojjeh's own very colorful past. I'm all for rehab. I also differ in that I can't condemn the players for going to Libya, although I support those who didn't. They aren't to blame for FIDE's crimes nor those of Ghaddafy. Love the sinner, hate the sin and all that. It's hard enough to make a living playing chess without having ponder a moral crisis each time out. It's up to each player. FIDE's members are federations.

June 22, 2004

Bulgarian Burqa

It's not 100% clear, but from this short report in a Bulgarian paper it appears that new women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova was not allowed to give her planned charity simul in Tripoli because of her gender. (It also mentions that she wasn't allowed to replace Morozevich in the KO, but that seems to be a separate issue.) Her presence in Libya is also notable because of the scandalous case of five Bulgarian nurses being sentenced to death in Libya in May. It has been front page news in Bulgaria for a month.

June 24, 2004

Women In The City

You probably don't know and you might not care, but the 2004 US women's championship is underway at St. John's University in Manhattan. In fact, it is down to Friday's final round. I finally tracked down the official website. (Background here.) It also covers the "St. John's International Tournament" running in the same place at the same time. It includes GMs Fedorowicz, Benjamin, Yudasin, and venerable Yugoslav Boris Ivkov. Organizer Frank Brady (yes, the author of "Profile of a Prodigy" on Fischer) works at St. John's.

I haven't been able to find what looks to be the critical game of the Women's event, Shahade's win over Zatonskih. The game files are a mess and even the crosstables seem out of whack. There are an odd number of players in the women's event (7), but it should still be impossible to have one player with five results and others with three! (The site mentions some webmaster-scoresheet communication problems.) After four of six rounds 2002 champion Jennifer Shahade led with 3.5/4. I'm going to attend the event tomorrow for the final round. Maybe we'll even be able to figure out who won! [Update 0200: Apparently at least one game was postponed. The crosstables have been updated and it looks like Shahade has already clinched victory with 4.5/6. Allow me a Huzzah! for my friend and, interestingly, only non-Russian speaker in the field.]

The winner will get the fourth spot on the Women's Olympiad team and be the US women's champion for a few months, until the 2005 (?!?) championship in San Diego in November. (A fitting duration for a title won in a six-round event, really.) If the winner is Krush or Zatonskih, who are already on the team, there will be a playoff between the top finishers two not on the team. Defending women's champion Anna Hahn, who had been told the fourth spot was hers and felt railroaded by this impromptu event, declined to play.

June 25, 2004

G'day Israelies

If you want news on the exclusion of Israelis from the FIDE KO in Libya AND you like the way Australians talk, this is your article. Two developments come from down under, but you only get one today. It's a radio interview with top Israeli GM Boris Gelfand. There is a transcript and links to listen to the interview. (It's pronounced "chis" down there. Isn't that adorable?) Not much new, reiterating that the Israeli players will seek compensation from FIDE and the Israeli federation may sue Libya. Hmm, it took Khaddafi 15 years to pay compensation for murdering 270 people, this could be a long wait. Tomorrow will bring the curious case of Vadim Milov, who plays for Switzerland but holds an Israeli passport and was absent from Tripoli.

June 26, 2004

Worth 1000 Bulgarian Words

On June 22 we saw a Bulgarian news report that said women's world champ Antoaneta Stefanova's simul in Tripoli was cancelled. Thanks to writer Paul Hoffman we know this is not the case. At the very least we know she gave one simul, because he played in it and took photos. (Maybe another was cancelled?) A full set of Paul's entertaining pictures from Tripoli will be posted at ChessBase.com later today.

June 28, 2004

Quo Vadim?

More meat from down under comes from the indefagitable, peripatetic, perspicacious, and jocund personage that is Australian GM and chess journo Ian Rogers. He writes for the Sydney Sun-Herald and has a scoop on "the forgotten Israeli," Vadim Milov. Like Gulko, the USSR-born Swiss Milov holds an Israeli passport. In his June 27 Sun-Herald column (not available online), GM Rogers writes:

"Despite constant requests from Milov and the Swiss Chess Federation, Milov's invitation - necessary to obtain a visa - was delayed until 23.30 on the night before the arrival day. At that time Milov was informed that after a long meeting with FIDE chief Iljumzhinov, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to allow Milov to play. FIDE even offered to pay for Milov's travel expenses but the offer came too late for Milov to find a flight to Tripoli which would allow him to arrive on time. Earlier that evening Milov had been told by a FIDE official that FIDE had been tricked by the Libyans, who had never intended to allow any Israelis to play."

Thanks to Ian for ferreting this out. Milov now has posted a letter at the ACP website about his plans to sue FIDE for forcing him to miss the event. Most of this jibes with my original take on FIDE trying to have their cake and eat it too. Promise Israelis they can play, promise the Libyans that they will make it impossible for it to happen. Then blame the victims. Win-win. Let's hope they lose-lose the court case. Milov would have been the 12th seed in Libya, a favorite to reach the fourth round and earn at least $22,000. Jeff Sonas's original odds on the event gave Milov the 29th-best chance to win the event, or 134 to 1.

June 30, 2004

Machine-Machine

The 12th World Computer Chess Championship starts July 4 in Ramat-Gan, Israel. There's an event summary at ChessBase, which is also the publisher of all three of the favorites: Fritz, Shredder, and Junior.

Computer chess is a thriving subculture. Thousands of fans are more interested in Fritz vs Shredder than in Kasparov vs Anand. They swap test positions, play tournaments, and brag about suite scores. Most of them aren't chess programmers, they just love to fool with and talk about chess programs. Computer chess has even followed the humans in getting caught up in Middle Eastern politics.

One of the most interesting computer chessplayers is Hydra, the hardware-based system formerly known as Brutus and programmed by the author of the program Nimzo, Austrian Chrilly Donninger. (The official Hydra website has no information on the machine at all, but has plenty of chess news "borrowed" from other websites like ChessBase and TWIC.) Hydra won the short but strong Paderborn computer tournament last February, but won't be playing in the WCCC.

Hydra is now officially a program from the United Arab Emirates. From my my e-mail exchange with Donninger:

"The UAE has declared 1967 war to Israel. There is so far no peace-treaty between the 2 countries. It is therefore for political reasons not possible that Hydra participates. Personally I have also no interest to travel with an Arabic-stamp in my passport to the WC. I assume that I would be specially checked by Israeli security forces. I do not like this idea. There were plans to organize the WC-2005 in Abu-Dhabi. But the negotiations were canceled, because Israeli citizens get no visa for the UAE."

One of the Ramat-Gan organizers sent me this:

"When the Hydra team asked if they can play in Israel under the UAE flag, we replied that there is no problem with that, and they are most welcome here. But when the WMCCC was held in Indonesia (Jakarta 1996) the Junior team was not allowed to participate."

As is the case with the humans in Libya, chess loses.

July 1, 2004

Listless

The new FIDE rating list is out. Nothing too interesting, although France's Bacrot crashed the 2700 club with a huge leap. He took the French #1 spot from Lautier by a wide margin and will likely play board one in the Olympiad. The former youngest-ever GM is finally showing the promise already displayed by fellow prodigies Leko and Ponomariov.

Speaking of prodigies, Teimour Radjabov dropped a little on the list and has been playing very unambitious chess. His semifinal appearance in the FIDE KO, where he lost game one to Adams today, actually proves this theory. Advancing is really all that matters, but when you look only at the first two games of each match, the only ones that will be rated, he is seeking draws and actually playing well below his rating. Last month Garry Kasparov expounded to me that we would soon see Magnus Carlsen surpass Radjabov on the rating list. "Carlsen knows how to win. Radjabov is playing in Linares and other top events where drawing is a good result for him. He's never won a tournament!"

It's a little early to write off Timmmaaay!, of course. He shows flashes of brilliance when pushed up against the wall, usually when he has black. It's not a coincidence that he has wins against Anand and Kasparov with black. But his rocket to the top has clearly stalled. He gave up draw after draw in the recent European Championship. Many thought he would be top-10 by 18 years old.

July 6, 2004

Mobile Chess

Just as the FIDE WCh in Tripoli hits the finals I'm off to Toulouse, France for my sister's wedding. You know how hard it can be to get an internet connection in these third-world countries, so updating may be sporadic at best. I'm armed with a wireless card and a global dialing account, so I'm hoping to be able to send at least small "vacation" versions of White Belt and Black Belt while on the road.

Apart from the usual ChessBase suspects on my laptop, I have my trusty old (and I mean old) Palm Pilot with me. It has Chess Tiger on it. It's a fine program (and they gave me a review copy) but since it's not very strong on my slow Palm Vx I've never bothered to try out other Palm platform chess programs. And since I wouldn't use a Pocket PC for much I haven't tried Pocket Fritz 2 or the other sophisticated and pretty programs for the mobile Windows OS. I keep hoping that ChessBase will realize the marketing value of giving me a nice Pocket PC so I can promote Pocket Fritz, mention how handy it is on the subway and while traveling, etc., but so far they haven't fallen for it.

Since chess programs max out the CPU they can drain batteries like Dracula. What is your favorite mobile chess program? Comments are especially welcome from those who have tried more than one. Not looking for full reviews, of which there are plenty on the web, just some testimonials. How much use do you get out of it? Good user experience overall?

July 8, 2004

Very Plane Chess

A 33.6 dial-up connection at my Toulouse hotel isn't a dream, but it works. Had a chess experience on the flight from New York to Paris. The Air France Airbus plane had an "Echecs" game installed on the personal video system. I saw a few other people on the plane playing it and of course I had to give it a try. Decent 3D graphics, although the screen was a bit too small. I confidently set the play level to "difficult" and played 1.d4. This was surprisingly met with 1...e5 and I thought "wow, they have this thing playing sharp gambit chess, cool." That illusion was dispelled very quickly when 2.dxe5 was met with the less-than-incisive 2...Qg5??? The rest of its play was equally pathetic. It would avoid a mate in one, but other than that it was almost random. (Another game 1.e4 e6 (French Defense on Air France!) 2.d4 Qg5??? Oy.)

A Kasparov-branded game is being rolled out on a few airlines in a few markets. I hope it's a lot better than this one or it'll be an embarrassment. In an age in which your shoes have more computer power than the 1969 moon lander, this is ridiculous. I can only assume they believe this is the average level of play, or maybe they just want their passengers to feel good about themselves.

July 9, 2004

À la Recherche du Échecs Perdu

Not that I really care with so much good food and wine around, but of course I keep my eyes peeled for chess when on the road. After hitting a few dozen bookstores and magazine stands here in Toulouse I have found no chess magazines and exactly two chess books, both primers. I don't doubt there are specialty stores and clubs here for the chess fan, but it's definitely a place where you have to find chess, it doesn't find you.

It's conventional wisdom to say that the USA is chess ignorant, but every large chain bookstore you go into (Barnes & Noble, Borders) has a respectable chess section, often a quite large one. They usually have plenty of new books as well as a selection of classics. They also usually have Chess Life in the periodical section. How accessible is chess where you live? Local club? Play in the parks? Books easy to find? Outcast with online play only?

July 12, 2004

No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Just a quick note to say I'm back home and that "daily" will be back in the Daily Dirt again as soon as I pay off my massive sleep deficit. Now I need to go over all the Kasimdzhanov-Adams games too. Even the cool as the other side of the pillow Mickey Adams has shown plenty of nervous play in the final. Kasimzhanov has played the strongest possible field in Tripoli, one of Linares caliber, and is more than holding his own. And yet I haven't seen a one win from him that I would call an excellent game, although I haven't had a good look at the final games yet. It's not Kasimdzhanov's fault; I blame the silly semi-rapid time control.

July 14, 2004

Gimme a K!

Uzbekistani GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov triumphed over odds, Elo, and four world-class opponents to become the new FIDE world champion. Despite eliminating Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Topalov, and Adams he will be a heavy underdog in his unification match against Garry Kasparov, which is (very) tentatively scheduled for January 2005.

Clearly the odds-makers underestimated the K-factor. No, not the number used to calculate rating changes after a game, but the first letter of Kasimdzhanov's name. Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik... 1999 FIDE WCh Alexander Khalifman's name was often transliterated as "Halifman" but he wisely went with the K to clinch the title. Only the letter S has as many classical champs: Steinitz, Smyslov, Spassky. In Russian the Ks have it because Capablanca also starts with K!

The Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match is supposed to be played under the same rules as the Ponomariov match that never happened. 12 games, classical time control. Kasimdzhanov has lived in Germany for a while, but is still getting a hero's welcome in Uzbekistan. That nation is a tidy dictatorship, but it's a very open question whether or not they will be interested in sponsoring a big chess match. Not every despot likes attention as much as Ghaddafi and Ilyumzhinov. [Edit 08:52: Serendipity.]

July 15, 2004

Israeli Wins WCh Anyway

As if just to spite FIDE, the Israeli program Deep Junior just won the 12th World Computer Chess Championship. Israelis were banned from the human WCh, but this one was held in Israel. It was a narrow win over Shredder to which I credit the home (magnetic) field advantage. Junior is programmed by Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky and opening book trainer GM Boris Alterman. Kudos to Amir and my former Herzlia comrades Shay and Boris.

The consistent dominance of very few names shows the primacy of programming, but as Ban himself recently said, book training is critical. From a recent message board post:

"Book work is tremendously important in these tournaments. It sometimes seems as if Boris is in charge, while I and Shay are delegated to the role of technicians."

This is unavoidable in a competition situation in which program tweaks could be disastrous but the book must be tuned for each opponent. With hundreds of millions of positions in a database custom-designed by a strong Grandmaster, the line between human and machine play is blurred beyond recognition. I wonder how far this will go until such databases are either limited or banned altogether to put the focus back on artificial intelligence. The way it is now many games don't really start until move 20 or beyond and many of the decisive games are already evaluated as a winning advantage by the time both programs are out of book!

Of course this is the case in human-human chess as well. But study (and what to study) and memorization are part of the human challenge of chess. Adding a few more gigs of databases is not machine chess. When Deep Boris prepares an opening trap for Fritz, that's not computer chess, it's a hybrid. Junior must play what it is told by the human. (Just using Junior as an example here; all the programs are like this.)

Using opening ballots like checkers seems to be the unavoidable future. The starting position of each game (or even all the games in each round) would be drawn at random from a long list of positions. In a perfect world they would play each position with both colors.

Fishing for Fischer

Alert reader Sean Evans tells us that Bobby Fischer's scrofulous website has just added the news that he has been detained at the Narita airport in Japan. (Be warned that the item, like most of the page, contains profane and disturbing content, especially if you would still like to remain a Fischer fan.)

"The World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has been viciously attacked brutalized seriously injured and very nearly killed when he was illegally detained and arrested by the Japanese immigration authorities at Narita international airport in Tokyo Japan."

Some ranting follows, then a request for political asylum. If it were a request for an asylum he'd be on the right track. Hard to tell what's really going on, but it seems he may have worn out his welcome in Japan. If you'd care to compare Fischer's last tragi-comic jailhouse rant to this one you can read it here. If you're wondering how Fischer ended up where he is, much of what is known is capably recapped in this Atlantic Monthly article.

Update: The Washington Post is the first to get the story. An excerpt:

"The hunt for Bobby Fischer, the unpredictable chess legend, ended this week when he was detained in Japan, where he awaits possible deportation on charges that he attended a 1992 match in Yugoslavia in violation of a U.S. ban.

The Japanese Immigration Bureau detained the 61-year-old Fischer on Tuesday at Narita International Airport in Tokyo at the urging of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had recently stepped up efforts to track the fugitive, U.S. authorities said yesterday.

"He's in custody in Japan, and we are awaiting a determination whether he'll be deported back to the United States to face charges," said Allan Doody, special agent in charge of the immigration agency's Washington field office."

It's surprising that they have decided to hold Fischer on US charges based on his playing Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. Someone bumped this up on the priority chart because he hasn't really been all that hard to find. No one really wanted to prosecute a former American hero as long as he stayed away. Why not go after Roman Polanski?

July 16, 2004

Fischer Mania

Yes, that is a double meaning in the title. It looks like we're going to have to live with Bobby Fischer in the headlines for a while, unless the media storm around his detention in Japan dies down very quickly. He'll either be extradited to the US and prosecuted or given his own talk show or both. According to the treaty between Japan and the USA he MUST be handed over if the US requests it. It seems unlikely the US cancelled his passport just for laughs.

What does this all mean for that dread inanimate object, "chess"? If there's no such thing as bad publicity, it's all good. But it seems obvious that some potential chess parents and sponsors will shy away from chess because of the ill-repute Fischer brings to the game and its players.

Who knows, maybe this could be the best thing for him. Instead of being paraded around by exploiters/enablers like Philippine GM Torre, Fischer might get the treatment and reality check he has needed for years. I'm sure a nice Jewish doctor can be found to administer the medication and shock treatment. By the time Fischer gets out he'll still be younger than Korchnoi is today. He can write a sequel to "My 60 Memorable Games," play in the US Championship, join a local synagogue, and play for the unified title (not as defending champ, sorry).

July 18, 2004

Gata Go to San Diego?

As mentioned here before, former world championship contender and US champion Gata Kamsky recently returned to play chess for the first time since 1999. The newly lucrative US Championship in San Diego in November could be a tempting target for his comeback. The problem is that since the rating qualification uses the February list, when he was inactive, Kamsky would have to qualify.

According to the AF4C calendar, the only qualifier left is the US Open in Florida in August. His only other chance to get in would be to cadge one of the wildcard spots the AF4C honchos dole out each year. These have traditionally gone to up-and-coming junior players like Laura Ross (who qualified directly this year, go girl!) instead of Grandmasters.

In general I'm a letter-of-the-law kinda guy and wouldn't want to see the rules bent even to aid a comeback that could have great significance for US chess (although it doesn't seem like Kamsky is really considering a full-time comeback to the game). Kamsky had the chance to qualify and still does. As much as I would love to see him play in San Diego, giving a prodigal son dispensation would set a bad precedent. Every GM who failed to qualify would be asking for a wildcard next year.

On the other hand, what is the point of a wildcard if you can't use it for special occasions like the best American player since Fischer returning? It would almost certainly gain some PR for the championship. On the third hand, Kamsky might just want a quick paycheck and giving a wildcard when he's not really going to return would be a little embarrassing. Maybe they could ask him what his plans are. Anyway, let's hope we see Kamsky in Fort Lauderdale, where four qualifying slots are up for grabs.

July 19, 2004

Kasparov on Fischer

UPDATE: We have posted Kasparov's full article at ChessBase.com.

Garry Kasparov has been working on the Bobby Fischer section of his Great Predecessors book series. It will cover an amazing 55 Fischer games and 250 pages! Even if he hadn't been up to his eyeballs in Fischerania for the past year everyone would want to know the world #1's thoughts on his legendary predecessor, especially with him back in the news.

Kasparov long ago tired of fielding Fischer questions and he had to answer them all again when Fischer briefly resurfaced in 1992. "I can't play a ghost," was the answer he gave during an Argentine television interview I interpreted in 1998.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an exclusive editorial by Kasparov on Fischer. (On Friday the Journal's European edition ran a piece by Kasparov on Iraq, so it's a back-to-back.) It's a must-read and you have plenty of time to run out to your local newsstand. (Also available at WSJ.com, a pay service.) In the piece Kasparov praises Fischer's OTB achievements and their importance:

"Despite his short stay at the top there is little to debate about the chess of Bobby Fischer. He changed the game in a way that hadn't been seen since the late 19th century. The gap between Mr. Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest ever. He singlehandedly revitalized a game that had been stagnating under the control of the Communists of the Soviet sports hierarchy."

He laments the opportunity lost when the international star left the game in 1972. He also worries that Fischer hitting the headlines may damage the reputation of the game. Toward the conclusion comes this:

"Despite the ugliness of his decline, Bobby Fischer deserves to be remembered for the great things he did for chess and for his immortal games. I would prefer to focus on not letting his personal tragedy become a tragedy for chess."

Can I get an amen?

July 20, 2004

Looking for a Few Good GMs

At a time in which you hear of GMs retiring or threatening to retire because of a lack of income, you would think it would be easy to find contributors of chess content. Not exactly. I spent two years as editor-in-chief and VP of content at KasparovChess Online and started ChessNinja in December, 2002. In that time I've learned that trying to pay Grandmasters can be like herding cats.

No disrespect intended, I'm not exactly the most organized person in the world myself. There is also the matter of fair pay. Many GMs simply don't consider it worth their time to annotate games or write articles when magazines pay so poorly. (The flip side are the pack of Brit GMs who have all but become full-time writers, churning out an endless supply of books, most of them written in less than a month and showing it.)

Where I'm going with this is that I'm looking for IM/GM contributors for the Black Belt newsletter and I thought I'd take the search public. I'd like to do my part for US chess by giving work to American chessplayers if possible, especially since 60% of my subscribers are American. I'm not looking for charity. ChessNinja has been profitable since its inception and it growing steadily thanks to a great community and a phenomenally low cancellation rate. If a Grandmaster spends a couple of hours to nicely annotate a game, adding insightful commentary instead of just variations and symbols, and if the readers enjoy it, he should be fairly compensated.

Moreover, if I get more and happier subscribers because of the GM's contributions, the rewards should be shared, either by more work offered or by profit sharing the money from new subscribers. ChessNinja's business model is predicated on low price, many subscribers. Black Belt is $5/month for four issues, each around 10 pages. If I pay a GM $200 for a game each month I'll need 40 new subscribers to make up the expense. A GM title isn't essential, but I am well aware of the prestige factor it can lend.

Our readers won't be fooled by a big name or a title, it's got to be quality goods. That's another reason for this open call. Who are your favorite annotators, particular American ones who are based in the US? Barring favorites, who would you like to hear from? Personally I'd also like to go after young, active players who can delve into their own games. Nakamura, Shahade, Akobian? Or seasoned veterans? All suggestions welcome.

July 21, 2004

Follow the Money

In a follow-up to yesterday's casting call for titled contributors, I wanted to mention one of the problems of the chess publishing trade and a suggestion that might help many in the community. If a Russian or Israeli or Brazilian Grandmaster wants to contribute material to ChessNinja it can be quite complicated to pay him or her. Stuffing a wad of bills into an envelope isn't wise. Many countries (including Russia) don't accept one of the current standards - and the system I use at Ninja - Paypal. Many will offer bank transfers but this costs both sides money, often over 10% of the fee.

Since I am now a card-carrying member of the Association of Chess Professionals (thanks Almira!), I'll make a suggestion to the leadership. (There isn't really an ACP card, but it beats the FIDE forearm tattoo.) They could establish a payment distribution system by which they act as a sort of bank for their members. They could receive and distribute payments to their members, taking advantage of good faith dealings instead of exorbitant fees. Setting up a merchant account would allow them to accept credit card transactions. Even Paypal would work in the interim.

With the wide membership of the ACP regional treasurers could be established to disburse funds on a regular schedule. If the money is held in a central corporate account you avoid transfer fees. This could be a simple but useful way of improving the lot of many Grandmasters. An additional step could be establishing links with translators so more GMs have access to the global information market.

July 22, 2004

Fischer In Brief

A few more tidbits of information have trickled out about the Fischer case. You are just as capable of I am of going to Google News and searching for the words "Fischer" and "chess" so I'll keep it brief. Reuters reported that Japan has decided to deport Fischer, but he is appealing the decision.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has more from Miyako Watai, the only person who has been speaking to the press on Fischer's behalf. She says Fischer has complained of "rough treatment" from Japanese immigration officials. Apparently the 61-year-old Fischer, still the fighter, struggled with the officials. The other factoid in the AFP report was that the US embassy in Manila issued a notice about revoking Fischer's passport last year, but he wasn't aware of it.

The Jewish weekly Forward has a useful summary of Fischer's anti-Semitism. They even talked to old Fischer acquaintaince and American chess legend Arnold Denker. He postulates that Fischer was picked on as a kid because his mother was Jewish. I'm very skeptical, considering the Jewish schools and surroundings in which Fischer grew up.

Many of the wire reports have contained the usual small errors. The most pervasive so far is saying that Fischer lost his title in 1978 instead of 1975.

July 24, 2004

Urals Gone Wild

Following the North Urals Cup this week? Didn't think so. With powerful events going on in Biel, Dortmund, and Taiyuan right now, a remarkable event in Russia probably escaped your notice. It is also a supertournament, but of the women-only variety. The ten players include many of the top women in the world who aren't from China or named Polgar. Recently crowned FIDE women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova is the top seed.

I've always said that elite "women's chess" is more exciting and instructive for amateurs and club players than most games between the top 10. Not because they are women, but because they are lower-rated and make more mistakes. Mistakes lead to tactics and decisive games, which are what most fans find exciting. You can't tell the difference between the games of 2500-rated women and 2500-rated men, which is why I like to put "women's chess" in quotes. However, there ARE women's titles, which are archaic, patronizing, unnecessary, and should be eliminated. The North Urals Cup website annoyingly lists Stefanova and Chiburdanidze as WGMs, when they also hold the true Grandmaster title.

July 25, 2004

Willkommen Bobby?

Salon.com has an article by Rene Chun on the Fischer Incident. He wrote about Fischer in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago and has a few new facts this time around. (The new article is for paying Salon.com subscribers, or you can get a free "day pass" to read it.) Most of the article rehashes Fischer's chess legacy and recent history. Newer data includes the revelation that Fischer is trying to get a German passport based on his father's nationality.

"The German Foreign Office in Berlin was contacted on Wednesday by the Fischer camp and it has confirmed that Germany's "blood law" stipulates that if documents can be produced that prove that Regina's husband was German (which he was) and that Bobby was born before his parents were divorced (also true), he would be issued a German passport. Bobby's passport, birth certificate and Regina's divorce papers have already been located in various parts of the world and are on the way to Tokyo."

Chun also discusses the speculation, and its new relevance, that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer was not Bobby Fischer's biological father. Plus, even if Fischer gets a German passport it is doubtful that Germany will grant him asylum. But if he has EU citizenship Fischer can apply to the European court and drag things out for much longer than the two-month maximum for Japan's deportation process.

As in his Atlantic article Chun writes well and has some good info, but makes a few rookie mistakes that make you wish he would let someone who knows about chess read his articles first. Calling the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match "the 11th World Chess Championship" is just silly. The "about the writer" blurb at the end of the article, which Chun may or may not be responsible for, says he is "completing the first Fischer biography for Viking." Eh? Apart from a few in other languages, Brady's "Profile of a Prodigy" is still in print and sufficiently famous, one would think.

July 26, 2004

Augury

Some thought-provoking items from a thought-provoking and rather forgotten book.

"What needs emphasis is the plain fact that a chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality."

While it's undeniable that chess isn't going to cure cancer, that's beside the point. Tarrasch's oft-repeated statement about chess (like love, like music, etc.) having the power to make men happy is good enough for me. We don't worry about basketball players or musicians doing "trivial" work. They love what they do and it also entertains millions.

More than a few famous chessplayers have expressed their concerns about chess being a waste of time. Most famous of these would be world champion Emanuel Lasker, who was also accomplished in math and science. Before WWII it was almost unseemly to be considered "only" a chessplayer. It's also true that being great at chess doesn't necessarily mean you would be great at anything else. So maybe that talent isn't being squandered at all.

"There is evidence, moreover, that the capacities for highly abstract spatial imagining, for the rapid mental calculation and projective analysis that are needed in mathematics, music, and chess may be inherited. The large Jewish presence in topflight chess, as in modern mathematics or mathematical physics and in the performance (though not the composition) of music, does not look accidental."

– George Steiner, Fields of Force, Fischer and Spassky at Reykjavik, 1974 (Previously titled The Sporting Scene: White Knights of Reykjavik, 1972)

I'm a committed Darwinist, but the heavy emphasis on education and study (and music) in Jewish culture surely has much to do with these achievements. The jokes about every Jewish mother wanting her little boy to be a doctor or a lawyer exist for a reason.

July 27, 2004

Dumb Chess News #1

There exists a special category of chess appearing in the news. It's whenever there is a mundane crime that makes the news only because someone in the scene was playing chess at the time. This dull gem popped up yesterday on AP, and something like it appears in the news trawl every month or so.

Police: Men Brawl Over a Game of Chess

Slidell, Louisiana. - An argument over a game of chess ended with a fight in which one player rammed the other's head through a plate-glass window, St. Tammany Parish authorities said. Robert Talley, 34, was booked with second-degree battery and later released on bond, Sheriff's department spokesman James Hartman said.

Har har! A fight about a chess game! Hilarious! Needless to say, if they'd been playing checkers, cards, Nintendo, or just about anything else, this wouldn't make the news. That's because these things are "man bites dog" stories, something supposedly curious and abnormal. After all, aren't chessplayers quiet nerds you wouldn't expect violence from?

To casual and non-players, chess is another relaxing board game. Some know that it can be "hard" or that "it's for smart people." But unless you have played tournament chess (or watched your child play tournament chess), the furious mental stress chess can cause is unknown. 100%-information games like chess are different from games with dice or hidden cards. There is no luck or coincidence for your ego to hide behind. The simple fact that you know that while you play and after a loss can twist you into knots.

What is your most dramatic, traumatic, or thrilling experience as a chessplayer? That you have witnessed? I saw Ivanchuk jump off the stage and walk off into the crowd after losing to Ponomariov. But that's Ivanchuk...

July 29, 2004

Fischer In Brief 2

The latest has Japan announcing it would deport Fischer, but saying that Fischer could appeal that ruling. (He has yet to hire a lawyer.) Better hope for his avoiding arriving in the US is promised by his attempt to secure a German passport based on his father's citizenship. The LA Times has the best summary.

I strongly doubt anyone would bother to make any case on the strong possibility that the father on Fischer's birth certificate wasn't his biological father. The US government has been very quiet so far, perhaps waiting to estimate the political consequences of prosecuting Fischer. They basically canceled his passport and took a powder. I'm not even sure which area of government would be in charge of taking further action, but it's likely they'd be happy to let Germany have Fischer at this point.

The LA Times article concludes with this:

Japanese immigration officials do not deny they used force to bring Fischer into custody.

"We tried to put the handcuffs on him but he resisted firmly," said Yogi Koga, spokesman for Narita's Immigration Bureau. "So we needed to take him with about 10 people because he's a rather big guy.

"He may have gotten some light cuts or something. But he hasn't asked for any kind of medical treatment."

July 30, 2004

Stock Exchange Chess

Garry Kasparov, no doubt with a few sour grapes underfoot, coined that term to describe the conservative, play-the-percentages chess style epitomized by the man who took away his world championship title in 2000, Vladimir Kramnik. I consider these to be the basic precepts:

1) Don't lose. That sounds obvious, but it means not risking a loss, or playing what the Russians call "for two results," win or draw only.

2) Save energy to maximize advantages. Don't tire yourself out playing for a win if you get an equal or even a better position with black. Take the draw asap so you are fresher when you have the white pieces. This combines the advantages of energy and the first move.

3) Don't press too hard. If you lose the advantage with white, offer a draw immediately. Again, maximize advantages. Don't risk overpressing just because you have white. Be pragmatic. This is contrary to the old conventional wisdom - still followed by many players - that you need to press hard to win with white even if your opening advantage is gone.

4) Play the position, never the player. Ignore factors like opponent's tournament standing or rating, etc. These can interfere with your best judgment at the board, and it's not pragmatic to waste time and energy considering them.

It doesn't take examples to realize that following these rules leads to lots and lots of draws, many of them short and without interest as chess games. GMs today make very few mistakes, so being good at avoiding mistakes and punishing errors does not guarantee tournament success. UNLESS you are in a match situation like a FIDE KO or a tournament with a format like this year's Dortmund. Then, by never losing, you win!

I should point out that I have tremendous respect for Vladimir Kramnik as a chessplayer. He has created things on the chessboard that will stand forever as brilliancies. In a way, that makes results like his current showing in Dortmund even more disappointing. Here is this massive talent drawing eight consecutive games, four of them against players he out-rates by a wide margin.

It's not just the results, it's the innocuous games themselves. Anand, Kasparov, Shirov, and Morozevich draw too, it's the nature of the high level of the modern game. But you can see from the games that they are usually making every effort to outplay their opponent and will risk to do so instead of being 100% sure that a move cannot backfire. Today nobody plays each game to the death the way Fischer and Larsen did in the 60's. Now it's all "professionalized." Do they think the profession will last long with games like these?

Peter Leko reinvented his game a few years ago, playing risky chess after years of drawishness. Lately he seems to have backslid a bit, but it's hard to tell if he's just being cautious before his match with Kramnik. Still, seeing them play a combined 16 consecutive draws in Dortmund is painful.

Kramnik, thanks to winning some blitz games, is now in the final match against Anand, starting tomorrow. If they draw both games and Kramnik wins in rapid or blitz he could become the first player ever (?) to win first prize in a tournament without winning a single game! Then get ready to hear that old refrain, "you can't criticize the winner." Join me for a beer?

[Update: I should have mentioned some previous comments on draws in chess. Related comments on Dortmund 2003 including some by Bologan.]

August 1, 2004

Kasparov Radio

National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed Garry Kasparov yesterday and the audio stream is available online. They called Kasparov at his annual training camp in Croatia for the five-minute interview. They started with Fischer, but, refreshingly, quickly moved on to talk about Kasparov's Predecessors book series and its other subjects.

Oddly, Petrosian is singled out for discussion by interviewer Scott Simon. (Who starts out the piece by calling Fischer a "genius, and also a bit of a jerk.") Kasparov does a good job of explaining Petrosian's style in layman's terms, comparing him to a baseline tennis player who never rushed the net. His relationship with Botvinnik was also mentioned. Interesting stuff, if not revelatory for those who know the basics about the champions.

Can you be too old at some point to play chess at the level you want to play it?

"Absolutely. It's a quite young game, the average age in of the top 10 now is under 30. ... For many of these kids, I look like a dinosaur who played Petrosian and Spassky and was taught by Mikhail Botvinnik. Many of them probably see me as a historical link between the very old generation and young players. I learned from players that grew up in the 30s and 40s. I played with the great players who dominated chess in the 50s, 60s and 70s and now I'm playing the kids in the 21st century."

August 3, 2004

CheckBack 1

In the tradition of my beloved Slashdot's "Slashback", these sections will update past items and highlight useful reader comments. I'm also changing DD policy to not opening external links in a new browser. You can do that yourself by right-clicking a link and selecting 'Open in New Window'.

Fischer. The latest on Fischer's detention in Japan has him filing for asylum there (odd since he's been going on about how it's such a horrible, USA-Jew-controlled place). Several reports mention how Fischer's anti-Jewish and Holocaust-denying rants may hurt his chances on various legal fronts.

Legal eagle Rob Huntington points out that "Asylum is for refugees who are defined (in the Geneva Convention) as those 'unwilling or unable to return home due to a well-founded fear of persecution on account of their race, creed, political opinion, membership in a particular social group.'"

Fischer apparently doesn't qualify. Serbia-Montenegro has offered to take him, but only if the USA and Japan agree to it. You can read Fischer's side of things (many, many things) here.

SEC. Stock Exchange Chess and the draw problem ("problem"?) has stirred much debate. Yes, draws are a part of chess. But 25-move draws with all the pieces on the board will destroy the game as a sport. If you can win tournaments by only playing hard in one or two games, something has gone very wrong and the rules need to be changed. Is it unfair to blame the players for exploiting the rules in order to do less work? Perhaps. Would you pay admission (or sponsorship) to a chess event (online or in person) knowing that it could end in 30 minutes and 14 moves? (Kasparov-Kramnik, London 2000. Twice.)

August 4, 2004

New Republic, Old News

When an article about chess appears in the mainstream press, fans are usually so excited that they don't really mind that there is nothing new for them in the article. Occasionally an "outsider" author will cast new light on an old subject, but more often it's conventional wisdom with information gleaned from a few chess sites and a few cliches tossed in.

One positive is that most non-chess journalists have both knowledge of the trade and experienced editors. While this rarely results in fact-checking, it usually means they go after primary sources and interviews, something most chess writers never bother to do. Today's article in the once-prestigious American magazine The New Republic is a good example of the breed.

Titled "The Game of Dictators," it rehashes what most of us already know about Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and the debacle around his selection of Libya as the host nation for the 2004 world championship. (A story pursued closely here. Search for "Libya".) The piece includes useful comments from Israeli GM Emil Sutovsky (perhaps contacted by the author because of Emil's contributions here while the scandal was unfolding) and US FIDE delegate Bill Kelleher. I wrote in to correct a few factual errors in the piece and they made the corrections and responded with commendable velocity.

My letter also included several expansions and interpretations of items in the article. Most serious is the author's statement that interest in chess in the West, particularly in the USA, has waned since the end of the cold war. No supporting evidence for this is given, because there isn't any. Chess is more popular than ever in the US. I doubt they will publish it, but my letter is below.

Continue reading "New Republic, Old News" »

August 5, 2004

Reality Check

Former US Champion GM Alex Yermolinsky added some needed perspective to our discussion of the perceived problem of too many short draws at the top level. A shout-out to my Contra Costa roots..

"The absolute majority of 9-round tournaments are Swisses. Who's going to get more wins, a guy who played on Board One throughout the event or somebody who raised to the top at the last moment? Do you want to reward the winners of mismatched games or worse yet the cheaters of pre-arranged encounters? It's no secret how people act when facing a last round situation when a draw gives no prize. Is that the kind of "fighting chess" you want to encourage? Same goes for the 3 point soccer scoring system. People will just dump games, period.

Secondly, the problem with abundance of draws in top-level chess runs deep and cannot be fixed unless you break up the entire system of invitational tournaments. Linares, yawn...

Knockouts are actually quite cool. The only problem I have is that the clock-bangers KNOW that the blitz tie-break is coming and do nothing but kill the play in the slow games. Solution? Forget blitz, and toss a coin. We're all big boys now, we can handle a little bit of bad luck.

Thirdly, I'm not even going to reply to proposals of changing the scoring system. Every issue of Chess Lies magazine has yet another letter from a backwood nutso full of "abolish the stalemate rule" ravings. Enough.

And finally, a sociological comment. Our chess heroes do not exist in outer space void, they live, think and act according to the real world that surrounds them. It's funny how chess fans demand greater altruism from top GM's while being pragmatic, sober and responsible people themselves." - Yermo

Now you can see why I want GM Yermolinsky to annotate for Ninja. Sane, perceptive, Oakland A's fan, cute as a button. What's not to like? Must read: The Road to Chess Improvement

The two most reasonable and practical ideas I know of, neither of them at all new: 1) Minimum move rule. 40-50 moves are not too much to ask at a professional event. (If the players are paying an entry fee they have no obligation to entertain and can do what they like. 2) .4 points for a draw with white, .6 for a draw with black. Both can be done by the organizers without messing with rating formulas. Neither force players to be wildly aggressive or treat draws as the disease instead of a symptom. The second item would eliminate the logjam of ties and the need for trigonometric tiebreak formulas, or at least make them required far less often.

The worry is that it would give black draw odds in a final-round game between two tied players at the top of the standings. I don't think that's necessarily bad. Most top players already try only for a draw with black anyway, so it can't get worse from that perspective.

August 7, 2004

Do Your Bidding

Everyone's favorite science-fiction website, FIDE.com, recently posted Word documents related to the 2005 unification match between Garry Kasparov and new FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov. (Couldn't they find a photo of Kasparov from the last 10 years?) Bidding for sponsorship of the match ends September 15.

It's hard to judge the market interest. The stakes are high, and Kasimdzhanov proved himself by beating Adams, Topalov, Grischuk, and Ivanchuk in Tripoli. But the Unknown Uzbekistani will still be a huge underdog against Kasparov. Last week's suicide bombings in Tashkent don't augur well for local sponsorship, but dictator Karimov is far from predictable. Kasimdzhanov is contractually obligated to play and I doubt Kasparov will hold out for big bucks here when what he really wants is a shot at Kramnik/Leko. The 12-game Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match is very tentatively scheduled for January, 2005.

Drug testing the players isn't mentioned in the match regulations, but paying for it is in the sponsorship bidding form. Was there drug testing in Tripoli? I don't recall hearing anything about it. A section in the bidding document asks whether or not visas will be guaranteed for players' delegations, guests, and journalists. Better late than never!

August 8, 2004

Sand Castles

Remember when the construction of "Chess City" in Kalmykia for the 1998 Elista Olympiad was going to make FIDE president Ilyumzhinov's fiefdom the global capital of chess? Me neither, but that's what he said. Now Ilyumzhinov is saying it again about a different city. On a recent trip to the Arab Emirates city of Dubai, he announced plans for an International Chess City.

"It is Dubai's destiny to become the center of such a magnificent game," His Excellency President Ilyumzhinov added. "Dubai will play host to over 60 million amateur and professional chess followers from around the globe annually. They will have a permanent venue where they can congregate and play 24 hour championships throughout the year, while some other 500 million lovers of the game will have the chance to follow the excitement via interactive electronic screens. Chess lovers from around the world will also have the chance to take part in the first Dubai World Chess Cup."

"All the buildings that will make up the International Chess City," HE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov clarified, "will be shaped like chess pieces and have the traditional black and white colors of the game. The "King" buildings will be the highest," he continued. "Work is now underway to collect all building plans, as well as deciding the location of the project."

This is just another example of how this FIDE administration is making ilfe very difficult for chess humorists everywhere. How can you parody something so goofy? The obvious jokes about inviting Bobby Fischer to take up residence in the rook-shaped house of his teenage dreams have already been made. With so many to choose from I can't decide which of these phrases from the article is the funniest. You decide:

1) "the King and Minister towers will be categorized as seven-star"
2) "some other 500 million lovers of the game will have the chance to follow the excitement via interactive electronic screens"
3) "After much deliberation"

August 9, 2004

Winning Is In

On July 31 in Dortmund, GM Joel Lautier, the president of the Association of Chess Professionals, gave a statement to the press. It announced the creation of the ACP Tour, a grand prix of events culminating in a Masters event toward the end of 2005.

The goal is a very good one and it's not without precedent. There has long been a grand prix of established events in the USA. The main advantages are 1) it co-opts established events instead of conflicting with them and 2) it doesn't need a pile of money to start out. It's a math formula applied to existing events, not new events that need money. Only the concluding Masters event will need sponsorship. Technically, they don't even need an event's participation to count it as an ACP Tour event. But it could quickly become a hot ticket, especially since open events will be included.

That last is no small thing. Bringing in some new blood is critical to put a fire to the feet of the big guns who have grown complacent. Not that I think the top ten are overrated, but they are definitely underworked. (At least at the board. They study like madmen.) I hope the ACP formula is aggressive enough to encourage some of the elite to play in open events the way tennis players on the cusp scramble to play in smaller events to gain enough points to make the ATP final. The hypothetical list of players who would qualify for the final based on the first half of 2004 results is interesting: (in order of points) Anand, Rublevsky, Kramnik, Leko, Mamedyarov, Kasparov, Grischuk and Short.

The crucial thing is to heavily reward winning events and winning games. Years of being rewarded for cautious seconds or thirds has made it possible to win a cautious first. Let's hope appearance fees and rating obsessions are out and winning is in.

August 10, 2004

Cross In Crossville

Why is it so many of my stories about chess federations include the phrase "I'm not making this up"? First, the backstory. As mentioned in these pages here and later here, the United States Chess Federation was planning to move from New Windsor, New York to the town of Crossville, Tennessee. That was before the financial scandal, near bankruptcy, and an almost entirely new USCF board and leadership.

Now the village, sorry, city, of Crossville is threatening to sue the USCF for breach of contract. The Crossville law firm of Looney & Looney (really, I'm not making this up) has sent a very thorough and forceful letter to the USCF. (See below) If the USCF follows through and moves to Crossville it sounds like all will be forgiven. The USCF has asked them for an accounting of Crossville's expenses, perhaps hoping to arrange a settlement. This letter is only the first shot in what could be a protracted negotiation.

Apart from the seriousness of the subject, the timing is also ugly. The USCF was hoping to put on a happy face and roll out good news at their meeting at the US Open this week.

Continue reading "Cross In Crossville" »

August 12, 2004

Breaking the Hoodoo

Don't ask me, that's what they call it over there. That's the jinx or curse or karma that has kept a Scotsman from winning the British Championship since Combe did it in 1946. Even having the tournament in Scotland last year didn't help. This year, however, Jonathan Rowson is one of the top seeds and has a half-point lead with one round to play. He got a nice pairing against a FIDE Master in the final round, albeit with black.

This year saw the British Ch become the British instead of the Commonwealth Ch after the "Indian takeaway" of the last two years ruffled feathers. Top Brits Adams and Short still aren't playing. Maybe if Rowson wins they'll make it English-only next year. (Rowson won Hastings, too.) There was a brief sensation this year as Georgian-born Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant took the lead for a moment. She's a woman and plays for Scotland, but two consecutive losses have put her out of the running. Have there been any female national champions other than Judit Polgar? [Andy McFarland points out that Victoria Cmilyte won the open Lithuanian championship. It was in 2000 and she was only 16 at the time and rated just 2329. Quite a feat, although she tied for first with five other players in a massive Swiss. Interview with her from 2000.]

Being a national champion is prestigious, but few elite players bother because of poor conditions (small prize funds) in most countries. They also worry about losing precious rating points to the non-elite players they will face. Boo-hoo. That changed in the USA when the AF4C took over, although right now the USA doesn't have anyone in the world's top 40 to worry about rating or conflicting invitations to gravy-train European invitationals.

It's a credit to Yasser Seirawan that he played in the US Ch and on the Olympiad teams when he was a WCh Candidate and World Cup player in the 80s, when US Ch conditions were often quite poor. And how about Joel Benjamin's 21-consecutive US Ch appearances! Of course this is what we should hope for, but it's not always what we get.

I can see why Anand doesn't play in the insanely long Indian championship (he'd score +18 or so), but why not the Olympiad team? [Rimfaxe gives a link to an interview that confirms Anand will play in the 2004 Olympiad after an absence of 12 years.] Many of the top Russians don't play in their championship, although this year they are trying to organize a "super-final" that will include Kramnik, Kasparov, Svidler, et al. Do your country's best players play for your country?

August 13, 2004

Let the Games Begin

The Olympics are underway in Athens, Greece. Chess is, as ever, absent, in line with an Olympic commission suggestion to prohibit mind sports a few years ago. Ilyumzhinov scored a coup in 2000 by wrangling an exhibition match at the Sydney Olympics. Anand and Shirov drew two rapid games played at the Olympic Village. Chess has made it to the Olympics in one way, however, thanks to the Cubans. According to one report on the Olympic village in Athens: "The largest banner in the village is the one of Fidel Castro hanging on the Cuban dorm. It covers almost the full side of a building. Castro is playing chess in the poster." There's a tiny pic here. There's also one of Che Guevara at a chessboard. According to a Mexican newspaper the Castro photo is of him playing in the record-setting Havana simultaneous in 2002. The Olympic Committee has told the Cubans to take down the banners.

You'd hope that with chess definitively out of the Games, FIDE (and a few national federations) would dump the idiotic drug-testing they still have written into the rules of official events, although I'm not sure they are actually testing anymore. Were players tested in the Libya KO?

USCF executive director Bill Goichberg commented on the subject for an article in the Pittsburgh Trib today.

"I think maybe the best thing would be if there was a separate mind sports Olympics."

Of course there is exactly such a thing. The 8th Mind Sports Olympiad starts on August 19th in Manchester! The idea sprang from the fertile mind of David Levy, who is still the organizer. Bill may have had something under the actual Olympic banner in mind.

August 14, 2004

Jogo Bonito

Quick, in which country will Kasparov, Anand, and Karpov be playing next week? We're back with another edition of "great events with zero PR." That country is Brazil, but Kasparov won't be playing Anand and Karpov. As part of the Sao Paulo 450th anniversary festivities, a rapid tournament will pair the best of Brazil against Anand and Karpov in a rapid chess double round robin. Milos, Vescovi, Leitao, and token Chilean Morovic round out the field of the four-day "Desafio de Xadrez" event. It begins on August 20 and ends on the 23rd.

The day before that begins there is a giant simul with ten titled players. On the 21st Kasparov will give a 20-board simul at the Morumbi Hilton site, but he's not playing in the rapid. After the simul there is a launch event for the Portuguese edition of the second volume of his Predecessors series. Most of this I learned from this official event page, the only info I could find on it after Garry told me there was a rapid tournament with Anand and Karpov at the same time as his simul. I've got some info from the organizers so we'll be covering this event daily at ChessBase.com.

Another interesting thing is that the organizers seem to be selling spots for the Kasparov simul. Usually these all go to celebrities, government officials, local players and juniors, and other people the organizers want to favor or use for publicity. I'm sure most spots were reserved for those ends, but it's still strange to see an online sign-up request form with a $500 registration fee! A few days later Kasparov will be giving lectures on strategy at a management event. "Part I: Don't get involved in dot-com bubble."

August 15, 2004

Dumb Chess News #2

Two Colorado politicians were ensnared by the dark right-hand corner square mafia this month. That's the title Dutch author and chessplayer Tim Krabbe once bestowed on those who, infernally, set up chess boards turned 90 degrees in the public view. Just about every chess board you see in an advertisement or TV show has a dark square in the right-hand corner. (Absolutely don't go to Tim's website unless you have nothing to do for the next many hours. Diary items 30, 51, and 83 have to do with the DRHCS Mafia.)

This story in a Colorado newspaper is written by a US Master. It tells of how four senatorial candidates played their favorite game against a reporter. Two chose chess and both were photographed with the board turned sideways. (Apparently the reporter didn't notice either.)

Many casual players don't know the en passant rule, or have trouble remembering where to put the king and queen. "Light on right" isn't that hard, but we've all seen this gaffe. I recently saw it in an old episode of The Simpsons, usually a very savvy show with this sort of detail. You'd think with a 50/50 chance they'd do better. Far more annoying is how in just about every movie and TV chess scene "check" is spoken aloud and is clearly meant to be devastating. The Bogo-Indian must be very popular in Hollywood.

August 17, 2004

Book Burning

The ongoing Hydra-Shredder match is the latest example of why it's nonsense to use unregulated opening books in computer chess events. Instead of learning about the relative strengths of the top programs and hardware, we get the computers leaving their books in a position either very advantageous for one side or, just as bad, that one side doesn't understand at all.

The first two games of this match in Abu Dhabi saw Shredder in horrible positions (for a computer) before it even started thinking for itself. Sacrificing a pawn for initiative is suicide against a super-computer, even if you're one yourself. Limiting book usage in comp-human matches is inevitable as storage capacity increases, but you can't expect a machine to reinvent the openings every time out against GM with knowledge.

I can't see a reason to use them at all in comp-comp play. What's the point of using a human book expert to bring your creation to move 22? If they actually started working on opening algorithms and tested them against each other, comps might have an impact on the openings like they have had on the endgame. (I doubt that, but the idea is there.) One counter-argument I have heard is that the games would be boring, with lots of tedious symmetrical play. To that I'll add that the games would also be less "normal" and less useful to humans. Okay, then maybe you aren't playing good chess, figure it out! Give'em a Reuben Fine book and teach them to play the openings. The happy medium is to use balloted openings, sometimes called Nunn matches. Programmers still need to use standard openings to test their creations and so are playing "real" chess.

Other items on computer opening books.

August 19, 2004

Catch 64

The latest Fischer fun is that he might not be able to marry the Japanese woman he hopes will save him from deportation unless he has a valid passport, which he doesn't, which is why he was detained in the first place! His intended bride to be, Miyoko Watai, said she wouldn't mind even if this only a desperate gambit by Fischer. Continuing the plague of chess analogies, she is quoted as follows by the NY Times:

"I could be a sacrifice pawn," Ms. Watai, the 59-year-old acting president of the Japan Chess Association, said in remarks to reporters intended to explain a faxed statement on Tuesday that she and Mr. Fischer are in love and want to marry.

"But in chess there is such a thing as pawn promotion, where a pawn can become a queen," said Ms. Watai, four times the women's chess champion in Japan. Breaking into a smile, the soft-spoken chess strategist vowed: "Bobby-san is my king, and I will become his queen. We want to win the game by joining hands."

Then comes this report, in which Watai denies the rumors that Fischer has a wife and child in the Philippines. Maybe it would help if Fischer buddy and exploiter GM Eugenio Torre would stop petitioning the Philippine government to grant Fischer asylum based on his having a wife and child there...

August 21, 2004

Chess for Blood (Sugar)

The Scotsman newspaper, home of the well-known chess column by John Henderson, has an interesting if typically hyperbolic article on new UK champ Jonathan Rowson. His battles at the board are accompanied by a life-long battle against diabetes. Perhaps a sponsorship from Snickers is on the way? I've been watching the Olympics while in California for my sister's wedding reception. Gold medal winning American swimmer Gary Hall also has diabetes.

August 24, 2004

Higher, Faster... Smarter?

I'm back home in humid New York after a week in the California sun. While staying at Mom's without my beloved TCM, I was left watching the 2004 Olympic Games all night. I really have to agree with the current Olympic ban on mind sports. Having chess, or bridge, or checkers, in the Olympics would be ridiculous.

Perhaps it would be only slightly more ridiculous than shooting, which requires great physical control but is basically tool using. But I'm a purist. "Race walking" is also stupid as an Olympic sport. Getting from point A to point B faster than everyone else is the ideal. Adding artificial limitations (one foot on the ground at all times) is bizarre. If walking can be a sport the sack race could be next. (Any swimming event other than freestyle has similar problems, but at least you can clearly tell what they are doing.)

Not that chess isn't a sport in its own right. Physical conditioning can be important and there can be great physical stress during a game. Notice the "can be." Also, a sport that allows the players to agree to short draws is about as contrary to the Olympic ideal as I can imagine. If chess were put in the Games you would never see it. The IOC wants attractive games to market. Presenting chess on TV requires a tremendous amound of expertise.

Kasparov vs X3D Fritz did okay on ESPN, but heavily hyped man-machine matches are a different breed. In the Olympics you'd be lucky hear about the chess results, and that only in countries that win the medals. We already have the spectacular Chess Olympiad. It would be great if the IOC would sanction the Mind Sports Olympiad in some way shape or form.

August 25, 2004

Speaking of Faster

If I'm not answering the phone it's because my new computer arrived today and I'm neck-deep in getting it ready to take over from my old workhorse desktop. The new one is a custom-made machine built by Monarch PC. It's based on an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor. Combined with two 10,000 rpm hard drives in a RAID array and 2GB of RAM, it might even give Fritz a chance to beat me in blitz. Cough cough.

It's not as if most people really need a new computer these days. I bought my last one, an Athlon 1800+, over two years ago and it is still fine for 90% of common tasks. Surfing the web or opening Word in two seconds instead of four isn't a reason to drop a few grand on a new box. Unfortunately, chess and video work aren't common tasks, but they take up a lot of my time. Both crave CPU speed and the new hard drives will be handy for pushing around giant video files of the sort I'll be working on for ChessBase video materials.

As expected, Fritz and Co have more than doubled their node count on the new machine. That means the same quality in half the time or significantly better quality in the same time. A ChessBase search through three million games for Karpov's collected efforts returns its 3300 results in around two seconds instead of the old twenty. Trivial, but satisfying. I've no interest in matching my computer chessplayers against others online. These results can be worked out with a formula for the most part. More practical is cutting the filtering and encoding of a 30-minute video from 40 minutes to under 10. And did I mention the silent case? No more aircraft carrier behind my desk. Yay.

August 27, 2004

It's Good to Be the King

And with that tip of the hat to Mel Brooks... Oh what the hell, it's Friday. http://www.lovechess.nl/

(WARNING! Only for those not offended by erotic virtual marble statuary.)

# A beautiful 3D board and state-of-the-art realistic models in an elegant setting.
# Freedom of movement, watch the chess pieces make love from every angle you want.
# Diverse and unique animations for all movements varying from very tender to very bizarre.

Now you can get screwed on the board and over the board at the same time. Next up, an S&M version so you can get your ass whipped and kicked simultaneously. FIDE may sue the makers on the grounds that it's THEIR job to do this to chess. Okay, your turn with the bad jokes. Keep it clean, kids. No points for the obvious bishop jabs.

August 28, 2004

Checkback 2

Back with another revisiting of recent posts and your comments.

Regarding this much-commented entry on computer opening books, I got an e-mail from a man who knows, Chrilly Donninger. He came to fame as the programmer of Nimzo and is now running the hardward-based Hydra chess project (formerly Brutus).

His machine just beat the elite program Shredder convincingly in a match. In that great report Donninger makes the points he made in his e-mail: Hydra uses a drastically truncated book, going out on its own after move 10 in most cases. He explains "It is just to set the program on the right track. No special book tricks, play just the main line." That's certainly a good start. A rumor on the computer chess streets said that the well-funded Hydra team in the UAE prepared for the match by meticulously going through the Shredder book looking for weaknesses, a la Kasparov. But looking for weak spots up to move ten wouldn't be useful enough to bother with, although you could certainly find lines your opponent isn't comfortable with. More relevant is that Shredder is a commercially available program, making it relatively easy to prepare for if you want.

Regardless of rumors, Hydra outplayed Shredder even when it wasn't winning out of the opening as in the first few games. It is safe to postulate that Hydra, running on as many cards as it did in Abu Dhabi, is the strongest chess machine extant. It would be interesting to let it play a few hundred games to see if it can even lose to a PC program, and I assume the Hydra team has done that and more.

I'm up to my eyeballs in chess programmers these days. Friend and former KasparovChess Online colleague Shay Bushinsky is in town on vacation with his family. Shay, together with Amir Ban, is half of the Israeli programming team behind the current computer world champion Junior. He's enthusiastic about the next version of Junior, number nine, number nine, number nine...

August 29, 2004

OTB vs Online

What does the increasing popularity of online chess mean for OTB (over-the-board) chess? This one is discussed often, but there's no way to prove anything. Between playing against their PCs and online chess, many players first encounter serious chess thanks to the computer, and many then go on to seek out OTB chess. By "serious" I mean tournaments, ratings, openings, all those things a majority of the world's oft-cited 400 million chessplayers don't know anything about. For most of those millions chess is just another board game, if perhaps one they understand has a serious side.

Anyone out there go from online chess to OTB chess instead of the other way around? I know from various posts on the Ninja message boards that this is not unusual, especially among the youth crowd. Most who go from offline to online play feel they are different games. If you started online, what encouraged you to play your first OTB tournament? Can exclusively online play create a strong player? Most find it hard to concentrate enough playing online (or against a program) to see the improvement you get OTB, but I'm speaking as an old fogey of 35. Most online players only play blitz, and that's not going to create a Master. Why do you/don't you play OTB/online?

September 1, 2004

The Good Old Days

With all the Bobby Fischer blather coming out of Japan these days over his ridiculous predicament, let's not miss an important anniversary. Today in 1972 Fischer won the world title from Boris Spassky. The final game started on August 31, but Spassky phoned in his resignation on September 1.

September 2, 2004

Elder Gods of Olympus

The US Men's Olympiad team has been announced. There are new faces on the team, although they are only new for the US. Onischuk is the highest-rated player and is also the youngest, turning 29 tomorrow. Novikov and Goldin are making their Olympiad debuts for the US, although both are 40-year-old veterans. Gulko, Kaidanov, and Shabalov round out the Soviet, I mean American, squad. According to John Donaldson's Mechanic's newsletter, even the USA team captain will be a Soviet veteran; Boris Postovsky led many Soviet teams in his long career and will now do the same for the US. (It's possible he may have even led a few of his current charges back when they were juniors.)

Two years ago it was already trite to suggest that the US team was getting too long in the tooth to compete under the rigors of the faster time controls and fewer off days of the Olympiad. The US won silver with a veteran team in 1998, but has shown more wear and tear in the last two events. From top to bottom the US team is one of the highest rated in the field. You still have to wonder why top young American stars Nakamura and Akobian aren't on the squad.

Not literally; we KNOW why. The selection formula goes back to April, 2003, so their strong performances in recent months don't have much impact. They focus on the US rating. Using the latest FIDE list would put Nakamura on the team as #6 since Seirawan has largely retired and Kamsky hasn't been active. Young American players have very few chances to gain international experience. While the "ratings only" system avoids controversy (witness the brouhaha over the women's team), it seems a shame. John Henderson suggests that the team's plane take a detour on the way to Calvia and play in the world senior championship!

September 4, 2004

Star Chess

Sometimes it seems every American football player is a chess fan. Hall of Famer Barry Sanders is appearing at a Kansas club. Top star Priest Holmes has been on TV in his home's "chess room" complete with suits of armor for decorations. Then we have boxers like the Klitschkos, tennis players like Boris Becker, and many more. Such crossover appeal is an effective, if somewhat cheesy and desperate, way to promote chess, particularly in the USA where the game has a reputation for geekiness. List a few other stars into chess, with links if possible.

September 6, 2004

Column Like You See'em

Let's look in on the state of the regular chess column. If you're new here, this is one of my regular cheerleader sections to find more and to get more chess out there. Daily doesn't exist (even here, ahem) since George Koltanowski passed in 2000 after over 19,000 columns starting in 1948.

One of the best out there is GM Lubomir Kavalek's in the Washington Post. The UK Telegraph Chess Club section is also good. I believe both require free registration. The Scotsman column by John Henderson has been made hard to find. Go here to the Games section and click Chess on the right. His name isn't on it for some reason, but he assures me it's still him.

Few newspaper columns contribute much in the way of new news if you are already reading sites like ChessBase and TWIC (the aforementioned are exceptions), but they usually have an analyzed game. Does your local paper have a chess column? If not, write the editors online AND with a letter. Make suggestions, talk about kids and the game, be personal. Get other chess friends to do the same. I'll send'em a column for free if they'll run it.

Post links to other good columns, or mention offline ones you like. There's a list here, but I'd rather hear the ones you like and why. Too many just phone it in.

September 7, 2004

Kamsky in US Ch

Big exclusive. Former US champion and FIDE world championship challenger Gata Kamsky will play in the 2004 US Championahip in San Diego on Nov. 24. He has been awarded one of the two wildcard spots by the AF4C, necessary if he was to play because his long inactivity left him ineligible by rating and he declined to play in any of the many qualifiers.

UPDATE 12:09 - The AF4C now has a press release announcing his participation. Full text below.

Despite my earlier waffling on the matter, I agree with the choice to break with the AF4C tradition of giving the spots to juniors (the other wildcard almost surely will go that way). I'm still concerned about giving a player a spot after he passed up a chance to play in a qualifier. It's a precedent that the organizers may regret next year when every GM who didn't make it will plead his case. Giving wildcards to GMs also contradicts the commendable policy of emphasizing qualification over free tickets by rating. It's a worthy prize, players should be willing to fight for it.

Kamsky is an exception for several reasons, mostly due to his long inactivity and recent return to the game. Past glories alone shouldn't cut the mustard. (Walter Browne played in many qualifiers and didn't make it from what I can tell.) I've heard that Kamsky offered his services to the US Olympiad team and was turned down.

Speaking of spots, another good AF4C idea is about to see the light. An online tournament of state champions starting in a few weeks will decide an entry spot to the US Championship. It's blitz and it's online, but it's an exciting idea that could add a lot of needed pizzazz to state championships, which get little to no publicity. There wasn't much time for such PR this time, but next year should be different.

Continue reading "Kamsky in US Ch" »

September 8, 2004

Red Hot Poker

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the popularity boom poker is enjoying.

"Poker is on fire, its popularity fanned by a combination of television, technology and, for some, the allure of big money.

The game Mark Twain once complained was "unpardonably neglected" in the United States is now played by hundreds of thousands of people online 24 hours a day and by celebrities on television."

Ah, what the elements of chance and money can do for a game. Sure, poker has a fairly high skill quotient and the longer a game goes the better chance the more skilled players will win. But chess it ain't. An amateur with good nerves and a few months of study can beat the world's best if he has a lucky streak. The last few poker championships were won by amateurs. With so many amateurs flooding the game, their sheer numbers overwhelm the pros for the top prizes. Still, the pros benefit overall from all the "dead money" coming into the game since they win more on the percentages over time.

Not much of a model for chess to imitate. The bluffing and odds-beating that make poker fun for amateurs, even beginners, to gamble on don't exist in chess. Some people just like to gamble, period. Bluffing, losing money, and beating odds all translate directly to television viewers, even if they barely understand the rules. And without the gambling element you won't see the massive promotion poker is getting from casinos.

Many chess players are heavily into card games, including poker. Six-time US champion Walter Browne is a veteran card shark. There are countless anecdotes about Lasker and other pre-WWII champions' addiction to whist, changing the names and the game to bridge post-war.

September 9, 2004

ICC Hacked

A trio has published a fascinating paper on how they hacked the Internet Chess Club. They produced a client with which they could easily cheat by controlling the amount of time they used per move, even setting it to zero. They also hacked the communications stream and could eavesdrop on all communications between any user and the ICC server, including credit card info, or even take control of the system to solicit information from an unsuspecting user. Read the abstract of their paper below.

They say they won't release their code and they offer suggestions to fix the problems. They also made their info available to the ICC before they published last week. I just chatted with George MacDonald, the general manager of the ICC, and they are still working on the system. Today they updated their help file to include a security disclaimer (see below).

As for it being easy, as the paper's authors imply, that's from a mathematical standpoint not a practical one. It's not as if anyone with a few hours free time would be able to whip up a cheat client. The danger would be an expert distributing such a thing.

Continue reading "ICC Hacked" »

September 11, 2004

Let's Go, Toto

Safely ensconced as I am in a blue state, it would take more than Swedish meatballs to get me to Kansas. But I like chess and I love a parade. Next weekend Susan Polgar and Anatoly Karpov will play an unusual three-format match in the tiny town of Linsborg, Kansas, which is becoming something of a chess Mecca these days. They'll play two games each of rapid chess, blitz, and shuffle chess (aka Fischerandom, aka Chess960, some of my thoughts on it here). The official press release (below) has enough hyperbole for six DD items. NPR has a truncated audio file of the note they did with the event's organizer, Mikhail Korenman. The Kansas City Star has a story on it, but it's a long registration page required, so they clearly don't want anyone to read it.

It's a shame there isn't any classical chess involved. After their last training session, Kasparov told me that Polgar is likely to be playing at a 2600 level come the Olympiad, where she'll lead the US women's team. It will be something if she can reach that level without playing a public game of serious chess before Calvia. That's a seven year break!

Anyone else remember an old Chess Life that had Karpov (and Polgar?) on the cover dressed up as a king and queen? Post or send me a scan if you've got it.

Continue reading "Let's Go, Toto" »

September 13, 2004

Kasparov Online

Garry Kasparov is keeping up his attacks on the government of Vladimir Putin. Since January he has done so as the Chairman of the Committee 2008: Free Choice, a Russian pro-democracy coalition that is dedicated to stopping Putin from keeping power in 2008. Last week Kasparov had another strong editorial in the Wall Street Journal, bashing Putin's government on its reaction to the Beslan horror and on Chechnya. You might wonder if Kasparov won't become the second world champion to have his passport revoked this year...

This week, today actually, Kasparov in in Hamburg speaking to the Baltic Development Forum on the prospects for relations between Russia and Europe. Even if the subject matter doesn't interest you, that there will be an online video of the event might. The organizers say there will be streaming video of Kasparov's 15-minute address this evening at their website. You probably have to go to the "Videofeatures" link.

Update: Still no sign of a video link, but we've posted the entire address at ChessBase.com with pics. Video of it should be on a future ChessBase Magazine.

Chain Reaction

Vladimir Putin's latest power grab will do away with the direct election of local governors and presidents in the far-flung Russian republics. Although not mentioned in any of the reports I can find, that should include Kalmykia, where FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov rules. The Kremlin's move means Ilyumzhinov will, come next election, be serving at the whim of Moscow. Putin backed Ilyumzhinov's opponent last time around (third item). Next time Putin will essentially pick the candidates, if I understand the early descriptions of the changes.

Ilyumzhinov has proven a canny operator and a survivor, and the next elections there are far off. He might even steal enough money to stay in charge of FIDE after losing in Kalmykia. Still, it's fun to fantasize about restoring the game under a beneficent administration. My big three: 1) A return to classical chess. 2) A more dynamic rating system. 3) A rigorous world championship system.

Notifaction

I've added an email notification list sign-up on the left. Submit your address and receive an email + excerpt of each new Daily Dirt item. You'll receive a one-click address verification e-mail and that's it. When I tested it, SpamAssassin flagged the verification email, so check your junk box if you don't see the verification message in a few minutes. I won't sell your address to porn spammers, even if you ask.

Please click the Add button and the verification e-mail link ONCE or you could be added multiple times. I'll cull the doubles, but try to help out.

UPDATE: I'll put the usual XML link up on the left later, but if you are into the wide and wonderful world of RSS news feeds, there IS one for the Daily Dirt. http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/index.rdf. I recommend FeedDemon or if you want browser-based RSS, Bloglines.com. If you've never heard of RSS it basically culls news headlines from thousands of sites and blogs in channels you select. Very handy.

September 14, 2004

Anand Speaks

Viswanathan Anand is always in the news in India, not that he hasn't deserved it with his dominance of the past year and a half at the board. He's about to embark on a tour of India to promote chess. Vishy has also been in the papers in the past week talking about the chances of the Olympiad team he will lead for the first time in a decade and corporate sponsorship of chess in India. It's nice to see the easy-going Anand taking an active role, and playing for the national team is a huge part of that. Even with the strongest board one (Kasparov isn't playing, as was revealed here) and Sasikiran on board two, Anand doesn't sound too optimistic, at least not about the men's team.

"We will be playing some top chess playing countries like Russia, Israel, Ukraine, USA and Armenia among others and it will be a tough task for us to win a medal as all the members of the team will have to do well consistently," Anand told reporters here.

"Compared to the men's team, probably the women's team has a very good chance of winning a medal as they not only have a very good team but their opponents too are not as formidable as in the men's field," he added.

Touching on various topics, the champion said that his next important assignments are to see that his team does well at the Olympiad and to win the Chess Oscar.

On his recent performances this year, Anand said, "this year has been very good for me and I hope it will continue for some time. I think I did pretty well to win the Corus Grandmasters tournament in Wijk Aan Zee and then the Dortmund Chess and Mainz Chess in Germany which had chess greats like Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik in the fray."

Perhaps a misquote, as Kasparov didn't play in any of those events. But they did meet in the Armenia vs the World match in Moscow this year, a 26-move draw. (My report here.)

September 15, 2004

Accoona Tamatas

The press conference announcing the event was so long ago you might not remember it. (And there was so much vodka after the press conference I wouldn't remember it myself without the photos.) The match between Almira Skripchenko and Irina Krush has finally arrived.

The match is two rapid games tomorrow (not four over two days as originally planned), starting at 2pm NY time. The control is 25'+10" and tiebreak will be a pair of 5'+10" blitz games. Then there's a sudden-death "armageddon" game of six minutes for white versus five minutes for black (no increment), with a draw being a win for black. The name of the sponsor has also changed. It's now Accoona, a new technology company. The money behind the curtain is the same (well, similar) as the sponsor of the X3D Kasparov matches I worked on.

I'll be at the Russian Samovar sitting near the board doing live commentary at Playchess.com. Download and install the client, log in and go to the Broadcast room to see the show. We'll also be filming for a future issue of ChessBase Magazine (CD-ROM) and some clips will be available on the web at ChessBase.com and the Accoona site. Contrary to what we were first told, the match WILL be open to the public, within reason. So if you're in midtown Manhattan Thursday afternoon, stop by. There will be live expert commentary downstairs.

I think they have more space than they thought because they scheduled the match on Rosh Hashanah. Oops. I'll bring the apples if you bring the honey. Susan Grumer writes in to point out that the Kramnik-Leko match starts on Yom Kippur, a major blunder. Quick, someone tell Fischer that maybe Jews really don't run the chess world.

September 17, 2004

Accoona Caption Contest

Been a bit busy with the aftermath of the Krush-Skripchenko match and the beforemath of Kasparov's arrival in NY. Meanwhile, the remnants of some hurricane or other has arrived here in Brooklyn and it's getting biblical out my window. Okay, it's not exactly what happened in Florida or Jamaica, but I'm still not going outside.

Some Dirt from in and around the Accoona match. As mentioned below, today there is an event with Susan Polgar facing Anatoly Karpov in Kansas. It was originally announced they would play blitz, rapid, and advanced chess (computer assisted). The advanced chess was later changed to shuffle chess (aka Fischerandom). From the press release: "Due to the current situation of Bobby Fischer, both World Champions agreed to change the format to include 2 Fischer random chess games instead. This is to show support and respect to their fellow World Champion Bobby Fischer for what he has accomplished over the chess board."

The word is that Karpov freaked out when he heard it was advanced chess, at which the veteran is predictably horrible. He was massacred in that format by ChessBase whiz Anand 5-1 in Leon in 1999. So it was hastily changed to Fischerandom. To show respect to Fischer they could have just had some sushi. Or played to 10 wins, draws not counting! I don't know how much Polgar has been training in private, but Karpov has been playing the worst chess of his life in the past year.

Of the four or five noise interruptions during the Krush-Skripchenko match, two were caused by Accoona employees. One with a cell phone ringing three meters from the board, another yelling across the room downstairs. But the worst was a restaurant worker, as mentioned in my onsite photo report on the match. The video of Irina waving at arbiter John Fernandez will be priceless.

Speaking of, as I pointed out to my chess-newbie friend Ann LePore, a video artist who was there to film the match for ChessBase Magazine, no matter what countries the players represent, the post-mortem is always in Russian. It was. See below for photos and a caption contest.

Continue reading "Accoona Caption Contest" »

September 19, 2004

It's a Date

Either someone in FIDE actually has a sense of humor, or it's an amusing coincidence that they extended the deadline for bids on the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match to September 25, the day that the Kramnik-Leko world championship match starts in Brissago, Switzerland. Extended deadlines are rarely good news.

I heard about the HB Global Chess Challenge a week or so ago, but didn't want to rain on Maurice Ashley's press conference. It's quite an amazing sum: a $500,000 open tournament, doubling the prize fund of the US Championship, which had claims on being the richest annual tournament in the world. When I told Kasparov about it he responded that maybe he should play in that if the Kasimdzhanov match doesn't get off the ground!

Update: As several people have pointed out, perhaps an equally amazing sum is the entry fee: $350!

September 20, 2004

Kramnik-Leko WCh

I suppose it's time to start talking about the Kramnik-Leko classical world championship match that starts on September 25. And why not? Nobody else is talking about it. With a roomful of chessplayers and fans at the Accoona match, nobody mentioned it once. It was all about the Olympiad. The two most consistently conservative elite players in a 14-game match. Yawn. Not that the 2000 Kasparov-Kramnik match wasn't a draw-fest. I was there for the duration. But the ongoing shock of seeing the heavily favored Kasparov down and increasingly desperate added tension and drama.

Anand said it best when he called Kramnik-Leko a battle of immovable object versus immovable object. Kasparov favors Kramnik, and thinks there will be more action than many predict. ("At least three or four decisive games. Two wins each if it's a draw. If Leko wins it will be plus two minus one.") What happens if both players just wait for mistakes? In K-K 2000 both decisive games (wins by Kramnik) were directly out of the opening. As well-prepared as Leko and Kramnik are, and as cautious as they tend to be, this could be a drag.

But let's be optimistic. Kramnik and Leko have played some very exciting games in the past. Leko has the game and the mental toughness to be able to beat Kramnik, who has the edge in experience and, I would say, in sheer talent and depth. If I were betting even money I'd go with Kramnik. But since you can get good odds on Leko, that's the smart bet. Leko even has a career plus against Vlady in classical chess.

Go vote on the winner in our message board poll and predict the score.

September 21, 2004

Poker in the Back

Poker bots? An interesting article on using computers to play online poker. It serves as a follow-up to our interesting discussion of poker a few weeks ago. A comparison to chess is again made. Slashdot has a long discussion thread on the story with many insightful posts.

"The strategy of [poker] is difficult and to sit down and write a program that can beat a table of experienced human players is no trivial task," he said.

While bots have been used to play the optimal strategy in other online card games, like blackjack, poker is a different animal. The biggest obstacles lie in the amount of information unavailable to the player and the need for the program to be able to employ a variety of strategies at different times, such as bluffing and laying traps for opponents, explained Billings, a doctoral student and master poker player.

"With chess – I don’t want to trivialize it – but it’s just a matter of calculation," he said. “With poker, you really need to write a program that can think about the game and reason.”

The solution, in the case of the Vex Bot, was adding a layer of artificial intelligence over its ability to calculate probabilities.

Of course the implications of computer cheating for a game based on gambling are severe. Online chessplayers obsess about computer cheating, but that's about ego, rating points, and the occasional small prize. With the typical love of Big Round Numbers, they describe poker as a "billion dollar industry." I'm not sure gamblers would even care. These are people who pour money into slot machines, roulette, and other games in which they have only the casino's word that they have an honest chance of winning. Online poker is the same. You trust that it's not rigged or cheatable.

September 22, 2004

Kasparov A's for Q's

It's a pretty slow week as things ramp up for the Kramnik-Leko match that starts on Saturday. Meanwhile Garry Kasparov in here in NY for meetings with publishers, among other things. In a few hours I'll post a long article at ChessBase.com about Kasparov's recent stay in Pamplona, Spain. There are also some interesting comments about the third volume of his My Great Predecessors book series. I'll see him again before he leaves this weekend, and if you have some good questions that haven't been answered many times already, post'em if ya got'em.

September 24, 2004

Watch Swiss

The tiny town of Brissago, Switzerland will be the center of the chess world for the next three weeks. It is already drawing the usual suspects of the chess world in like a black hole. Let's hope it doesn't suck like one. Oh yes, I forgot, I'm trying to be positive. It's going to be great. I mean, GREAT!

My partner in crime at ChessBase.com, Frederic Friedel, just arrived in Brissago and will be filing reports and photos. I'll be spectating and commenting on some of the games at Playchess.com and we can expect a host of GMs to be there too. They are really playing up the betting angle at the official match website. So we have smoking and gambling, all we need is some sex and booze and we'll really have a match!

Let's look back four years to the 2000 world championship match, where Kramnik took the title from Kasparov. Below is the transcript of the post-match press conference. Unfortunately, most of the questions were for the dethroned Kasparov, who hardly needs an invitation to talk, so we didn't hear much from the quiet new champion. It seemed odd to many of us in attendance (including Kasparov) that Kramnik didn't say anything to honor his victim's 15 years on top. But really he just didn't say much.

Continue reading "Watch Swiss" »

September 25, 2004

Better than ChessBase

I've found something much better than ChessBase or Playchess.com for watching live games. Even the new ChessBase 9 coming out next week doesn't come close. It's watching games live with Garry Kasparov in the room making comments. Really, ChessBase needs to incorporate this feature. Watching game one of Kramnik-Leko at Playchess.com with Garry in the room is a great user experience. He's reasonably user friendly, his graphics aren't bad for 41, and his endgame evaluations are much better than Fritz's.

We had the game on in the background as Garry packed to leave New York for Turkey, where he'll play in the Euro Team Championship next week. Every once in a while he'd wander by the screen, work through a few lines in his head, render a verdict, and go back to packing. For the record, Kasparov pronounced Leko "dead meat" when he played 44.Qf4 instead of taking on g6. (Kramnik won with black, analysis and report coming at ChessBase.com.)

September 26, 2004

You Asked, He Answered

It was pretty informal, but I managed to get a few answers to your questions for Garry Kasparov. He dodged a few of the more complicated ones, but at least he was funny about it. Thanks for all your questions.

He considers Kramnik the favorite against Leko (game one was in its early stages at this point).

About Kramnik getting a rematch if he loses to Leko, Kasparov said, "It's none of my business. Probably Kramnik will think he should!"

Re if he would play in a qualifier if he loses to Kasimdzhanov or Kramnik/Leko, "That's too many "ifs" for FIDE."

Re if there will be rule changes in chess in the future. "I wouldn't rule it out. Many people are thinking about the openings." [Meaning things like balloted openings.]

Re getting his My Story videos on DVD, or continuing them: "There are no plans, but these ChessBase [Fritz Trainer] DVDs are a better format anyway. No interviewer, just speaking directly to the camera." For those who don't know, Kasparov is making a series of these with many of them already recorded. I think the first to be released is on the Najdorf.

Re who will be world champion in 2010. "A better question is how many champions will there be. And who will run such an event in 2010?"

Re Kamsky comeback: "He may fall short of Fischer's comeback! Who knows, it's up to him."

Re the last book he read: "Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, better, or more believable, than Da Vinci Code. And Jefferson's Second Revolution." Kasparov is a serious American history buff, btw.

Re are GMs over-reliant on computers these days: "Yes, but there's really no choice."

Re has his style of play changed in the last few years. "It evolves, but I'm not playing like Karpov yet!"

Re is there any particular child prodigy he is watching: "Not really watching, but probably Carlsen is the most promising."

Re playing Hydra. He'd heard of it, and said he is always willing to play a computer opponent. "To continue the experiment" is how he usually puts it.

Re 2004 Olympiad predictions (he's not playing): "Russia of course, India could surprise. Anand on board one changes everything, it's huge. The young Ukrainian team."

I asked him what he thought of Nakamura not being on the US men's team and he initially didn't want to comment. "They got us (the Kasparov Chess Foundation) to work with the women's team only!" Eventually he settled for "I'll just say it's strange to see a US team without Nakamura."

Re the current hierarchy: "The results speak for themselves. Obviously Anand has been in great form." He then went on to point out the irony of people complaining about his benefiting from the static FIDE rating system when he organized the development and the propagation of the more advanced and much more dynamic Thompson rating system (aka Professional list) a decade ago. Just two years ago he started the now-defunct World Chess Rating with the hopes of reforming the system.

Note the September 2004 Professional list below. It is much more dynamic, but still doesn't punish inactivity, so GK is still #1. That last number is an index of volatility. The lower the number, the more stable your rating.

1 Kasparov,Garry 13.04.1963 RUS 2764 137
2 Morozevich,Alexander 18.07.1977 RUS 2734 163
3 Anand,Viswanathan 11.12.1969 IND 2725 142
4 Topalov,Veselin 15.03.1975 BUL 2714 153
5 Kramnik,Vladimir 25.06.1975 RUS 2692 120
6 Polgar,Judit 23.07.1976 HUN 2690 161
7 Adams,Michael 17.11.1971 ENG 2687 143
8 Leko,Peter 08.09.1979 HUN 2680 130
9 Svidler,Peter 17.06.1976 RUS 2677 128
10 Shirov,Alexei 04.07.1972 ESP 2669 150

He blew off the New Chronology stuff and said he didn't want to discuss his political aspirations.

September 27, 2004

Turkey Leg

Slipping in one more Kasparov item before the Kramnik-Leko match starts up again. GK just arrived in Turkey, where he will be playing in the Euro Club Championship starting next week. There is a brief item on his presence in a Turkish paper online.

When I talked to Kasparov today he said he was "in the middle of nowhere" 100 kilometers from the event site of Cesme. The Turks run these events on a for-profit basis, something that has brought them into conflict with the ACP on occasion. Kasparov called the energetic organizer and federation chief Ali Nihat Yazici "sort of a Turkish Bill Goichberg."

Kasparov arrived early to finally focus on chess and train for a few days after so much running around in the past few months. Last year in this event he started very strongly, winning four games in a row, several of them excellent, before blundering into the ugliest loss of his career against Huzman. That's what a combination of age and lack of practice will do to you. Kasparov hasn't played since June.

September 29, 2004

Tennis, Anyone?

There's a fluffy little piece on Anand's current chess promotion tour in India. Most mainstream chess news coverage in English comes from India or the Philippines. Spanish and Latin American papers are also good. As for other languages, a Google news search in German turns up 76 hits for "Kramnik" right now and only 24 in English. That despite there being over six times as many English sources, although many of them are small, local US newspapers. US and UK papers feel that chess needs to be ghettoized with the classified adds or the comics instead of included in the sports pages. It's one thing (and a good thing) for the Olympics to rule us out again, but being dumped in with the crossword is humiliating.

Where was I? Oh yes, tennis. Anand joked about how his mother originally put him into a tennis program.

Explaining to them what aptitude means, Anand, who is the Brand Ambassador of NIIT, said, "it is that quality through which one naturally excels in his chosen field. I guess I didn't have any aptitude for tennis as it meant that I had to get up early in the morning, go to the courts and run five rounds first," Anand said."

No doubt. I'm much more likely to be going to bed at 5am than getting up. Actually, I'm even more likely to be playing blitz online. We don't know what tennis lost by Anand's defection; certainly it was a coup for chess. Reminding me of the immortal line about Reuben Fine's retirement from the game: "a loss for chess, at best a draw for psychology".

September 30, 2004

Chess Imitates Life

Okay, I know I was supposed to be taking a break from Kasparov items, but this is a good one. The NY Post reveals that Penguin books has won the bidding war for Garry Kasparov's next book project. The fee? How about half a million dollars! First off, it won't have any chess notation in it. It's called "How Life Imitates Chess" and is about, well, life's lessons from chess.

After three days of incremental bidding, Emily Loose at Penguin agreed to pay close to $500,000 for "How Life Imitates Chess," by champion Garry Kasparov. The Azerbaijan-born Kasparov has been the No. 1 ranked chess player in the world since 1984, according to the 31-page proposal that was sent to nine publishers.

"Before I knew much about life, I understood chess," it begins — and then goes on to explain how advantage, initiative, opinion, threat and hope (among other ideas) influence both life and game.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Crown and Simon & Schuster were the underbidders for the philosophical self-help tome. Kasparov's co-author, is Mark Reiter, who is also acting as agent. Reiter performed the same two services for Twyla Tharp's best-selling "The Creative Habit" last year.

I've perused the proposal and sample chapter, but I'm not the best person to comment. I'm sure there are many insights to be gleaned from a life of top-level chess, but this sort of forced authorial introspection is weird coming from someone you know. It's not really a self-help book, but it's not a memoir either. On the other hand, maybe he could write one on getting in touch with your inner child!

Okay, cheapo there. If this is as big a hit as they must expect considering the price tag, it could push Kasparov fully into the American mainstream. His regular Wall Stree Journal articles keep him visible, but his Q-rating still isn't that great, at least not for someone who was in a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial a few years ago. And if it's good enough for Twyla Tharp...

October 3, 2004

The Bitter End

Been down with a nasty cold this weekend. Yes, yes, how hard could it be to type out a few entries, especially with so much going on in the chess world this week. Leko struck back to equalize his classical world championship match against Kramnik. Leko missed a drawing continuation in game one (as documented in Black Belt #94).

Adjournments are untenable in this computer age, but in 50 years when players compare the endgames of 20th century with those of today, they'll think we forgot how to play. The top players may know as much or more today, but faster time controls and no adjournments mean lower quality.

October 4, 2004

Turkey Website

The Euro Club Cup started yesterday and many of the world's top 20-30 players are there. Kasparov is leading the Ekaterinsk team, but he didn't play in the first round in the typical lopsided matches of superpowers versus teams with barely a GM. His team paid the price as his board-one replacement lost. We'll be covering the event at ChessBase.com.

The official website looks like it was designed by Mrs. Butterbee's third-grade class. We seem to go from super-heavy Flash and animation-crazed chess event sites to amateurish and confusing ones. Everybody wants to build a site from scratch, fill it full of cruddy images and applets, and host it somewhere ill-equipped to serve such heavy stuff. They get a friend or someone else with connections to make it, and it's usually junk.

October 6, 2004

Kramnik-Leko at the Half

After seven of fourteen games, the Kramnik-Leko classical world championship match in Brissago, Switzerland is tied up 3.5-3.5. Kramnik will have four whites in the second half, although his three so far have been unimpressive. Five of the seven games have been draws, four of them very short. That's no surprise and doesn't compare unfavorably to other recent matches. Kasparov-Kramnik saw only two decisive games of 15. Kasparov-Anand 95 started with eight draws and ended with 13/18 games drawn. With incredible preparation and risk-averse attitudes prevailing it's only going to get worse, at least until Morozevich gets a title shot.

Game 6 was a good illustration of today's rules. They agreed to a draw on move 20 with all the pieces and seven pawns each on the board. If there was any advantage, Leko had it with black. As I posited in my "stock exchange chess" polemic a few months ago, reaching equality with black is now a cue to offer a draw, unless you can play for a win without any risk of losing. Matches make things worse because match strategy (needing a rest, testing an opening) takes precedence. With private sponsorship I don't know why they don't insist on move minimums. If you have paying spectators you shouldn't have to risk a sham like the 11 and 14-move draws of K-K 2000. Draws are part of the game, short ones with all the pieces on the board shouldn't be.

October 7, 2004

Chess Guts

The "management, leadership, and career advice for executives" magazine Fast Company has an article by Garry Kasparov. He's been writing on politics since the early 90's, although it's only in the past year or two that he has branched out from Russia-centric items. Now Kasparov is hitting the lucrative business circuit for lectures on strategic thinking and decision-making. (Not to mention life-coach-style instruction in an upcoming book.) No matter how these new endeavors go it's a shame he couldn't give another four or five years purely to playing chess. (Not counting writing about it.) The debate about whether or not he is past his prime is beside the point since he started putting so many irons in so many fires.

"Smart executives, correspondingly, must understand that their competitors are at least as smart as they are. Only the most arrogant fail to acknowledge that they do not have a monopoly on brainpower, ideas, or will. In chess, I know that my rival sees everything I see. Even if I do the unthinkable -- a bold, unprecedented move calculated to leave him gasping -- I must assume he has anticipated it and will have an equally daring answer. Call it the courage to accept humility."

October 8, 2004

2005 US Championship

That's right, 2005. In order to accomodate the wacky and impromptu 2004 US women's championship, this year's regularly scheduled event (Nov. 24 - Dec 5, San Diego) has been dubbed the 2005. I think this should be their cue to do what the Soviets did to avoid this sort of confusion with their haphazardly scheduled championships: number them instead of using years. Plus, Roman numerals always look cool.

Anyway, the field is now complete and posted to the AF4C website (further changes may occur). Of interest: Yasser Seirawan and Susan Polgar declined their invitations. Kamsky got a wild card. IM Ron Burnett qualified by winning a tournament of state champions online blitz event. This was hastily arranged and little publicized this year, but is a great concept to lend nationwide PR to the main event. It could also add a lot to the state championships, many of which barely exist anymore. It will be the strongest of these new Swiss-system championships thanks to Kamsky and Onischuk. Nakamura must be tipped as a favorite after his remarkable FIDE KO run.

October 10, 2004

Man-Machine Beef

Greetings from Seattle. I don't drink coffee so they are deporting me back to New York tomorrow. But first, I've got a beef with these endless man-machine matches. Sure, they put food on the table for many, myself included, and they attract more spectators - chess and non-chess alike - than human-human or comp-comp events. Even a championship match like Kramnik-Leko won't bring out as many online and in-person spectators as Kasparov versus the latest version of Fritz, Shredder, Junior, et al, all of which play at roughly the same level.

The problem is that we've known for quite a long time now that Grandmasters play better chess than computers. The humans still get tremendous positions in most games at classical time controls. It's true that the comps get a little better every generation, but as game three of Kasparov - X3D Fritz showed, machines can still play like brain-damaged gerbils in the wrong positions. (And they are still overly dependent on their human-designed opening books, but don't get me started on that right now.)

We also know why humans usually lose to machines: they blunder and computers don't, and a blunder is usually required to win a chess game. The Bilbao event saw the humans winning only a single game against the silicon, and Fritz was running on a laptop. Multiprocessors and other hardware advantages make a big difference against other machines when every half-ply is life and death. But within a certain range, that's not why humans win or lose to computers. Hydra will probably kill any other computer these days, but it didn't outscore Fritz on a laptop in Bilbao against humans.

If the human blunders, the computer wins. If the human doesn't blunder, it's a draw. If the human gets a great anti-computer position in the opening or in an endgame, the human can win. So we sit around waiting for a blunder, pretty much. Can the heroic human hang on? It's a compelling narrative, but with what should be limited attraction for a chess audience. If the human wins one we get a man-bites dog story and some "we're not dead yet!" feelgood. It's just that almost all the games a human can win against a computer these days are so ugly that it's hard to cheer. We know that in "normal" chess we get ripped to pieces 99% of the time.

October 12, 2004

Abu Dhabi Doo

After months of disquieting quiet, an announcement has been made for the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov FIDE championship match. As previously rumored it will take place in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates in January, 2005. Combined with Leko leading his Brissago match with Kramnik, this is the brightest title unification has looked since Prague, 2002. Leko would have more to prove than Kramnik and a high-profile match against Kasparov would be all he could hope for.

As mortal as Kasparov has been in his past few events, I doubt I'm alone in giving Kasimdzhanov scant chances to beat him in a match. The Uzbek will have a cultural home-field advantage of sorts. Earlier he spoke of how comfortable he felt in Tripoli.

October 14, 2004

Chess Art

This almost made the "dumb chess news" section since idiots are involved, but perhaps chess art is a more interesting tangent. A couple of guys tried to steal a chess sculpture in an Oregon town. (Gee, I wonder if alcohol was involved.) This earlier story has a small pic of it.

Chess has an powerful visual element that has attracted playing and non-playing artists for centuries, beyond the metaphorical connections of the game. Dubai's planned Chess City is likely to be the largest display of this affinity. We know of Marcel Duchamp's love of the game. Many other well-known artists designed chess sets or included the game in paintings or works of fiction. Any chess art in your area? A quote of Duchamp's is worthwhile in this age of chess sponsorship.

"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."

A 19th century Russian set, one of my favorites from the chess set exhibition at the Philadelphia art museum in 2002.

October 15, 2004

Calvia Olympiad

Round one of the Olympiad is today. There is a wealth of information at chess-olympiad.com, which is handling the details for the official portal site 36chessolympiad.com (the English pages don't appear to be up there). The first round is full of slaughters and the favorites won't have tough match-ups until the third or fourth round.

Russia is again a prohibitive rating favorite, with a 42 point advantage over Ukraine. Things tighten up considerably after that with a remarkable 17 teams having average ratings over 2600. Thanks mostly to Anand's return to top board, India is a new presence among the favorites. Nigel Short will miss the first half of the event for England, severely damaging their hopes. I was surprised to see the Netherlands so highly seeded with Timman's long slide, but Sokolov has finally stopped playing for Bosnia. Bacrot isn't playing for France. With his lofty new rating they would have been a contender. Shirov is back for Spain after skipping Bled.

On the ladies' side of the aisle, the usual suspects of China, Russia, and Georgia have been joined by the well-trained and heavily hyped American team. Susan Polgar leads the team and will be playing her first serious chess in seven years. Her old world championship foe Xie Jun is back to lead the top-seeded Chinese team.

Handicapping these events is impossible, but I always like the Armenians. And much as with the club events, it's fun to watch the world's best face lower-rated competition. Kasparov made the point to me that if Russia fails to win gold and if Leko finishes off Kramnik, there won't be a Russian (/Soviet) title holder for the first time probably since before Botvinnik's day. (Junior, women's, men's, national team, club.)

October 17, 2004

Leko's Big Day

Tomorrow in Brissago, Switzerland, is 25-year-old Peter Leko's chance to enter the history books. Even if this annoyingly fractured era in chess history is littered with asterisks and footnotes in the chess encyclopedias of 2050, a match win over Vladimir Kramnik would stand on its own as a formidable achievement. Kramnik lost candidates matches to Kamsky (94), Gelfand (94), and Shirov (98), but showed an impeccable ability to pick his spots in 2000 by beating Kasparov.

On the other hand, if Kramnik beats Leko in the final game to tie the match and retain his title, Brissago becomes an instant classic. He'll have done what only Emanuel Lasker (1910) and Garry Kasparov (1987) have done: win the final game to change the result of a world championship match. Everyone is incredibly hard to beat at this level, but it's interesting that Leko fits the uber-defensive-expert profile of the two guys on the wrong side in 1910 and 1987, Schlechter and Karpov.

Few have had even the opportunity, of course. Alekhine, Bronstein, Smyslov, and Korchnoi had the chance and couldn't do it. In 1984 Karpov had 21 games to knock out Kasparov and failed. Karpov could have kept or taken the title from Kasparov in the final game in 1985 with a win and in 1987 with a draw.

Leko basically stopped playing after his win in game eight put him ahead. But he has risen to the occasion when pressed and has outplayed Kramnik consistently after the opening. The overall standard of play is nothing to write home about, but Leko has been better when it counts.

October 18, 2004

Kramnik Wins, Sort Of

Vladimir Kramnik beat Peter Leko in game 14 to draw their match and keep his classical world championship title. Kramnik joins Lasker, Botvinnik (twice) and Kasparov in the list of defending champs who retained their titles by virtue of draw odds. Quite a few people, only partly joking, said before the match that between these two conservative players having draw odds would likely be decisive.

Bad news for Leko, good news for Kramnik, bad news for unification. (Good news that we don't have to see the Danneman logo with the misplaced white king and queen for a while.) Kramnik keeping the title drops unification chances down close to zero, at least if Kasparov beats Kasimdzhanov in January. (If Kasimdzhanov wins it rises to maybe a ten percent chance.) Kramnik was dragged to the table in Prague in 2002, signed under duress, and wants no part of anything with Kasparov that would put his old rival on equal or near-equal footing. (E.g. no long qualifier, no draw odds.) Kramnik's reasons are not unreasonable and they have been well covered over the past two years, but sign he did.

Kramnik and Brissago match director Joel Lautier run the ACP, so the organization's first post-match statement about unification is eagerly anticipated.

October 19, 2004

Conspiracy Theories

The latest Fischer news isn't much news. Fischer has a new lawyer, who immediately started banging the conspiracy drum.

At a news conference at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan in Tokyo, Vattuone presented a copy of an internal U.S. government fax as proof the U.S. government was behind Fischer's arrest by Japanese authorities. The U.S. Embassy officials presented the copy of the fax at Friday's hearing.

The fax, dated Nov 18, 2003, states that the Department of Homeland Security had requested the assistance of the Passport Office "in effecting the revocation of the passport privileges" of Fischer "in order to secure his deportation from the Philippines."

Well, yes. When the US government revokes the passports of everyone with outstanding federal indictments I guess you could say they are out to get you when you are one of those under indictment. Doh. As I said before, the case against Fischer and its continued pursuit are silly at best. Just as silly are Fischer's claims that he is the victim of particular persecution. I'll be very surprised it turns out anything special was done regarding Fischer's case prior to his detention.

October 20, 2004

A Mohel's Best Friend

Better information on the latest Fischer chapter.

Way too much information on the latest Fischer rants.

In the News (Not)

The English-language news coverage of the Kramnik-Leko match was very disappointing. Coverage in German was 15 times greater than that in English, which means the organizers didn't have very many contacts with English-language media. Basically, unless they are spoon-fed stories it's just too confusing for the press to explain about the different champions each time so they don't bother. Not that chess was front page news before 1993, but things have clearly gone downhill and the schism is largely to blame.

If Kramnik had lost it would have been in a few more places, just as Kasparov's loss was trumpeted in 2000. Still, ZERO stories?! Reuters and the AP ignored it entirely, a first. The only English-language news sources to mention the result of the match were two in Moscow and a couple more in India. I mean, the world junior badminton tournament got 51 stories. Scary. On the other hand, many places are covering the Olympiad, which has local interest.

In the various Spanish, French, and German reports, a few note that Kramnik will face the winner of the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match. Several in Spanish even say that this is a unification match "scheduled for 2005"! Jumping the gun a bit there. Even in FIDE fantasy-land (where they had the Kasparov-Ponomariov match on their calendar even after the dates had passed) they haven't gone as far as saying it's scheduled!

Have your contacted your local paper by letter or e-mail to request, to demand, more chess coverage and/or a column? If not, do it. If yes, do it again. It just takes a minute and now is a good time. "Hey, the world chess championship just finished and your paper/website/channel didn't even mention it!" In turn they might ask the wire services why there wasn't anything.

UPDATE: Duif points out that a French wire service had a Kramnik-Leko final report in English (and in Spanish) online.

Commentator

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Thanks for your help.

October 21, 2004

Zeus, Guide Your Humble Servant

The most interesting scoresheet you'll see today comes from the Calvia Olympiad. Iranian women's team member Shadi Paridar signs her scoresheets "In the name of God" at the top. We can see it didn't help in this loss, but she's on 4.5/6 on board one, so you might consider giving it a try.

Then it occurred to me that maybe this is a curse after a loss: "In the name of God, how could I lose to this idiot!?" Somehow I doubt it. Also interesting that it's not in Farsi. Maybe that would make the arbiters suspicious of note taking. US Women's Champion and current women's team reserve Jennifer Shahade wrote an interesting interview with at least one Iranian player a year or two ago in Chess Life. I wonder if it was Paridar. (I know, "interesting" and "Chess Life" in the same sentence. But every once in a while something sneaks through.)

October 25, 2004

When In Doubt

I'm not right all the time, but my prediction about Kramnik's attitude toward reunification were accurate. In his post-match comments he states that Prague and Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov should be thrown out in order to have a different qualifier that would include Anand and Ponomariov.

Of course that would be great, and similar things were suggested in 2002, but it's the same old "when in doubt, hold another qualifier" argument. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing is going to be perfect. If you include Ponomariov, why not Khalifman? Why not Shirov? Why not Leko (this is a separate title, after all)? If we include the #1 and the #2 on the rating list, why not the #4? That's Morozevich, and Topalov is just one point behind him. In 2002 Kramnik said rating and tournament success weren't good reasons to include Kasparov in unification. Now he gives the same as reasons to include Anand. Why have we be sitting around for two years waiting for something that he's going to junk when it finally moves forward?

New qualifiers ALWAYS sound great; that's the problem. You keep talking about new ones and nothing ever happens. The qualifier in the hand is worth two in the bush. The more people you add, the more potential you have for disagreements. What if Moro takes over the #2 spot in the meantime? If you organize something based on current circumstance you can't keep changing it with the circumstances or you never do anything at all.

And try using the "well, it's obvious" argument on the guys who are shut out. Anyway, a quadrangular would be dandy. It would be even better if it were a five-player event with Kramnik tossed in. If Prague 2002 is tossed out and Anand dropped in, why weren't Dortmund 2002 and Leko dumped? We all know that FIDE screwed up their part of the unification plan. Using that as an excuse when it took Kramnik-Leko two years to happen seems a bit petty, or disingenuous.

David Levy's prediction for 2005 is disturbingly realistic:

2005 FIDE President Ilyumzhinov announces Kasparov vs Kramnik reunification match to take place in Dubai in December 2005 for a purse of $2.5 million. Also announces that if either player refuses to sign the match contract within 30 days he loses his right to play and will be replaced by the highest available player in the FIDE rating list. Kasparov signs. Kramnik refuses to sign, saying he wants to play the winner of a 4-player tournament with Kasparov, Anand, Kasimdzhanov and Ponomariov. Ilyumzhinov agrees to Kramnik's proposal, in the interest of bringing peace to world chess. Kasparov also agrees. Anand agrees. Ponomariov's lawyer sues FIDE on the basis that Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov have both held the FIDE WC title since the Prague agreement was signed but Anand has not. Leko's lawyer announces that if Ponomariov wins the case, thereby eliminating Anand, Leko will sue FIDE unless he is given the fourth spot in the tournament.

I think Kasparov is a little tired of agreeing to things that he figures will never happen, but you never know. Perhaps such a qualifier could be organized in time for his 50th birthday in 2013. Seriously, if we start over again we would be looking at a qualifier in 2006 and then 2007 for a new cycle. Assuming we don't need another qualifier, of course.

UPDATE: It should be obvious that we're all Anand fans. Taking the very real problems with starting over as an attack on Anand is a strawman. There are serious logistical and legalistic concerns. The fastest way to get Anand involved in the world title fight is probably to continue with Kasparov-Kadimzhanov and unification. Then Anand and the rest of the world can play for the unified title. Scheduling a new unification qualifier would take at least as long. Anand (and Ponomariov) is playing in Wijk aan Zee in January. Players have schedules and contracts.

Look, a Kitty!

To take your mind of the horrors of chess politics for a moment. Awwwww.

Okay now, do you think my cat favors a quadrangular qualifier? Discuss. I guess we can just call this an open thread. Anything on your mind? Something you'd like to know? Something ticking you off?

October 26, 2004

Game and Match

It's interesting that the Olympiad uses board points instead of match points. (I explained this a bit in an Olympiad report.) It makes things more dynamic and could encourage more aggressive play, because beating a team 4-0 is much better than 2.5-1.5.

One downside is that when combined with Swiss pairing it creates weird cascades. With 20-30 teams just a few board points apart, a single big match win changes everything and it cascades up the table as in an individual Swiss. This can really distort things if it happens in the final round. Jumps of 20 or even 30 places aren't unusual. For example, Malaysia busted up Lebanon in the eighth round. That big score put them up against Turkey, who duly crushed them 4-0. That shot #69-ranked Turkey up in the pairings, where they got stomped by Slovakia 3.5-0.5. That puts #32 Slovakia up against #9 Poland today. #5 India has #43 Canada (Canada wiped out a stronger Macedonian team to jump up, so it's not always a chain of mismatches.)

Another aspect of Swiss pairings is that in a long event the top teams will have faced each other long before the end of the event. But there are so many strong teams now it doesn't matter so much. That underdog Slovakian team includes veteran GMs Movsesian and Ftacnik!

The US Men came through 2-2 against Ukraine yesterday and now have Russia. Some reward. The US has a history of "playing up," doing well against the top teams while struggling against teams they should beat. They are so balanced they should be beating weaker teams on boards three and four consistently, but it never seems to work that way. The US doesn't have a 2700, but only Russia and Ukraine have stronger reserves.

October 27, 2004

Bring Back the K's?

When Russia won the Olympiad a few years ago without Kasparov, Kramnik, or Karpov, there was celebration and good-natured singing about how the famous K's weren't needed. With two rounds to go in Calvia, a similarly composed team is on course to finish well behind Ukraine. It will be the first time a Russian team failed to gain the gold medal. (The USSR missed it once.) Ukraine has played very well, but not tremendously well. Second board Ponomariov only has a 50% score. Russia has had lackluster performances from Grischuk and Khalifman (who took a draw with black against Gulko in a position he really should have played out if Russia wanted to push to catch Ukraine).

When the USA lost the Olympic basketball gold medal in 1988 they responded with the Dream Team of top professionals in 1992. I wonder if the Russian Chess Federation, revitalized under Alexander Zhukov, will be able to bring Kasparov and Kramnik together for Russia in 2006. Russia obviously has the talent to win without them, and they played half the event without Svidler, but a K-K-led team with four 2700's would be a sure thing. It would also be quite a spectator draw. Getting Kramnik and Kasparov to play in the name of reclaiming Russia's honor shouldn't be too hard.

Anybody else notice that the big, flashy official Olympiad website has been down for a while? (36chessolympiad.com) I guess everyone just uses the handy tournament results site. They spent a lot of time and money on the official site, so this is a bit weird. Maybe David Llada will clear this up in a few days.

October 28, 2004

Brain Activation

Phil Ross sends in a link to the cover of Science magazine. It's not easily available on newsstands, at least not in New York. Nice cover, anyway. There have been many studies of what goes on in a brain that is playing chess. One group was recently surprised to find the flare-ups had less in common with those of doing math problems than of solving word puzzles.

There's no doubt chess can discipline the mind to work more effectively in many ways. Those benefits are promptly negated when you become addicted to online blitz and cease to be a productive member of society.

October 30, 2004

Medal Maniacs

The Olympiad is finally over. It was an impressive showing by the favorites and by the US men. Actually it's not that surprising. They were only the 10th seed, but that's because they don't have a 2700, and only one player over 2620. But they do have six 2600's, meaning that against any team other than Ukraine or Russia, the USA is as strong or stronger when reserves are in action. The depth and balance of the US men's team has long been their strength. It would be nice to have a +6 first board, but being able to rest your guys is important in these marathon events. Having the very experienced Postovsky as a captain couldn't have hurt.

I'm delighted for the US women's team and their silver medal. China sprinted out to such a lead that the gold was out of reach, although the US has the symbolic victory of beating the Chinese in their match. I'm disappointed for Jen Shahade, however. The current US women's champ played just two games, both early on and with black, and caught a cold in the middle of the event. It's hard to imagine a better result for the team, but not using a reserve as strong as Shahade is a little strange. (She finished ahead of Krush and Zatonskih in the US Ch.) It also casts the epic wrangling about the fourth spot in a cold light. Remember that an entire US women's championship was organized just to end the controversy around the fourth spot. To stay in the moment, congratulations to both US teams, particularly the women for their first medal ever.

November 1, 2004

Boy Named Sue

With apologies to Johnny Cash. From the Oct. 27 Chess Today:

"What attracts attention here, is Vasilyev's interview with Boris Postovsky. This chess coach has won everything with Russia in the past, but now he lives in the United States and is working with the US team. According to Postovsky, the US chess officials intended to break [their own] very strict rules for the team's lineup - in order to include on the team the young star, Hikaru Nakamura, who performed impressively in Tripoli earlier this year. But Boris Gulko threatened that the officials would be forced to defend such a decision legally in court. So the idea was rejected."

[Quoted from the original interview published in Sport Express on Oct. 27.]

The problem isn't Gulko; he deserves to have his federation obey its own rules. The problem is that the rules emphasize USCF ratings for international competition, and qualification is based on ratings so old that upcoming players are punished and recent form isn't considered. It's not fair to single out Gulko. But rules that allow any player who has barely played in the past year are ridiculous.

Depending on USCF games or rating is silly because a strong American player must pursue opportunities in Europe. They should be encouraged to play in US events, so counting USCF games for the activity minimum seems reasonable. But FIDE rating should trump when it comes to qualifying for an international event.

Anyone want to bet against Nakamura playing board one for the USA in Turin, 2006? When was the last time someone played their first Olympiad on board one, for any country? I think Kamsky did this for the US at Manila, 1992, his only Olympiad. That adds to the trivia quest: only Olympiad appearance on board one?

November 3, 2004

Boot to the Head

Well, back to chess. I'll try to avoid reading a newspaper for the next four years. Hey, it works for Bush. I could make a contrived election connection to chess by making the case that having an avowedly anti-intellectual president isn't good for a game with an egghead reputation in the US. But I won't.

Instead I'll touch on the already-infamous case of FIDE vice-president and Georgian Grandmaster Zurab Azmaiparashvili's altercation with Spanish police at the closing ceremony of the Calvia Olympiad. Azmai is out of jail now and an interview with him will be at ChessBase.com soon. Basically they thought it was best to wait until Azmai was safely back in Georgia.

The unrepentant attitude of the organizers and Spanish federation is the worst of it. Instead of apologizing for what was bad policy to start and a dangerous overreaction by security, they act as though having an unarmed man beaten to the ground on the stage of a chess event was perfectly normal.

Azmaiparashvili has some thuggish qualities that have manifested at various times in public and private. There had been friction between him and the organization at several points in Calvia already. I don't doubt he tried to step by security to get to the stage. But this is really beside the point. The Olympiad is a FIDE event and if the FIDE VP wants to get on the stage and perform a naked tap-dance, well, cover the eyes of the kids and stand back. Okay, maybe not, but clearly the organizers have gone power mad when they have crack security police bludgeoning chess politicians. That should be left to the fans and the journalists.

Legal Time

The latest Fischer hearing and shuffling of papers has put the case back in the news. Nothing big, although several reports say that the case could drag on to the end of next year. As usual, the lawyers win. It would be obscene to see Fischer incarcerated for what will be over a year and a half if that prediction comes true. Apparently Fischer was hoping for a Kerry win, so it hasn't been a good week for Bobby.

November 5, 2004

Match Off, Match On

After a few days of rumors that it had been officially delayed, the Dubai Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match is officially on. The money is in the bank and the dates have been announced. (January 14 - February 1) Kasparov was somewhat relieved, but he is still troubled about the entire process after Kramnik's statements about ditching Prague and starting from scratch again.

That's the real issue here. What happens if Kramnik, as predicted, refuses to play? Since FIDE screwed up their side of Prague it's not unreasonable for Kramnik to have some new conditions. The question is whether or not he is willing to keep his word that he will put his classical title on the line for unification. We don't even know where to begin negotiations. Having Kasparov as FIDE champion instead of Kasimdzhanov might make sponsorship easier to find, but doesn't achieve squat in the way of unification on its own, especially since Kramnik is less likely to want to play Kasparov than Kasimzhanov. I say that not because Kramnik is afraid of Kasparov – he's not – but because he doesn't feel Kasparov deserves to be there.

Kramnik has considerable leverage, and I hope he and the ACP use it to push FIDE and to work with them to design and commit to a reasonable qualification system. Getting rid of the KO and the fast time control that came with it are right behind unification on the "save chess" wish list. But you have to have something to replace it instead of being nihilistic.

November 6, 2004

Measure of Success

It's hard to imagine something less controversial than scholastic chess, but controversial it is. The movement is huge in the US, and while the benefits for kids seem beyond doubt, the benefits to chess federations and the traditional chess community are less clear. In general I believe more chess is always good, period. It would be nice if kids who learned in school continued to play in tournaments, but with nowhere for them to go as professionals in the US, finding the next Fischer will still depend on rare genius.

This item stems from reading this curious little note from a Utah paper about teachers getting funding to start using chess in an elementary school with the express hope that it will improve math test scores. Maybe things are getting desperate now that the US has decided that test scores are easier than actually educating.

A must-read overview on the scholastic chess topic is this article (Acrobat format) by Tom Braunlich entitled "Scholastics and the Soul of Chess". Among other things, it makes the case that there is a growing conflict of interest between scholastic chess and those who play it as a sport, with the US Chess Federation in the middle.

The underlying problems are not new: How best to divide up a small pie of resources and how to define success. More players = good, but what if, as is happening in the US, fewer adults play while more kids play? There are many other such mind-benders. Is 4th place in the Olympiad a credit to American chess when all the players are Soviet-bred? How to save top-level chess, where the US has produced just one GM in the past seven years? Nakamura, who recently turned 17. Before him you have to go back to Tal Shaked, then to the generation of Sherzer, Ilya Gurevich and Wolff to find the GMs whose chess was developed in the USA. Tellingly, none of them has played seriously in years. (Also interesting is that both Shaked and Gurevich won the World Junior.)

Ashley got his GM title fairly recently, but after a long layoff. Perhaps a better way to to put it is that Nakamura is the only US GM under 30 other than the inactive Shaked. Eugene Perelshteyn will likely make the title, although he's already 24.

November 8, 2004

Places to Play Chess

This little article from a college paper on places to play chess seems more about using chess as a metaphor for making out. But it seems like a good idea to make a list of places to play casual chess. It could be a list to check before traveling. (Because doesn't your girlfriend just love it when you go to a lovely, exotic place on vacation and you get into a street chess game.)

Clubs that allow free drop-in play can be included. List the country, city, name of the place you could tell a taxi driver or find in a guide book, whether play is serious (with clocks, strong players, for money) or casual, and the usual hours of play. Add comments as you like after that. If it's an obscure place give an address, directions, or a link to a map. When we have a good list here I'll post it to a separate page and maintain it with a submission form.

I'll start with an obvious one.

USA, New York City, Washington Square Park, serious play, including blitz for money with expert-level players, all day until dark. Most are hustlers who only play for money. Rather mangy crowd with occasional drug trafficking, not recommended for unattended kids. Players often move to the nearby Chess Shop or Chess Forum shops to play in winter or after dark. Both are on the same block, two blocks south of the park on Thompson Street. They charge a few bucks for use of set and clock.

November 9, 2004

Kramnik Bails

With the tournament a week away from starting, classical world champion Vladimir Kramnik has bailed out of the much-awaited Russian Championship super-final. Bearing a note from his mother, Vlady claims stress from his title defense against Leko. This is pretty thin gruel considering that fewer than half the games were hard-fought and there were plenty of free days.

The most ridiculous part of this is that the tournament was originally scheduled for September, but back in Spring it was moved to November at the request of... Vladimir Kramnik! A few months ago Kasparov told me he doubted Kramnik would play, but I don't think that is on the record anywhere. My biggest problem with this is that it's simply unprofessional. One of the biggest names in the game backs out of a big event a week before it starts? In a real sport the sponsors would be getting their money back and the player would be fined unless there were serious health issues. I'm sure he's tired, but that doesn't cut it. Part of being a pro means playing even when you're not 100%. That responsibility increases when you are the champ.

This bailout has already led to much of the usual "Kramnik's afraid of Kasparov" talk among fans. I think it's more of the champion's malady of not wanting to risk playing at less 100%. They pick their spots and often feel they have more to lose than to gain by playing. When I spoke to Kasparov today he said he was relieved about one aspect of the super-final field. Not about Kramnik, but that thanks to Tseshkovsky he wasn't the oldest player in the field!

November 10, 2004

Free Speech

Going through the mail regarding the "Bush vs Kerry" chess game article at ChessBase.com was predictably disappointing. Of course complainers usually write more than supporters about anything, but it's the nature of most of the complaints that bugs me. Of course you can't expect Bush fans to really enjoy an article that pokes fun at their guy, but the ritual demands to remove anything political, anything "non-100%-chess" from a chess site mystify me.

Why should chess exist in a vacuum? ChessBase.com isn't a kids' site that published porn. It boggles my mind so much that I assume these people are annoyed mostly due to partisan reasons and that if the target had been Kerry they wouldn't have written at all. Had a group of well-known players sent in a faux game dissing Kerry that was equally entertaining, we would have run that too. That's not to say the political leanings of editors aren't relevant, of course. I might not have written an intro to such a game. But maybe I would have since I was no Kerry fan. (He is now safely in the Gorian past-tense.)

"Not appropriate" is a common substitute for "I don't agree" and when successful is nothing more than censorship. As long as an item is related to chess and, above all, entertaining, our tent should be big enough to handle it. I had to put up with this all the time during my first year of writing Mig on Chess at TWIC. I was disrespectful, insulting, opinionated, and a host of other things I won't bother to put between quotes. Lucky for me enough people liked those things as well as, I like to imagine, that I managed to be those things while being funny and informative on a good day. (If something is funny enough even the partisans can cut you some slack. The only people who had a problem with my "Weapons of Match Destruction" article wrote rabidly entertaining responses. I'm still trying to figure out the "Fascist communist" remark.)

We're going to publish an article with the feedback on the Bush-Kerry game, including some post-election gloating. Overall they are a good example of how partisanship is the worst enemy of free speech. If it's not funny, say so. If you don't like it, fine. But saying a satire chess game is not appropriate on a chess site is just another way of saying you think the wrong guy won the game but instead of stating an opinion you get self-righteous. (The next step for an American is to sue, I suppose).

Maybe you only want chess and your chess websites to be a total escape from the real world and bumping into a political satire was jarring. I understand that, but trust me, you'll recover. I'd rather continue to drag chess into the real world with other sports.

November 11, 2004

A Bust of a Boom

According to this press release masquerading as a news story, the supermarket chain Tesco is selling far more of its chess sets than expected. This is bad reporting in many ways. A surge in sales compared to what? The only stat is that they are selling more than they expected to sell. That doesn't mean more sets are being sold this year than last year overall. They didn't even launch their chess set until earlier this year. Basically it says they did a lousy job of forecasting. We don't know if there is a boom or not at all. It's dandy they may sell 35,000 sets, but it doesn't mean much if that's 35,000 sets not sold by other manufacturers.

There is always a big increase in set and board sales around Christmas, often together with a primer as a gift for a junior. I'm sure we can poke around and see if such sales are up this year over last.

November 12, 2004

Iran Plans Ban

Iran just banned four of their top players for not agreeing to participate in the Calvia Olympiad.

"The federation will never forget their immoral conduct."

It's tempting to react harshly to this this just because it's Iran, not exactly a hotbed of liberal democracy. But other than the reactionary wording, it's not hard to imagine other federations penalizing players for refusing to play on the national team.

As Alexander Shabalov points out, despite the report's statement that they "avoided attending the world meet in Spain," the banned Iranian players were actually IN Calvia. This must be regarding not playing during the Olympiad or some other "immoral" offense. Mahjoob and Ghorbani were forfeited in the 10th round against Kyrgystan and the other two didn't play that round either.

The USSR teams were highly politicized and Botvinnik's Achieving the Aim goes into detail about the shenanigans around team formation, although I don't recall anything about pressuring someone to play. (Although if they wanted you to and you didn't it's hard to imagine there wouldn't be repercussions.) It was more about maneuvering to get on the team or keeping someone else off. FIDE removed Kasparov and Short from the rating list when they broke away to form the PCA in 1993. Have you heard of any similar penalties, perhaps from countries without authoritarian fame?

November 15, 2004

Championship Talk

Ah, a nice weekend off before the panic ensues. The Russian championship is underway. Karpov, incensed at Kramnik for stealing his drop-out thunder, waited until the last minute before bailing out to save himself from a beating. With Karpov such treachery is expected by now. He fled the Botvinnik Memorial in 2001 to jump into the FIDE KO. In both cases he attended the press conference first. I wonder what karma will have in store for Karpov this time. In 2001 he was dumped from the KO by Zhang Pengxiang in his first match.

The US Championship is starting in a week. I'm going to be buried finishing the design of official website this week and as of the 22nd I'll be in San Diego to run it. Your suggestions and feedback are very welcome below. It's a hasty job, but it should be a great event and I hope to make the website a lot of fun. We'll have contests and prizes just about every round.

November 16, 2004

Park Chess Rats

The NYU newspaper has an article about how renovations to Washington Square Park may endanger the famous chess corner.

"I'm just going to get a mat and sit out there and play," he said.

His younger opponent chimed in, saying getting rid of chess in the park is "like saying you're going to get rid of pigeons and rats." In other words, it's impossible.

I recently mentioned the park in our places to play chess item. Most players use roll boards instead of the banged-up cement chess tables, but anyway we can hope that if they put in new tables they get the white squares on the right.

November 18, 2004

uschesschampionship.com

Well, it was a rush job and there isn't much content yet, but at least I didn't have to resort to Viagra to get this site up. www.uschesschampionship.com is the official site of the 2005 US Chess Championships in San Diego. There are a few things I need to tweak (Mozilla/FireFox mangling my style sheets for one) and it's probably riddled with typos. But I think all the links and images are working okay at least. And the essential info is there except the rules and regulations page. That's because they haven't quite decided the rules yet!

Apparently even more funding has come in at the last minute, so it could go over the current $255,000. Then there's the tiebreak situation. Shabalov and Akobian saved us from embarrassment in 2003 by fighting hard while all the other leaders played pathetic 10-move draws in hopes of going to rapids or splitting the big prize a dozen ways. AF4C honcho Erik Anderson is very keen (an understatement) to avoid such a possibility by carrot and/or stick. They are still considering the best way to break ties without swinging thousands of dollars on a few rapid games.

November 21, 2004

Off to San Diego

Tomorrow morning I'm headed to San Diego for the US Championships. Apart from the official reports I'll keep blogging and also incorporate this blog into the official site. I'll grab players and others to guest-blog various entries during the tournament. It should be good fun. Who would you most like to hear from in their own words?

Here's another reason to leave Brooklyn for San Diego. I like crisp Fall days as much as anyone, but it's going to be cold and rainy around here and I'm not sure they know what rain is in San Diego. As long as the hotel internet holds up, all should be well.

Despite being only the fourth seed by rating, Jennifer Shahade leads the voting to predict a winner in the Women's event by a large margin. She won in this format in 2002 and won the women-only event this year. Or is the voting influenced by the fact that she just became a regular contributor to my Black Belt newsletter? Last week she annotated her recent win against one of her competitors in San Diego, Anna Zatonskih.

Hikaru Nakamura has 40% of the vote for the overall title. (No Ninja favoritism here, although I'll be interested to see if he'd like to contribute. Sign him before he wins the title and raises his prices!) He's had a tremendous 2004 and could well be the favorite for the next 10 years unless Kamsky really comes back to chess full-time. Kamsky is second in the voting but has got to be terribly rusty.

November 22, 2004

Start Your Engines

Greetings from San Diego. Actually, it's La Jolla, a rather exclusive and upscale village 15 minutes north of the city center. The site of the 2005 US Championship is the Hilton Torrey Pines hotel. It's between the sea and the beautiful Torrey Pines State Park.

It was no problem getting here from the small airport, which is practically in the middle of San Diego. I waited a few minutes for a shuttle bus that cost $12.50. (Company "Cloud 9".) Apparently it's a little trickier to get back to the city since there is no public transportation from the hotel to downtown San Diego! I guess you could just take the airport shuttle. They have free hotel shuttles into La Jolla and there must be a bus or something from there. I hope so, because a taxi is $40+.

The hotel and site are spectacular. Here is the view from the mini-patio of my room, which is right next to the tournament ballroom.

More importantly, the DSL internet in my room is working fine, although there is something about it costing $13/day. I hope I get a webmaster exemption for that! That's money I need to spend on caffeinated beverages in order to work on the site.

I'll be blogging from behind the scenes throughout the tournament and inviting participants and organizers to guest blog as well. That's in addition to the analysis, interviews, and photo galleries.

November 23, 2004

Welcome to the Big Time

One of the players, an older fellow, came by where we were setting everything up last night and was delighted to find out that clocks were provided! He explained that he had forgotten to bring his own...

The reverse is usually the case when European Grandmasters come to play in the big US open tournaments and are stunned to find out the players are usually expected to bring their own clocks and sets.

Welcome Back

Gata Kamsky just arrived. First trouble already started, although not really his fault. He just bought a new computer with his credit card and apparently there wasn't enough credit left to use it for his room at check-in!

[I'm going to be adding many tiny tidbits throughout, sort of liveblogging the event. I won't send email notifications for each of these because it would be serious spamming. The ChampBlog at the official site will have items from the players and staff, not just me.]

Gonna Party Like It's Your Birthday

Hmm, I guess the party has started and as usual I'm the only one sitting down here in a room full of computers. Wait, the tech guys setting up the live game broadcasts are still working too. That makes me feel better.

The ChampBlog is now up at the official site. I grabbed Chief Arbiter Carol Jarecki for the first guest entry. I'm hoping for a cool, unfiltered experience by getting the players to blog. But I think Carol has dreams of being a novelist instead of an arbiter. I bet the players will be looser after the cocktail party, so stay tuned.

November 29, 2004

Hitting the Wall

Howdy all. I thought I'd be able to keep up here, but so far I haven't had a spare second here in San Diego. Apart from the www.uschesschampionship.com website, I'm doing the daily bulletins for the players and spectators and helping staff and players with their various computer problems. I literally have not been outside of the hotel since I arrived Monday afternoon, which is pretty pathetic.

Things should settle into a routine and get easier with each round, but I've been saying that for three days now. I'm going to put a sign on the wall above me saying "Next question: $5". I like to help, but it's hard to focus on analysis and the website for more than five minutes straight without an interruption.

Still, it's great! I don't want it to sound like I'm suffering; I love it. It's just that it's 4:20am, I've been up alone working on the site all night again, and I slept for three hours last night. (The core: results, games, downloads, analysis, annotated games, photos, report, poll, trivia, press releases, blog updates all day.)

So I'm getting tired and cranky despite the luxurious surroundings and living the chess fan's dream. I just got another personal lesson from Walter Browne as he came in and wanted to show me some lines from his game with Yermo. It's coming in Black Belt tonight, guys! Thanks to IMs Watson and Donaldson I don't have to do much serious analysis of my own, at least not for publication on the site. But I have to keep up with all the games so I can talk competently about them with the players for their analysis contributions and/or blog entries. This is the most chess-immersed I've been in a while and it's inspiring.

I'm very happy with the website. I only wish I'd had more time to work on the content before launch. (I had three days!) Player bios are still incomplete, many players don't like the ones we have for them, and it seems weird to roll them out now, not that I've had much time anyway. Thanks to everyone who has sent in suggestions and corrections on the site, especially Duif.

The ChampBlog was last-minute inspiration and it's far exceeded my expectations. Reaction has been tremendous from both fans and players. I know a few club events have used a blogging format to report on a tournament, but having the players unfiltered at such a prestigious event is very cool. As with my writing, I just make what I would like and hope others like it too. Forget press conferences and demo boards; I want a Linares blog and an Olympiad blog and a world championship blog! This is where the fans are, which means it's where the sponsors should want to be.

We have two IMs and the players themselves talking to an audience of maybe 20 people in the commentary room. They are also doing audio to the ICC, which is great, if limited. I doubt they ever mention the AF4C, Chessmaster, and the other sponsors. Meanwhile, tens of thousands visit the site each day. I hope the ICC is recording the audio; the system looked a little primitive compared to what's built into Playchess.com, but I haven't fooled around with it so I shouldn't talk. Still, multimedia is clearly the way to go no matter where you watch it.

(I was doing audio and even video stuff on my own for Real and then KasparovChess.com's "Champions Club" back in 2000, well before ChessFM and such. It was pretty raw, sort of like bad reality chess television, but it was fun. The ones I made for Real at the London 2000 Kramnik-Kasparov match were completely ad-libbed and I was as tired then as I am now, so they're a little embarrassing to listen to now. Plus, the technical glitches. I just put an oldie up for download here. It's of the 2001 Botvinnik Memorial, one of many clips that few ever saw. Real format.)

I hope to do some more blogging of my own, although I realized that it's not appropriate for me to do it at the official site in the ChampBlog. Who wants to read me babbling when the focus should be on the players? I just didn't know then that so many players would participate and thought some filler would be needed! Even if the gossip is fun, it's a distraction and should be separate. That's what this place is for, no?

My entries might not be as entertaining as Serper's or as linguistically cutting edge as Ross's, but I think my job security is okay until they learn to design websites. (Serper requested his first "boring chess" entry be removed after some haters on the ICC gave him a hard time about it. Sad, because he has a great sense of humor.) Next time around the players should have their own logins so they can blog at any time from their own computers throughout the event. I didn't have time to set something like that up this time around. In fact, they should be able to use the site as a blog and homepage permanently. I get asked all the time to put people in touch with various players for lessons or simuls, or just to pass on greetings and fan mail.

Okay, time to grab some sleep before I have to run in to set the live games link on the homepage to 05!

Kamsky 2.0

It was cool that Kamsky came in today to blog after his win. He is clearly watched and seen as a little different from the rest because of his past star status and he's just as clearly intent on leaving that behind. He socializes and post-mortems with players he would have been giving simuls to a decade ago. It's got to be very hard to not have that magic at your fingertips anymore. Most never have it, but to have it and lose it is extra tough. Let's hope he sticks around long enough to get it back. Watching how well he is dealing with this has put him on my cool list.

December 9, 2004

A REAL Chess Ninja

Yow, finally back and yes, I'm still alive. Thanks for asking. San Diego was nice, or so I hear. I never saw it other than the trip from and back to the airport. I did get into the La Jolla for two hours on the last day I was there. Monday was supposed to be my free day to check out the area and my girlfriend Ann came from NY for the last few days. Instead I ended up doing exciting things like trying to update the official site with final info while everything was being torn down and packed up around me.

Ann's a video artist and was also put to work, filming the last days of the tournament for ChessBase Magazine and on Monday filming my interview with new champion Hikaru Nakamura. We also did a quick "commercial" with Nakamura for the AF4C to send to the Tonight Show. I suppose they wanted to see if the new chess star had whatever qualities they are looking for. (How bad can you be next to Jay Leno?) Hikaru won't need much work on his comic timing. "One advantage I had in winning the championship is that most of my opponents were old guys, like 30 or 40!"

Some footage Ann got Sunday night will make some chess fans drool in anticipation. The same day he wins the US Championship, Nakamura is in the lobby of the hotel playing game after game of 1-minute chess against all comers, mostly with Gata Kamsky! I've never seen Anand play 1-minute games, but let's just say that if Ilyumzhinov's next brilliant plan is to make the world championship a one-day 1-minute knock-out, we could have an American world champion sooner than we think. Unbelievable.

Nakamura, who turns 17 today, is currently in Cuernavaca, Mexico for a six-game match against 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine. It's classical chess and the first game is today. We'll be covering it at ChessBase.com.

Garry and Bobby

One thing I missed while I was in San Diego, other than a decent bagel, was Garry Kasparov's book signing at Barnes and Noble on the weekend. Volume IV on Fischer and other Western greats is in stores now. (At first Garry accidentally went to the wrong B&N, where they, unsurprisingly, had no idea what he was talking about.) This is the first of the My Great Predecessors titles to come out first in English and Kasparov says the analysis quality is the highest yet.

Despite the huge number of books on Fischer, mostly on the '72 match, modern, in-depth analysis of his games is sparse. According to Kasparov there are many old mistakes and omissions have been ignored and perpetuated for decades. (At least the ones he considers important in Vol. 4.) Soltis came out with the enjoyable Bobby Fischer Rediscovered last year. Silman lists some Fischer game collections in this review of Rediscovered.

In seven hours I'll be talking to Kasparov about this new book, among other things. If you post quickly you can have your good question for Kasparov on Fischer included in the interview. The video of it will be on ChessBase Magazine, with text excerpts at chessbase.com in a day or two.

Turkey Surprise

As has now been documented here at ChessBase.com, the January Dubai match between FIDE champ Kasimdzhanov and FIDE #1 Kasparov has been terminated. At least negotiations with the Dubai guys have been cut off and there is no hope of a match anywhere before April or May.

Sheik Mohammad's negotiator was such a sweet talker that had just about everyone believing it was for real. (But not Kasparov, who was called a liar by Ilyumzhinov assistant Balgabaev when he publicly denounced the status of the Dubai negotiations.) FIDE has again been proven a band of inept fabulists. Now the spotlight falls on Turkish federation honcho Ali Nihat Yazici, who has been criticizing the Dubai bid and saying he's sure he can bring K-K to Turkey.

That gives FIDE more time to say something intelligent about their plans for after the match. Yesterday Kasparov joked that getting a match to happen was harder than playing in one. Making it a useful step toward unification will be even harder. To get Kramnik to buy in (or at least to put pressure on him to do so), FIDE needs a blueprint for where they want things to go after a match between the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov winner and Kramnik. The old last-second dictatorship knock-out isn't going to cut it. Recognizing the ACP and beginning work - in public - on an acceptable WC cycle would be a start.

December 13, 2004

Official Bash Kasparov Thread

Here's a thread just for the playa-haters so we can stay on topic in the other posts. To recap Kasparov's recent crimes against humanity:

Chess: +5 undefeated clear first in Russian championship ahead of Grischuk, Svidler, Morozevich, et al. Kramnik didn't play. Clearly it is unfair for a 41-year-old to be finishing ahead of three young top-10 players.

Chess politics: Wrote open letter to FIDE during Olympiad over their continuing with Dubai plans (since dropped) while ignoring Turkey's offer to host Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match.

Merc: The English edition of My Great Precessors Vol. 4 on Bobby Fischer and other great Western players just came out. In it, Kasparov postulates that Fischer was far from a lock to beat Karpov in the cancelled 1975 match.

Checkmate! : My First Chess Book came out in October. Stirs controversy by saying a pawn can move one or two squares on its first move.

ChessBase "Fritz Trainer" DVDs with Kasparov on the Queen's Gambit and the Najdorf released. "Champion edition" of Fritz 8 with Kasparov video lessons.

Extra-curricular: Appeared in NY with silver-medal-winning US women's Olympiad team his Foundation sponsored and trained. (Also rumors of baby-eating, as yet unconfirmed.)

Politics: Continued to criticize Vladimir Putin for various anti-democratic actions in Russia, as well as for interference in disputed Ukraine election.

Commentary: A few cheapos about the Brissago match being boring (largely similar to those made by just about everyone else in the chess world, the last three games notwithstanding), but got through three interviews without a serious poke at Kramnik.

Although it's best to stick to these most recent horrors, we'll understand if you can't resist the classics.

December 14, 2004

Playing with Fire

If a mantra of the 60's was "don't trust anyone over 30," maybe we need our own version: Never invite anyone over 20." Just look at the challenge match between US champ Hikaru Nakamura and Sergey Karjakin in Cuernavaca, Mexico. (Nakamura won game five and the match yesterday.) With one game still to play, four out of five games have been decisive and the only draw was an exciting 60-mover that ended in a dead rook endgame. It's enough to help you forget this year's Linares and Dortmund draw-fests.

Of course there are reasons for this beyond fighting spirit. Most youngsters don't have the hyper-prepared openings that lead to so many drawish positions or the technique that means drawn endgames are drawn. But attitude gets most of the credit. "Black to play and draw" hasn't sunk in yet. Their innate optimism leads them to play to win inferior (or equal) positions instead of trying to draw them asap.

This doesn't need to be the latest log on the "how to solve the draw problem" fire. Draws are a natural part of the game. But I believe that a few years of legislation could lead to a needed mental sea change. Eliminate draw offers, see what happens. More extreme attempts can wait. Prohibiting move repetitions, as in Shogi, is a bit much. (Think of the effects: no more sacrifices for perpetual check.)

December 15, 2004

Krasenkow Cardiogram

While perusing the playing field of the upcoming "4th AMPLICO AIG LIFE Rapid Tournament" I noticed that Michal Krasenkow is the second seed, after Short, with a 2676 rating. A few years ago he had jumped up to the top ten, then fell out of the top 100, then back to the top 40, then out of the top 100 again. Now he's back in the top 30. The rating chart generated by ChessBase for Krasenkow looks like a healthy cardiogram.

I'm not picking on the affable Pole, whom I first met in Buenos Aires in 1998. I just find the extreme fluctuation interesting. The consensus has long been that what separates the super-elite is consistency. For a while you heard a lot about how the top-ten were top-40 players with better technique and better openings. The 1999 FIDE KO world championship, with its largely unheralded finalists, contributed to this myth.

There was much talk of how the top players exploited the system to preserve their ratings. There is some truth to this, since you can finish -1 in supertournaments and stay in the top-20 forever. But players like Krasenkow and Piket show how hard it is to score even that -1 consistently. I would love to see a more dynamic FIDE rating formula, but even with the stodgy system we have it's remarkable how stable the top 10 is. Even the top 20 is usual suspects with just a few transients from year to year. Yep, talent exists.

Of course if you have to play in open and team events in which you regularly face opponents rated 100-200 points lower than you, it's almost impossible to keep a consistent rating at any level. Still, reaching 2700 doesn't mean a free ride on the gravy train.

Ice Fisching

According to TWIC, Iceland has granted Bobby Fischer a residency permit. This could pave the way for Japan sending Fischer to the site of his conquest of the world title in 1972. Having him on a fairly remote island seems like a good idea. In my opinion the US will be delighted to let Fischer go to Iceland and out of the news. I don't expect anything more than pro forma comments from the US, if that.

There are those, especially Fischer himself, that feel he has been the subject of a long-standing manhunt, so now we'll find out. (The US could put up a fight in countless ways if they were really after him.) In October Fischer wrote a typically deranged letter to Iceland's embassador in Japan. He then complained that Iceland had abandoned him. Icelandic psychiatrists are licking their chops.

Former US co-champ Stuart Rachels recently wrote to New In Chess magazine to diagnose Fischer as a paranoid schizophrenic from afar. I've long held that view, but of course it's just a casual opinion. Such cases are often difficult to diagnose even after close examination. It's doubtful anyone will get close enough to Fischer to ever know.

December 16, 2004

Linares 2005

The field for Linares 2005 is complete. It's Kasparov, Anand, Leko, Topalov, Adams, Kasimdzhanov, and Vallejo. Kramnik was on the first and second lists of participants I saw, but won't be playing. I don't know at what stage negotiations broke down. He has been replaced by the FIDE champion, a comic twist. Linares continues with the bizarre seven-player field for no apparent reason.

December 17, 2004

Cash Carrots

With all the talk of changing rules and scoring systems to discourage draws and encourage fighting chess, it looks like putting up some cash works pretty well. Jim Roberts, one of the founders of America's Foundation for Chess, created a $5,000 "Bent Larsen Prize" for this year's US Championship. It was won by Alex Fishbein, who had only one draw and battled hard in every game.

It could be a coincidence, but the "statistics of drawishness" were way down compared to the 2003 Championship. Of course not every event can put up that kind of money, and it might have a similar effect if put into the top prizes. Still, this sort of bonus money is fun and it adds spice for the players and fans. Even someone who isn't in the running for the top places has a positive, as opposed to punitive, reason to play extra hard.

A similar award was given to Ljubo Ljubojevic (hi Inky!) at the 1994 Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic tournament in Buenos Aires. He came last, but won three games in a row near the end was honored by the organizers for his fighting spirit. That was an impromptu award, much like the one AF4C president Erik Anderson sprang on Shabalov and Akobian after the 2003 US Championship. These bonuses are subjective so I don't know if the players would prefer to see them in place of bigger overall prize funds.

2005 US Championship Photos

I finally posted a large photo gallery at the 2005 US Championship website. It's not exhaustive, so if you want to see a pic of your favorite player, let me know. I tried to cover some of players who didn't appear in the daily reviews. I hate sites with puny little pics, so these are quite large and not over-compressed. One of my other peeves about tournament sites are photos without captions, so all of these are labeled. All of the pics are by me and John Henderson.

December 19, 2004

J-Lo and Nakamura

Jennifer Lopez and Hikaru Nakamura were on television together a few days ago. No, he hasn't made his Tonight Show debut yet (that still may happen). The giant NY1 news channel has a segment in the morning where they go over interesting bits in the local papers. One they chose the other day was the New York Post's coverage of Nakamura's win in the US Championship.

There aren't any photos in the online version.

December 20, 2004

Chess in Film

Nice long chess scene in the 1944 Irene Dunne vehicle The White Cliffs of Dover on my beloved Turner Classic Movies right now. Two elderly players, one English, one American, argue about whether the variation they are playing originated with Blackburne or Pillsbury. "Blackburne played it in the Hastings Tournament of '95." "No, it was Pillsbury at Paris 1900!" They go as far as whether or not the lunge of a pawn was typical of Blackburne and whether or not Pillsbury could "play rings around any British player."

I'm not geek enough to freeze the board at different moments to reconstruct the position on the board, although they got the white square on the right. I'm impressed enough that the script included such knowledgeable chess conversation. (Both tournament references are correct.) Both authors of the movie were born in Austria-Hungary.

Coincidentally, I just watched Searching for Bobby Fischer on cable for the first time in a decade. Good film, funny to see Benjamin and others in the tournament scene. Some of the chess bits are annoying, but not as bad as The Luzhin Defense and its idiotic ending, far from the Nabokov book in every way.

Ice Fisching II

All the wires have a note reporting that the US government has contacted the Icelandic government about Iceland's offer of a residency permit to Bobby Fischer. The only quote they all give is vague:

"We received a message from the U.S. government on Friday suggesting that the Icelandic authorities withdraw the offer to Fischer," said Illugi Gunnarsson, an aide to Foreign Minister David Oddsson. He said the government had not yet responded.

But Aljazeera seems to have a later development (in an AFP report):

According to the Icelandic government on Monday, the US ambassador in Reykjavik – James Gadsden - was informed that its offer to Fischer stands. ... Iceland said it would not withdraw its offer because the US has not officially requested Fischer's extradition from Japan.

So the question is whether they will or not. The US "suggestion" to Iceland may just be gamesmanship. The US can act like they care so as not to appear to coddle someone who cheered 9/11, Iceland can make a show of standing up to the US, and they both get what they want. My theory that the US just wants Fischer to disappear will be largely proven wrong if they move to extradite. But basically if they don't get him, they probably didn't want him.

December 21, 2004

Best Never

One of the most popular chess debates, right after "best ever" and "how many GMs can dance on the head a pawn" is who was the strongest player never to become world champion. Discarding for convenience and tradition the recent spate of FIDE titlists, only 14 people have held the highest title.

What gets less attention is that the list of challengers is also very short. Before Petrosian successfully defended his title against Spassky in 1966, it hadn't been done since Alekhine beat Bogoljubow in 1934! Zukertort, Chigorin, Gunsberg, Marshall, Tarrasch, Janowski, Schlechter, Bogoljubow, Bronstein, Korchnoi, Short, Anand, and Leko. That's 13 failed challengers vs 14 champions, amazing. I consider this a good argument for the "champ as #1" principle. Anand and Leko still have legit chances to make this list even shorter. (I'm tempted to include Kamsky because even if Karpov's title wasn't legit, the cycle Kamsky won was just as tough.)

Kasparov is currently working on the Korchnoi section of Volume 5 of his My Great Predecessors book series. It is by far the largest section of any non-champion. When it comes to the eternal question of best non-champ, Kasparov has several rationales. If longevity at the top is factored in, Korchnoi wins hands down. But he was never the strongest player on the planet, something Kasparov says could be said of Keres at the end of the 30's. Rubinstein is the other member of this hallowed-if-frustrated trio.

December 22, 2004

Mouse 1 - Khalifman 0

I was just looking at the round five games of the Petrosian Memorial Internet Championship. France upset Russia, with a little help from Alexander Khalifman's mouse, so it appears. In this position, popularized by Radjabov last year, Khalifman played the uninspiring 18...Rb7?? 19.d6 1-0. It's obvious he meant to play the normal move 18...Rb6. The official site has round reports, and I'm sure they'll bring this up.

When I helped organize the first internet supertournament back in 2000 (the KasparovChess.com Grand Prix, won by Piket over Kasparov in the final), we added a "clock press" button to the interface for those players not used to internet chess. (We also let people play on regular boards with a relay if they insisted.) With the "clock press" option on, you made your move on the board and then clicked a "send" button. If you didn't click the send button in three seconds, the move was retracted. At first we were concerned you could use this to look at a variation, but really that would be too distracting. Several players who didn't have computer chess experience used it and it saved a few slips like Khalifman's.

Losing an important game (China is now in the lead by a point) on a mouse slip seems a little draconian. The game wasn't even out of theory and the move played loses an entire rook.

December 23, 2004

Crass Commercialism

You might wonder what keeps the servers humming around here and what keeps me in cat food and dark chocolate. (Don't worry, the cat food is for the cats.) While there is a "coalition of the willing to pay Mig," the rent is mostly paid by subscribers to the ChessNinja newsletters, White Belt and Black Belt. Note the subtle header on this page.

ChessNinja just passed its second anniverary. That's 209 weekly newsletters and 623 Daily Dirt entries, not to mention tens of thousands of message board posts. I wanted to see how it would do on the cheap, doing everything myself without paying for any advertising and only occasionally paying for freelance content. It has done well, mostly thanks to a great feedback loop with the readers, and I thank them.

For 2005 I thought it was time to push it up to a new level. This requires investing in content and I figured I'd start at the top. Last month 2004 US women's champion Jennifer Shahade came on board. This month it's 2005 US champ Hikaru Nakamura. (I'll eschew the exclamation points.) The next issue of Black Belt will include his annotations of his key win over Kaidanov in the US Championship.

The financial model of ChessNinja is based on my favorite saying: pixels are cheap. With no printing or distribution costs it costs the same to send to 1,000 people as to send to one. So I set the price incredibly low and make it up in volume, as the old joke goes. Paying for content disturbs this balance, at least at first. I don't want to raise the price ($5/mo. for four issues of Black Belt. $3/mo. for four issues of White Belt. $/6/mo. for both.) I'll need between 60 and 100 new subscribers to get back to the same profit level. With great stuff from Jennifer and Hikaru, and others who will be contributing, I don't think it will be a problem. And I'm willing to give it some time. Plus, current subscribers will be rewarded with a superior product, no small thing.

So here it is, the first ever subscribe link in the Daily Dirt. There are links to sample issues above. Any questions about the newsletters or anything else with running this crazy show are welcome.

December 24, 2004

Chess Jokes

I'm doing a Christmas article on chess jokes for ChessBase.com. Yes, yes, I know that just about all the chess jokes you've ever heard, particularly those reprinted regularly in chess magazines, are stupid. But there are a few decent ones and we thought it would be a light holiday piece.

Off the top of my head I know four: two ancient groaners, one not bad but still Reader's Digest level, and one cute one. I won't give them in full here, which would preempt tomorrow's article; the descriptions will suffice for those who know them not to post them. If you have one not included, post it. Give a source if you have it. It might be interesting to see how far back they go. My four:

1) The excruciating "chess nuts boasting in an open foyer" joke. AKA the only chess joke anyone seems to know and the joke you always know you are about to hear when someone says "you're a chessplayer right? I heard a chess joke the other day...

2) The dog playing chess in the park joke. Immortalized last year at ChessBase with a video of Alexander Roshal telling it. We're laughing with you, Sasha!

3) Dead chessplaying buddy returns as a ghost. Yes, there's chess in heaven. The bad news is...

4) The actually funny one. Mercifully short. Bc4 Italian. Bb5 Spanish. Ba6 Belgian! (Insert nationality or ethnicity to be denigrated. I heard it from a Dutchman, so Belgian.)

December 27, 2004

Top Level Chess

With Corus Wijk aan Zee starting on Jan. 14th, it's tempting to look beyond the current crop of interesting tournaments. Events with obscure names like Drammen and Harmonie are strong and interesting. Traditional tournaments in Pamplona, Hastings, and Reggio Emilia also provide a fun mix of players.

It's a shame that many fans (and media) only pay attention when the top-10 are in action. Consider that most chess fans can't tell a 2700 game from a 2500 game (and that there IS no difference 80% of the time, statistically speaking). Then factor in that games between 2700s are drawn 70% of the time (not including rapids) and you realize it's mostly a matter of celebrity.

This isn't to say the top tenners aren't better players or that they aren't capable of playing spectacular manifestations of genius out of reach of the lumpen-proletariat GM class. The elite are the elite for a reason and they deserve our attention. Still, it's a fact that these days the best way to distinguish category 20 from category 13 tournaments is by the percentage of draws.

December 30, 2004

Ice Fisching III

The latest:

Japanese Justice Minister Chieko Nohno agreed Tuesday to consider fugitive US chess legend Bobby Fischer's plea to go to Iceland to avoid deportation and potential jail in the United States. ... "Generally speaking, the destination of his deportation will be the United States but we will consider his wishes and whether he has a country willing to accept him as we decide where to deport him," Nohno told reporters.

Japanese authorities earlier said that people are deported to their countries of origin barring exceptional circumstances, such as their homelands being at war.

No one seems to be considering the effects of Fischer living in Iceland. It's not an easy place to hide in, assuming he wants to stay out of the spotlight. Every chess event in Iceland would be obscured by "will Bobby show up?" speculation. Every visiting player will be inundated with Fischer questions. If Kasparov, Kramnik, or Karpov set foot in Iceland the rumor mill would be out of control.

Iceland has hosted many great events in recent years, thanks partly to the work of the amazing Hrókurinn chess club. Having all future chess activity overshadowed by Fischer is of dubious value, unless he has a dramatic change of heart (and brain) and decides to be helpful and/or quiet. Fischer remaining a recluse would be better than Fischer sounding off with outrageous statements.

Of course it would be fantastic if Bobby got his head on straight and became a positive ambassador of the sport, although it's probably too late for that in more ways than one. A fresh start can do wonders, and just maybe the Icelandic show of kindness might spark something. More likely, we'd see more of Fischer's habit of biting the hand that feeds.

Jan 05 Rating List

I'm not sure why they don't wait to rate the many games being played right now, but FIDE has released the January 2005 rating list. As expected, Kasparov's +5 performance at the Russian Championship allowed him to stay above the 2800 level, if barely. That Anand has had such an incredible two years and is still below that mark is testimony to how hard it is to achieve, even with rating inflation. (Not just mathematical, but how there are so many more 2700s than a decade ago. To score a 2800 performance against the top 10 players in 1990 required a full point more than to do so today.) Topalov moved to #3 without playing thanks to Kramnik's loss of a few points in his match with Leko.

The only new face in the top 10 is Etienne Bacrot. The French former "world's youngest GM" has shot up in the past year and comes in at #9. Certainly "top ten" has more value than the rating itself. (He only played five games, so it's more a case of others dropping.) Judit Polgar (the real #9) isn't on the list due to inactivity. She's back in action at Corus in a few weeks.

Hikaru Nakamura's tremendous performances at the US Championship and in his match with Sergey Karjakin weren't rated, so his expected jump to the top 50 didn't happen. As usual with the FIDE list, various corrections will likely be made until, oh, it's time for the next list.

January 3, 2005

Snowbound

Happy New Year to one and all.

I've been blessedly far from the computer, at least my own computer. I'm in California doing the family rounds and spent New Year's at my dad's place in the mountains (see above) (Oak Run, to be precise). Of course I got to spend some of my time fixing my stepmother's computer (a Pentium II!), but most of the time was spend eating and playing around in the sudden snow. (Time was also made for my girlfriend and I to trounce my father, my sister, and her husband at the most excellent party game "Cranium". My charade of the expression "ants in the pants" will go into family history along with my father's attempt to explain "picnic" in clay by making a line of tiny ants moving toward a basket.)

I'll be back in NY soon enough. Meanwhile, how about those New Year's chess resolutions, both personal and global? Please share. I always say I'm going to make time to play tournaments again. I always hope for unification. I resolve to try and stamp out GM draws wherever they are found.

January 7, 2005

Corus 2005

With a brief moment of net time before heading back to New York (whence daily posts will resume), how about we get the Corus Wijk aan Zee hubbub bubbling? It starts Saturday, Jan. 15. The official site has much useful information in English thanks to the excellent Aviv Friedman. ChessBase.com will have daily reports.

Group A: Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Leko, Morozevich, Adams, Svidler, Polgar, Grischuk, Ponomariov, Sokolov, van Wely, Short, Bruzon.

Group B: Nikolic, Mamedyarov, Onischuk, Nielsen, Karjakin, Cheparinov, Carlsen, Nijboer, Stellwagen, Ernst, Ramirez, Stefanova, Kosteniuk, Smeets. So many youngsters that anything can happen here.

Anand is the big favorite. He has won two Corus tournaments in a row and has played the best chess in the world for the past two years. If he wins he will tie Kasparov's record for three Wijk aan Zee wins in a row. Polgar finished second last time she played there (two years ago) and is an x-factor after a year away from the board.

Leko and Adams tied for second behind Anand in 2004. Kramnik had a miserable time with his opening experiments and had an even score. It would be nice to see him come out hard to ratify the title he barely kept against Leko, but Big Vlad doesn't play for anyone but himself, so we'll see. If he tries to keep up with Anand we could have a totally different event than if he plays for his +2.

Chess fans around the world are still waiting for Morozevich to have a big supertournament showing. Grischuk, Svidler, Topalov, and Ponomariov are all capable of winning this event outright if Anand falls into the sea. Another great Corus tournament, let the handicapping begin!

January 8, 2005

Radjabov Squeaks

Since it's moving into other posts, here's a place to talk about Teimour Radjabov's shot about how Garry Kasparov "uses his name, his influence in the chess world to persuade tournament organizers not to invite me to play."

Really I think discussing this sort of silliness gives it attention it doesn't deserve. What tournaments has he been kept out of? Why would organizers listen to Kasparov about Radjabov playing, especially since it's hard to find any events Kasparov played in where this would even be relevant. You'd think the kid would be happy with his +1 =3 score against Kasparov. But this has little to do with Kasparov.

Radjabov is probably talking about Linares, where he played in 2003 and 2004 and wasn't invited this year. His performances were okay, but the bottom line is that he was invited as a youthful novelty to an event that usually only includes members of the top ten, plus local player Paco Vallejo now that he's top 30 (now 20). Now that Radjabov is no longer the youngest and fairest (see Karjakin and Carlsen), it's all about rating and there are 35 players ahead of Radjabov on the list. (Radjabov scored -3 total in his two Linares appearances.)

That's not to say that Kasparov didn't stop treating him like a kid brother after he lost a bitter game to him in Linares 2003. No more ice-cream and pats on the head after you show you are a big boy. Kasparov can be spiteful and hates having a minus score against anybody. But Radjabov is likely frustrated by his effortless rise slowing, as it always does for top juniors. His rating went up a dozen points in 2004. Even Leko and Ponomariov had their plateaus, although Karjakin and Carlsen's current vertical charts gives pause.

January 10, 2005

Paper Trail

I just received a curiously worded tournament press release from MonRoi, an entity of which I was previously unaware. The 10-player round robin with six GMs starts on January 15 in Montreal. Perhaps more interesting than the field is the MonRoi broadcast system that will be used for the first time in an international event. Each player gets a palm PC-looking device to record the moves instead of using a paper scoresheet. This "ECM" transmits the moves over a wireless network to a central PC. In turn the games can be broadcast online.

Problems are inevitable as with any new system, but I guess this is a step in the right direction. It still seems strange to have the players recording the moves at all when electronic boards are increasingly prevalent. Wireless boards are in the works. One advantage of the MonRoi concept is that each player keeps his little computer, which stores many games. The potential for abuse is not trivial, although not as great as the potential for errors.

January 11, 2005

Secret Games

While recapping US Champ Hikaru Nakamura's recent triumphs I left out a tournament of which he was most proud. (Hey, did I mention he's now contributing to the ChessNinja Black Belt newsletter?) In October Nakamura scored 5.5/6 at the Western States Open in Reno to finish a full point ahead of a field that included over a dozen US Championship players. In three consecutive rounds he beat veteran GMs Wojtkiewicz, Kudrin, and Yermolinsky in what were described to me by Nakamura's step-father Sunil Weermantry as long grinds.

I say "described" because the games themselves are not readily available! In this era of live online broadcasts and daily event coverage, the event organizer wants seven dollars to send you the bulletins with 110 games from the open section! While it's his right to do as he wishes with his bulletins (and they may contain added value such as analysis), it seems obvious he would profit much more from the publicity gained by releasing the games widely so places like ChessBase.com with their hundreds of thousands of readers could report on the event. I can't imagine he sells more than a handful of the bulletins, especially once the event is over. I emailed the organizer and didn't get the games or a reply. Bizarre.

While the organizer owns the scoresheets, the gamescores themselves aren't copyrightable property. So if I went around to the players to collect as many scores as I could I could post them (or even sell them) myself. In 1998 FIDE tried to charge to download the Olympiad games. They gave up after a few rounds. There is never a shortage of people willing to repeat dumb ideas.

January 12, 2005

The Chicken Factor

It was almost six years ago when I, then writing at TWIC, came up with an idea to quantify and castigate "fightless" GM draws in Mig on Chess #116. Showing my usual flair for names that guarantee no one will take my ideas seriously, I called it "the Chicken Factor." It is a formula that analyzes a gamescore and produces a score for each player that says whether or not it was a fighting draw or a pathetic excuse for a game. (I made minor refinements published in MoC #118, see below with example.) ChessWise put my Excel Chicken Factor calculator online and it's still up.

The basic idea is to subtract the number of moves from total value of each player's pieces. I was surprised to find that the formula actually worked. It misread short, sharp repetition draws, but those are very rare and in the great scheme of things (a player's career or an entire tournament) would be statistically irrelevant. I had added a bunch of optional subjective factors, although I now think they are superfluous for the same reason. The original formula had modifiers based on color and the ratings of the players, so you got a bonus if you drew with black against a higher-rated player, etc. But these are cop-outs that go against the Chicken Factor ethos of promoting fighting chess regardless of color and rating points. No excuses!

I'm bringing this up because my vision for the CF may soon be realized. The laboriousness of calculating each game made it more of a joke than a tool. I said then that it would be truly powerful to have a PGN reader/calculator or to build it into database formats. Now that may actually be happening, so post your thoughts and suggestions.

The CF isn't an attack on chess professionals; I'm very much hoping to help them. Consider it an intervention to break the addiction to short draws. That addiction is harmful to the game, in this case meaning fan interest and sponsorship. I'm still in favor of move minimums, but the CF doesn't force anyone to do anything; it is an objective statistic. (Which is partly why I came up with it. Several GMs complained that I was too harsh in criticizing them for short draws. So the formula would do it for me.) You can even take it positively, as a method for rewarding those who fight hard in every game.

Continue reading "The Chicken Factor" »

Databases of the Times

Nothing much new for this crowd, but it's something to see Greg Shahade's photo on the homepage of the NY Times. Today there's an article on how databases have changed the game. There are comments by various NY players like Bonin, Shahade, and Ehlvest, as well as by the volks at ChessBase. One para reminded me of various conversations I had with players at the US Championship in San Diego.

"The Internet Chess Club, which is based in Pittsburgh, archives all of the games from top players who play at the site, which is one reason so many people know what Mr. Bonin plays."

In San Diego it came out that many players, particularly the more net-savvy youngsters, had gone beyond the MegaBase and TWIC and had prepared by looking at their opponents' blitz games from the ICC. (Playchess.com doesn't archive games online.) Many players try out openings in blitz games they used to think were anonymous. Many GMs maintain anonymous accounts, but the real names tend to leak out, especially in the community. Soon there might be a black-market in secret identities. I would expect there to be a "do not archive games online" account option to be added.

January 14, 2005

The Hastings System

If you have no trouble with differential equations and are looking for a challenge, check out the rules for the recently completed 2004-05 Hastings Congress. (Won by my old KasparovChess coworker Vladimir Belov, now all grown up. Good job!)

1,871 words are needed to explain the rules. They didn't have the money to run a traditional Premier section, so it was combined with the Challengers in a KO with "lucky losers," players who lost but were needed to fill out the next round of the draw and so moved on anyway.

Of more interest than the tournament format was the time control:

The rate of play shall be 40 moves in the first 70 minutes for White and 90 minutes for Black, plus 20 minutes extra for all the remaining moves; adding on one minute per move from the first. This shall apply throughout all rounds in both tournaments.

Rationale isn't given, but I assume it was to encourage more decisive results and so avoid playoff games. After all, if this equalizes the colors, wouldn't both players fight equally hard for a win and so produce more decisive games? Not a bad theory, but at least this time around it didn't work out. White still won more games and 44% of the games were drawn.

Two schools of thought to start out with. 1) Without either side starting with a clear advantage, the mathematical chance of a draw is higher. This is obvious if you take the game as a science. But because almost all draws are agreed in positions still with considerable potential to produce a decisive result, this isn't as relevant as 2): since most players consider a draw with black to be a success, taking away the disadvantage of black by giving a time bonus should encourage both players to play for a win, which in turn, because humans make mistakes, would lead to fewer draws (as well, of course, as more wins for black).

So much for the theories. Perhaps the SEC mentality is too deeply engrained and experiments like this one need more time. On the other hand, giving Anand a 20-minute time advantage hardly seems fair!

January 15, 2005

Corus Won't Bore Us

Today's first round was as close as Corus comes to a boring day of chess. The sheer size of the event is what saves it. Having 14 players (Linares has seven) means a broader range of ratings and increases the chance that a few will be hot and a few will be cold. And having seven games each day means even if you have three pathetic draws like today you'll still have a few good games. (A full report with analysis will be up soon at ChessBase.com.)

Had FIDE not botched the handling of the Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match - insisting it would be in January - Kasparov would be playing in Wijk aan Zee now. As he pointed out to me, it would probably have been the first time the top nine rated players in the world faced off in the same event.

Kasparov is also annoyed that Kramnik declined his Linares invitation this year. From what I can tell, his obsession with getting revenge against Kramnik isn't much shared in the chess world. Most fans will be more interested in his games against Anand, who has clearly surpassed Kramnik in the past year or two and has played better chess than anyone.

January 17, 2005

Chess for Peace?

A curious editorial in the UK Sunday Times about chess for kids in Scotland. It's a little confusing because it blends in coverage of another initiative for teaching Scottish history. The general idea seems to be that chess will decrease violence. There's more:

Anyhow, whatever sacrificing a pawn does to the heartbeat, it is claimed that since a chess development programme was introduced into seven primary schools in an Aberdeen housing scheme in 2001, school attendance has risen, literacy and numeracy have been enhanced and classroom behaviour has improved. Whole families have become involved as they rediscover the joys of adult-child rivalry. Peter Hamilton, the council’s community learning and development manager, even claims that introducing the game has resulted in more "active citizenship", although he does not say quite how.

Chess: cure for all of society's ills. Who knew?

January 18, 2005

#400 On My Mind

Not that you can tell, but this is the 400th Daily Dirt entry. That it has taken over two years to get here proves that perhaps "daily" wasn't the best name, but it was never really intended to be a destination site. I mostly wanted a place to put small items not worthy of a full article and someplace to link to from my ChessBase articles when I launched ChessNinja so people could find out about the newsletters. Now that there are over 5,000 readers every day I feel pressure to actually provide something. (Even if it's waffle meta-content like this.)

When Leonard "The Dean" Barden said kind words about the Daily Dirt in his legendary Guardian column a few weeks ago I felt that maybe I had become too establishment (when I finished feeling delighted). After all, my shaved head and leather jacket aren't visible online.

So thanks for reading and especially for commenting. We've had posts from GMs, super-GMs, US champions, and USCF presidents, and I know from email that people out there are listening. So speak up! (I'll note here that this publishing system masks your email address so it's not picked up by spam-bots, so feel free to post as a real human instead of an anonymous coward, as Slashdot calls them.)

Kasparov Exits FIDE WCh

Overdue or premature? The end of the best hope for unification or the end of something that never should have existed? Say what you will, and there's a lot to say. Garry Kasparov today issued a press release (see below) to explain the end of his negotiations for his match with FIDE champ Kasimdzhanov. Kasparov has been kicking himself for the past month about having had to cancel his invitation to Corus Wijk aan Zee because of the doomed FIDE match. (Hey, at least he waited for the off day.)

The entire point of having Kasparov play the FIDE champion was quick and messy unification with the classical champion, the FIDE champion, and the world #1. That was almost three years ago. With quick out of the picture we were left with messy. With FIDE in charge it went directly to ugly and pathetic.

Now it's over, but what's next? Kramnik might decide that a unification match against Kasimdzhanov is better than one against the winner of Kasparov and Kasimdzhanov. Even Kasparov couldn't guess what FIDE's reaction would be. Ilyumzhinov doesn't like being upstaged, so it could be dramatic. Will a new cycle rise from the ashes? Will the ACP and FIDE do more than spell DIP CAFE? And will the record for Daily Dirt comments be broken?

Continue reading "Kasparov Exits FIDE WCh" »

January 19, 2005

Ice Fisching IV

The Mainichi Daily News again has the best recap of the latest Bobby Fischer news. Fischer's supporters are trying the tactic of accusing the Japanese government of kowtowing to the US. I'm not sure if insulting the people holding the keys to your cell is the best idea. The Japanese courts still say they aren't prepared to send Fischer to Iceland since the default is to deport to country of origin. (Methinks Fischer should have changed his nationality asap after celebrating 9/11 on a radio interview.) I'm just amazed that this tortuous limbo has continued for so long. (You can find the other Fischer updates by searching for his name on the left.)

January 20, 2005

FIDE Responds

The international chess federation has issued a press release responding to Garry Kasparov's "unilateral withdrawal" from the 2005 unification match against Rustam Kasimdzhanov that had been scheduled for Turkey in April. In it, they say that if only Kasparov had waited one more week (until Jan. 25), that the monetary guarantees the players demanded would have been there.

Yes, well, that's just it, isn't it? It's always one more week. Then another, then another, and then it turns out your sheik is really just another exile from Lawrence of Arabia with too much time and too little money. And if it turns out to be true this time, against all possible odds, and the money comes through next week, it is almost a sure thing that it wouldn't have been true had Kasparov not put his foot down at last. But let's not have that "what next?" discussion until it happens. Of course when it doesn't happen FIDE will say it's because of Kasparov's letter, which is really the point of their press release: prepare the blame.

January 21, 2005

ACP: Prague is Dead

The Association of Chess Professionals issued a brief statement (see below) on Kasparov's withdrawal from the FIDE/Kasimdzhanov/Turkey/unification match. (Unless of course the money magically appears in the next few days, at which point Kasparov's letter will look like a clever negotiating tool.)

Kramnik/ACP have been "ready to cooperate" for a long time. The question is whether they are ready to lead and to do something like put together a new cycle, find sponsorship, and put money where their mouth is. If they do, the pressure will be on Ilyumzhinov to bring FIDE to the table or be cut out of the picture. (Perhaps not a bad thing considering their weapons of match destruction.) The longer things are open, the more likely FIDE is to come up with something horrible. That could be another KO, replacing Kasparov, or something even worse.

Continue reading "ACP: Prague is Dead" »

January 22, 2005

Corus at the Half

A very balanced event on paper has proven to be very balanced in practice. Four players are tied for the lead with +2. One of them is Anand, who has won three in a row. There has been a lot of great fighting chess so far. Only three players are without a loss: Leko, Adams, and Grischuk. Morozevich is performing his supertournament disappearing act even more dramatically than usual. His -5 performance has upset the crosstable much the way Timman often used to. (Moro always had a tough time against Timman, so maybe an invisible mantle has been passed.)

There are many games among the leaders to come, plus the always-anticipated Anand-Kramnik tomorrow. +4 is still looking good enough for clear first place in this tight field. Kudos to Ponomariov for some exciting chess. He's showing the fire that earned him the FIDE Ch in 2001 and second place in Linares in 2002.

January 24, 2005

Chess Week in UK

Today is the first day of National Chess Week in the UK. It raises money for the children's charity Barnardo's. It launched last October (photos and stories here and here.)

The official site makes much hay of celebrities who play chess. Madonna and Lennox Lewis are predictably trotted out. (We saw this story here last year.) Chess uses celebrities for image, but most of the celebrities use chess the same way. I'm sure some of them really like the game, and a few even back it up by sponsoring chess clubs and events. But much as many fictional characters use chess to show intelligence and depth, publicists and celebs use it too. I prefer 13-year-old Katie's Chess Week testimony about why she plays chess.

Chess in the Funnies

The popular comic strip Baby Blues today starts a six-day series in which the father is teaching his kids how to play chess. (It actually ran in the papers a few weeks ago; the strips are delayed for two weeks on the web.) In the first one (Jan. 10, up now), Dad says "It's an ancient game of skill and strategy that is said to be one of the finest achievements of the human mind!" One excited kid then asks, "You're going to teach us how to play poker?" Ouch. [Thanks to vigilant reader Michael Whisenhunt of North Carolina.]

January 25, 2005

Guest Blogger: Jen Shahade

Before we get down to serious analysis, I want to give a couple shout-outs, first to "Chess Moms," a label and T-shirt slogan for the hyper moms of would-be prodigies. Now Judit Polgar is leading the way in changing the meaning of "Chess Mom." True, women do sometimes drop out of chess once they start families. But certainly there are no statistics to show that those who do stick with it play any worse.

In fact, the most impressive results from the Mallorca Olympiad were from two-time mothers, Susan Polgar, (who had the highest performance in the event, 2622) and Viktoria Cmilyte, gold medallist on board one. Judit, in her first outing since the birth of her child Oliver started Wijk Ann Zee with a bang by defeating Peter Svidler in a clean defense from the Marshall Attack.

I was happy to see Judit win, but the game moved me for a more somber reason. I had spent six hours analyzing the white side of this line with IM Victor Frias. After too many sacrifices, and too much coffee, we got the strong sense that the white side of the Marshall is more fun than we originally imagined. The pressure is really on black, said Frias, to prove something. If black doesn't mate fast, white will gain counterplay in the center as well as the queenside. This was a typically lucid synopsis from Victor..

He deserves much credit for making me a champion. Before both my U.S. women's victories in 2002, 2004 (and 2003, when i lost in the playoff), I had marathon study sessions with Victor. After each of these, I emerged in love with chess and in energetic form. Frias passed away January 15 at the age of 49 – a huge loss to American chess.

[2002 and 2004 US women's champion Jennifer Shahade of Brooklyn contributes monthly to the Black Belt newsletter, from which this is an excerpt.]

January 27, 2005

Shahade TV

Not to turn this into the Jen Shahade news center, but by coincidence John Henderson sent me this link the other day. It's a recent TV piece on her that you can watch online.

January 28, 2005

Chess on the Rock

The Gibtelecom Chess Festival is underway on the UK's tiny peninsula in Spain, Gibraltar. I was there ten years ago, quite a fascinating place. There are spectacular caves and on a clear day you can see Africa. The famous Rock also hosts the only monkeys native to Europe, which have apparently been put to work designing chess websites.

The Master's open has a very impressive field, led by Alexei Shirov. He recently posted here against playing in open tournaments without compensation, so an agreement must have been reached! Black Belt contributor Hikaru Nakamura has 2.5/3. His first round win against former British champ Michael Hennigan had this picturesque final position.

January 30, 2005

Leko Wins Corus 2005

I'll have a long wrap-up at ChessBase.com soon, but wanted to kick-start the topic. It was a remarkably balanced event other than the bottom falling out for Morozevich and Sokolov. Leko was the only undefeated player, Sokolov the only one without a win. Like just about everyone I considered Anand the favorite, although I am on the record here as saying Leko would be my pick "if Anand were hit by a bus." He wasn't, but somewhat fittingly he lost to Leko.

Topalov was dazzling as usual, but you can't lose two games (another prediction that worked out for me) and win an event like this. Overall a spectacular tournament full of fighting chess and exciting games. The last round was a bit of a let-down; most of the games barely left theory. Kramnik's 11-mover with white against the out-of-form Morozevich is particularly vexing. At least van Wely got his first win. Karjakin won the B group, although the way he's going he might have been invited to the A group next year anyway!

Semper FIDE

I'm not much into mythology, but god help us. Ilyumzhinov crony Berik Balgabaev told a Russian paper that FIDE will raise funds for another knock-out tournament. Gee, the last one went so well. They're almost out of places to hold these things. Where to next? North Korea with a plutonium trophy?

Unreasonable Demands

Balgabaev also blames the failure of the unification matches on "Kasparov's unreasonable financial demands." This is amusing if only because FIDE 1) guaranteed these amounts several times and 2) wanted an exorbitant amount itself for doing nothing.

But while FIDE was/is in a mess of its own making, it's true that players in these world championship matches have had unrealistic monetary expectations. That goes for Kasparov as well as Kramnik, whose match with Leko was delayed for years for a money hunt. With no external or organizational imperative to play, it makes sense for them to wait until the biggest money can be found. Why play for $250,000 now if you might get $400,000 in a year or two?

February 2, 2005

Whole Lotta Dong

Several Vietnamese sources have recent stories on newly entitled 14-year-old GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. This one includes this terrifying and tragic line:

"At the age of only four, Truong Son became a professional chess player."

Makes you wonder what the lazy brat was doing during his first three years. The teen has been feted and now rewarded for his successes according to this story:

"The Tien Dat Electronic Company on Feb. 2 rewarded Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, who had just clinched his International Chess Grandmaster title at the age of 14 years and 10 months, with a sum of 1,000 USD.

With the aim of creating favourable conditions for the talented young athlete, the company is also providing a sum of 45,000 VND per day for three years (from June, 2002 to June, 2005). Son has recently obtained high results at domestic and international tournaments.

The Deputy President of the Viet Nam Chess Federation (VCF) said that the success of Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son who topped Viet Nam's list of 10 outstanding athletes in 2004, was the result of the effective combination of his talent and the Viet Nam Sports and Physical Training Committee's training scheme."

Before you get all impressed with that per diem, that's, umm, a little under three dollars a day. Purchasing power equivalency brings that up a lot, however, and $1,039 a year isn't so bad when according to this page: "The annual base pay [in Vietnam] for fresh graduates from the Business Administration faculty is at an average of US$2,476." In other words, 45,000 dong a day is more than the average Vietnamese wage, as you can see here.

More importantly, chess. Truong Son is another Nagy Baby, gaining his GM norms at the First Saturday tournaments in Hungary expressly created by Laszlo Nagy to have optimum norm chances. Three GMs, all usually rated under 2500, are invited in while the norm-seekers pay to play. From what I can tell, Son has never played anyone rated over 2550 and has three career wins against players rated over 2500.

This doesn't mean he isn't a great prospect or that getting a GM title is trivial other than relative to 20 years ago. (More on that later.) But comparing these kids to Fischer and Judit Polgar, who were regularly playing and beating world-class GMs at 14, is way off the mark. Bu Xiangzhi, a brief "youngest ever" who also got his norms in somewhat contrived fashion, is now 19 and isn't currently in the top 100.

February 4, 2005

Your Federation at Work

Two of the scarier items from the recently released minutes of the FIDE General Assembly meeting held last October. Recommended only for insomniacs.

"To standardise the time control for all major tournaments, he proposed a time control of: 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per a move, starting from move 1."

"Mr. Koya mentioned that a new age category would be introduced in the World Youth Championships, for children under 8."

Eek. As for our recent topic of title proliferation, according to the fascinating 2003 Treasurer's Report, FIDE got $126,224 for title applications. Making titles harder to get would be a financial hardship. That being the case, perhaps the creation of a new title is more likely. The oft-proposed, already existing unofficial title "Super GM" is one candidate. Solving title over-proliferation with a new title is pretty ugly. In another ten or fifteen years we'll need another one unless the title is relative (i.e. top 100 instead of a rating point like 2600).

Friday Cat Blogging

The lighter side of blogging, a tradition that has caught on around the web. Yes, it's Friday Cat Blogging. This is Morrigan, Morri for short. One good eye. Black and white, of course.

February 6, 2005

It's a Chess Match

Watch out or you'll be crushed by all the clanking chess metaphors around this year's Super Bowl. American football is indeed a very cerebral game, if not for most of the players, many of whom can read. All media blah-blah about the strategic preparation by the coaches of the Patriots and the Eagles has made my normal news trawls for chess difficult.

February 7, 2005

Youth Is Served

A few days ago I got the press release for the 18th Ciudad de Leon tournament that isn't until June. Event press chief GM Zenon Franco, a top-notch sort whom I hired to cover Spain for KasparovChess.com back in the day, is certainly on top of things. The players are Viswanathan Anand, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Alexei Shirov and Magnus Carlsen.

(The website only has a Flash placeholder up right now. In keeping with the tradition of Spanish chess sites I'm sure they are busy building even more Flash in order to make the site so heavy nobody will be able to see the games come June.)

Not that I'm against it, but when was the beginning of our obsession with youth in chess? Wunderkinds and prodigies have been around as long as the game itself, but we weren't always so eager to pop them into premier events in place of elite professionals. Of course today these kids ARE elite professionals. Judit Polgar really didn't get extraordinary invitations when she was 12-13.

In events like Leon, the rapid time control provides something of an equalizer. Still, there is much of the upset watch and man-bites-dog in these invitations. Results like Karjakin's Bali win over Shirov and Radjabov's Linares win over Kasparov make news and organizers like news. And we all want to see the Next Big Thing in action. You can't expect them to turn down the chance to make money and play the best, even if they are overmatched.

February 8, 2005

Fischer Files

The Mainichi Daily News has put up an index page for its stories on the Bobby Fischer affair. Their latest was based on recent radio interviews with Fischer and of course they highlighted his complaint that he couldn't get any alcohol in detention. Interestingly - or not - that story, from Jan. 29, isn't available. Perhaps just a misplaced link.

February 9, 2005

Zen and the Art of Cycle Maintenance

Stealing someone's comment for content, GM Yermolinsky posted this in the "Youth Is Served" thread.

"The absence of World Championship qualification system hurts the young talent the most. Only with the worthy goal in mind could Tal, Karpov and Kasparov become what they became.

Today's young stars allow themselves to be manipulated by the chess media into believing that garbage events like Leon is what chess is all about. Nothing good will come out of this. In 10 years we'll still be sitting there debating a Kramnik-Kasparov match."

I second that emotion. If you think that's hyperbole, look where we were 10 years ago and we're still arguing about the PCA and the Kasparov/Short breakaway. To partially excuse the press, we have to hype whatever we have in front of us. If the players play, we aren't going to ignore them.

There is a chicken/egg problem too. The proliferation of rapid events and shows is due to their better bang for the buck. Fewer players to pay, shorter events, etc. Since even FIDE doesn't care about the quality of the chess, why not rapid or even blitz? These disposable events leave no (well, very few) great games, no great battles to inspire present or past generations of players and fans.

At the US Championships in San Diego a few months ago I had a long chat with New In Chess editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam about the Melody Amber rapid/blindfold tournament in Monaco. Dirk Jan is the press officer there now and insisted that it's a genuine struggle that the players take very seriously. (I had called it a sideshow or something similar in a column.) I don't take anything away from the players, and certainly blindfold is a brutal test, but I've been to enough rapid events to say six-hour chess is a different world.

The young stars Yermo talks about are like many young fans today; they don't remember how great it was to follow the pursuit of the real world championship. I fondly remember poring over each issue of Inside Chess (RIP) during the interzonals and candidates matches. They quite simply mattered in a way that tournaments and rating points did not. "Candidate" was a title with meaning.

This isn't just nostalgia; it's important to think about why we want what we want. It's not like 1990 was a golden paradise. But the climb to the championship and the battle for the title had meaning in and out of the chess world.

February 10, 2005

Uncle Miggy

With some minor assistance from my sister and her husband, I became an uncle yesterday! (No, I'm not posting any pics. You're welcome.) Now to the most important question: When does the chess training program begin? My sister refused to read Botvinnik's lectures to him while he was in the womb, so we're already way behind. I'm thinking the Verhoeven & Skinner book of Alekhine's games would make a fine baby gift. They could always use it as a changing table.

February 11, 2005

World Championship Game

No, not a chess game. It could be a while before we see another one of those. My latest Mig on Chess column at ChessBase includes a board game that lets you play along on the road to the championship. Unfortunately it's quite realistic. I left out a few cheapos here and there, maybe for the second edition.

February 12, 2005

Ultimate Blunder

This is really Tim Krabbé's territory, but since it gives me an excuse to link to him, I'll put it up here. It's always possible that there was an error in the score, but this seems like a plausible version of what Krabbé calls "the ultimate blunder" (his examples), resigning in a winning position.

In this diagram from Bjelobrk (2377) - Watson (2286), Auckland, played a few weeks ago, White just played 36.Qd8-d7 and Black understandably resigned. I was going through games for the Black Belt tactics sections when I came across this, but it shouldn't require any belt at all to figure out what Black should have played. (In case you haven't had your coffee yet today 36...Qxg2+! is mate in 3.) For Mr. Watson's sanity, let's hope there has been some mistake! [As explained by a comment below, there was a mistake. White did play 36.Bc4+ and Black resigned.] White could have mated with 36.Bc4+, so I suppose this is just if it did happen this way. Full gamescore from TWIC below.

Continue reading "Ultimate Blunder" »

February 14, 2005

Love Is in the Air

Feeling romantic? Get any candy for Valentine's Day (R)? Sure it's a Hallmark holiday, but if it provides an excuse for some fine dining, as in my case, I won't complain. Romance and chess aren't exactly used in the same sentence very often, but despite popular conception, they can show up in the same lifetime. The number of women players with gargantuan hyphenated names indicates that. There are many well-known chess couples, with dozens of marriages (divorces, marriages, rinse and repeat).

If I recall, there were four married couples playing in the 2003 US Championship. Does the couple that analyzes the Queen's Gambit together stay together? Or should chess be avoided in a relationship between two competitive players? Working on your endgame with a hunk or hottie sounds great, but you'd think something would burn out. You have to have something else to talk about, right? (Please say yes.) Or should your romantic life be an escape from chess?

February 17, 2005

FIDE Gasps Again

Like zombies, vampires, and the career of Keanu Reeves, you just can't kill FIDE unification match rumors. FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is back on the spin machine with more promises. Having previously guaranteed a million dollars in money he didn't produce he's now upped the prize fund. Heck, why not triple it since there isn't any money anyway? From no sponsors and no money he's now saying there's more money and three sponsors.

"So, it appears that the process of chess unification will go on without the World No. 1 player. However, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov seems to be prepared for that. Yesterday, he said that in case of Kasparov's refusal other candidates will play against Kasimdzhanov – in particular, Viswanathan Anand (India) or Peter Leko (Hungary). And three countries have already offered to host the match – Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates."

If the idea of a unification plan with the world #1 involved is out the window, why not simply cut to the point and put Kramnik himself at the top of the list? We had a (very) long discussion here about how perverse it would be to move down the rating list after Kasparov's exit (only of people who didn't play in Libya, so Topalov is out but Leko and Morozevich are okay?!?), but it appears my comment that it's "just insane enough for Ilyumzhinov to do it" is coming true. How far down the list would they go? Until they pass Kasimdzhanov's spot?

The irony of Anand refusing to play in the Libya KO because it was a qualifier to play Kasparov and then accepting a match against the Libya winner would be apocalyptic. But if FIDE is crazy enough to do it, why not play? I'd say the same to Kasparov, Leko, and Kasimdzhanov, considering that FIDE's next step may be to have the poor Uzbekistani play a match against himself for the title. And hey, I like chess so play some chess. But what's the point in calling it unification since this road leads nowhere? While it's obvious that Kramnik would be more likely to grant a match to anyone other than Kasparov, he still has little incentive to do so.

This match is no longer about unification at all and FIDE knows it. They are just looking to make a buck, syphoning their 20% plus kickbacks from the sponsors. If the money is in the bank Kasparov might play, and unless Anand has lost his mind he'd insist on the same. Ilyumzhinov needs to stop giving interviews and start filling out deposit slips.

February 18, 2005

Your Federation and You

I've received several items from people complaining about the USCF, especially troubles with ratings. The problems at the USCF could easily warrant their own blog, which is sort of what they have in the chess politics newsgroup. There you can catch up on the latest financial scandals as well as enough bombast, slander, and partisanship to make the US Congress look like a quilting circle.

Before I start firing off email, digging up the bodies, and nailing hides to the wall, I thought I'd ask you first what you want from your chess federation. "Sanity, probity, and fulfilling their promises" seems like a minimum. Ratings, a magazine, Olympiad teams selected by transparent rules? Support of scholastic chess, help for professional players, sponsorship for championships, working internationally to change FIDE? Start small, stay solvent? All of the above?

What are your priorities? What questions do you have for your federation's leaders, or potential leaders? (Not just in the US.) Remember that as much as we complain about FIDE, technically it represents the federations, not individuals. (Literally it represents Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, something else that should be addressed.)

February 19, 2005

Aeroflot 2005

The awesome spectacle that is the Aeroflot Open is halfway over. There has been some trouble with the gamescores here and there, but there has been a splendid amount of fighting chess. If you are into rooting for Daily Dirt posters, Emil Sutovsky just took a share of first place with 4.5/5. Alex Yermolinsky on an even score.

Ponomariov was a late entry but hasn't shown much. Karjakin and Radjabov both have 3/5. I'm also keeping an eye on my old friend from Argentina, Maxim Sorokin, who moved back to Russia a few years ago. We had a surprise reunion at the FIDE KO in Moscow in 2001. He was there as Volkov's second, I believe.

This mighty event could easily be turned into the first stage of a world championship cycle. Drop some more money into it, add a rest day, get that weird smell out of the rooms at the Rossia hotel and you're all set!

February 20, 2005

Missed Opportunity

This is Vasquez-Ni Hua from Aeroflot. Black just played 41...Ra3. I annotated this endgame for the latest Black Belt and this position just has to be shared.

Here White missed a chance for a brilliant swindle and went on to lose. I don't remember seeing this sort of sequence before. When you know there's something to look for it shouldn't take long to find. Answer below.

Continue reading "Missed Opportunity" »

February 22, 2005

Leko vs Nakamura

It's Leko against Nakamura in a Fists of Fire event! Really. [Thanks to J Good.]

Update: Nakamura won on a TKO in just 54 seconds!

February 23, 2005

Go Go Linares 2005

Linares starts today. We have a big one in the first round, with Leko with white going for his first-ever win against Kasparov. In an effort of carefully camouflaged hackery, I've repackaged a Corus review that never ran and combined it with a Linares preview. These events tend to be so tight that picking a favorite is a bit silly. When one point separates the top three players, a bit of luck in one game means more than all the carefully considered factors.

I'm more interested in having every player score at least one win. It would probably be even better if every player also had at least one loss! This year they finally put the money into the prize fund instead of appearance fees. With tens of thousands of dollars on the line you probably won't see many 11-move draws in the final round.

The official site should be showing the games live. If I can work the scheduling out I'm going to try to do some commentary, audio or chat, at Playchess.com. You can download a free 30-day client or (plug ahead) get a somewhat simplified six-month trial client with a subscription to ChessNinja.

February 24, 2005

Ice Fisching V

Good news on the Fischer front. Iceland has granted Fischer a special passport, which might allow him to leave detention in Japan. At the very least this should force the Japanese and American governments to show their cards. Do they really want him or not? Japan is starting to run out of excuses based on obscure protocol. Kudos to the Icelandic group for doing some real work.

This special "foreigner's passport" would let Fischer travel freely in Western Europe. He's been in Asia for quite a while, where he can live in relative obscurity (and not run into too many Jews). It will be harder to stay out of the limelight in Europe, if that's even what he wants. I don't know what the chess community would do if Fischer started getting 50% of the already sparse chess press. And yes, there IS such a thing as bad publicity.

Boon(doggle)

The United States Chess Federation a belated southward migration. It's been in a temporary (undisclosed?) location in Crossville, Tennesee for a week or two now. The US chess community is baffled, but the folks of Crossville seem happy, calling it a boon. From the Nashville City Paper:

"Last week the federation relocated its offices from New Windsor, N.Y., to temporary space in Crossville. That Tennessee presence, officials say, will bolster the Midstate economy with employee relocations, future events, ancillary businesses, etc.

“Our people will be buying houses, renting apartments, shopping — the impact will be in the millions,” said Grant Perks, USCF chief financial officer.

Perks said the federation eventually expects to have about 22-25 employees in Crossville. In addition, the group plans to build a permanent home for an estimated $525,000."

Events and ancillary businesses? I don't know of much or any of that good stuff happening in the USCF's old home of New Windsor, NY. They do have the power to schedule events there, and the've already done so with one big scholastic in April. Building a new office for half a million? Is office space that hard to find? Sounds like a promise made to sweeten the deal. One thing's for sure: for their employees to have an impact in the millions they're going to have to raise the salaries. (No mention of the employees in New Windsor being laid off; few will relocate. Relocation and employment are a zero-sum game unless you are profitable and expanding.)

The USCF has been in a "well, it can't get worse" situation for so long that we now know it's not true. But just maybe a new location can mark a new beginning with new practices of responsibility, accountability, and transparency. Judging from all the shenanigans that have surrounded the move that might be a bit much to hope for. Let's just cross (ahem) our fingers for "not horrible." [For more on this search the DD for Crossville.]

February 26, 2005

Software Suggestions

My latest ChessBase Cafe column is mostly Q&A, and I thought I'd open up this forum as well for feature suggestions and comments. Not just about ChessBase stuff, anything you like. The good, the bad, what you'd like to see.

Something that would be very handy in ChessBase both for games and databases is a system of bookmarks/favorites. You could have a key to jump to the next, etc. Sort of like html anchors. You could create a bookmark in a game and jump right to that spot in the game a week later by clicking on a bookmark.

February 28, 2005

FIDE Unification Tournament

What part of the word "unification" doesn't FIDE understand? In an statement released after the FIDE Presidential Council meeting in Georgia, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said FIDE would organize a unification tournament. Some of the AP stories say it would happen in October. Then there's a March 15 deadline to hear from the players. With FIDE, deadlines are always for other people.

The idea, if you can call it that, is to have Kasimdzhanov, Adams (KO runner-up), Kramnik, Kasparov, Anand, Leko, Topalov, and Morozevich play a double round-robin for the title. Elista, surprise, was suggested as the venue. Sounds great, but there's a small catch: Kramnik won't play. He's the one FIDE is supposed to be unifying with, remember? A round-robin no more rigorous or democratic than Linares is hardly going to convince Kramnik of a threat to his legitimacy. And if he doesn't play and the tournament goes forward, where are we? A new FIDE champion with the same old split.

Then there's the "well, we'll just ignore Kramnik" option. I just don't have it in me to pretend this is a great chance and to pressure Kramnik to play in it or be left behind. This isn't what a real world championship is supposed to be about. If they cut it to six players and made it four rounds, a la 1948, it would have the necessary rigor. If they had a big qualifier it would have the democracy. Just grabbing guys off the rating list and adding some money (oh yes, where's the money?!) doesn't cut it. It sounds like the famous Georgian wine was flowing freely.

Chess and Boxing

Warning, tortured analogies ahead. Usually wouldn't post such hackery, but this article on boxing comes on the heels of the "Nakamura vs Leko" item that spawned similar comparisons between one-on-one physical and mental combat.

Accoona in Times Square

American Irina Krush will face former FIDE women's champion Zhu Chen of China in two rapid games tomorrow afternoon in New York City. The event takes place in the ABC Studios building in Times Square at 5pm. It's open to the public and there are free tickets. I'll be there relaying the moves to Playchess.com and doing some impromptu commentary and contests. Brave the snow and come on by! You'll remember Krush beat Almira Skripchenko in September to qualify for this match. (And the preceding press conference and ear pulling.)

ABC Studios has seen several chess events in the past and I think I've been at all of them. There was the Kasparov-Karpov rapid match in Dec. 2002, sponsored by X3D, the founder of which is also behind Accoona. Then there were two KasparovChess.com events in 2000. Garry gave a massive international virtual and real "UN of Chess") simul, walking past rows of computers as well as kids in the studio. Then there was the award ceremony for our World School Chess Championship. Sting and his band played a simul against Kasparov and then awarded the trophies to the kids. Most importantly, my mom got to see me on the jumbotron in Times Square. I don't know of if any coverage of those KC events has been preserved anywhere other than my hard drive, so I'm posting a few pics below.

Continue reading "Accoona in Times Square" »

March 2, 2005

Lame in Linares

Well I guess it had to happen. Right after I touted the fighting spirit evident in this year's Linares supertournament, the players come back from a rest day and turn in a combined total of 62 moves. If you subtract the moves already known to theory, they contributed just 20 moves. And this after a rest day. Ugh.

March 3, 2005

Get Bent

Bent Larsen celebrates his 70th birthday tomorrow. An idol for his combative chess and equally fiery personality, the Great Dane was a tournament world champion if ever there was one. (He even had a prize named for him at the 2005 US Championship.) His risky play was poorly suited for long matches, but he outstripped Fischer, Spassky, and his other peers when it came to tournament titles. Viva Bent! I spoke with Larsen several times in Buenos Aires, where he resides with his Argentine wife. He was/is still passionate about chess, but disgusted with how age and bouts of ill health have decreased his acumen. He made an even score in the 2004 Pinamar tournament. Of course he drew only one game of eleven!

After the initial 10 minutes explaining that I'm not joking about what I do for a living, I often spend time talking about how top-level chess is a young person's game today. The statistical peak is similar to that of tennis. If you feel your chess has declined with age, please share your thoughts.

March 4, 2005

Chick Chess

At dinner after the Accoona rapid match between Zhu Chen and Irina Krush, I swapped women's chess thoughts with Ninja contributor Jennifer Shahade and Krush. A while back, in reponse to the oft-heard "women players are more aggressive," I wanted to see if statistics could back it up. Of course you can't really measure aggression, but the standard metrics of drawishness and length of draws would suffice to start.

What I found was that the top women's events indeed had a much higher percentage of decisive games than tournaments like Corus and Linares. But when I corrected for Elo, it was the same. That is, the top women (Judit Polgar excepted) are rated 2450-2550. They play the same number of draws as men in that rating range, which is naturally a lower number. Weaker players make more mistakes, don't prepare as deeply, and rarely chicken out with short draws.

Jen postulated that the reputation for aggressiveness still might not be an urban legend. Putting 2500s in the spotlight (normally reserved for top juniors and 2700s) where they feel obliged to put on a show could lead to explosive play. To that I'll add that many women in chess – as with minorities in other fields – feel pressure to perform because of the closer scrutiny. The freedom to be mediocre comes with establishment and equality. Since most "women's chess" is affirmative action in one form or another, there would be little tolerance of the short draws seen in places like Linares.

On the other hand, that might only go for high-profile matches and exhibitions. In the first "women's supertournament," the 2004 2nd North Urals Cup won by Almira Skripchenko, 20% of the 45 games were drawn in 25 moves or fewer and 53% were drawn overall, more than average for a category 9. Maybe some people believe women's chess is more aggressive simply because we wish it were true. [After some comments I'm explaining my "affirmative action" remark below.]

Continue reading "Chick Chess" »

March 5, 2005

No Lamb In Linares

Make a few comments and get punished by Caissa. Say how tough Kasimdzhanov is to beat and he loses two in a row. Say Vallejo Pons is playing more aggressively but may wreck the event with his losses and he plays a 13-move draw with white and then wins one. At least the part about Kasparov kicking some butt worked out.

The drawing percentage is up to 70%, but you don't notice it so much when 1) there's a clear leader to watch and 2) the wins are evenly spaced so you get one each round. The race is now for second place. Anand has the inside track with whites against Vallejo Pons and his favorite customer, Adams.

March 6, 2005

Ice Fisching VI

I guess it's time for another update. The US seems to be taking more interest in Fischer than I had imagined, if for reasons other than playing in Yugoslavia in 1992. Mainichi mentions the tax evasion case being prepared against Fischer. (More and more on Fischer's visitors being denied access to him.)

"An official from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court clerk's office at the Robert N.C. Nix Sr. Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia confirmed the court action is poised to go ahead.

"There are five matters being looked at in that case," the official, who did not give her name, told the Mainichi Daily News. The official refused to divulge details of the case, nor would she say when hearings would begin. She said she could not disclose the information because "it concerns a person's privacy.""

As usual, Fischer's lawyers make many grandiose statements about human rights and persecution without getting into whether or not Fischer has broken the law. What seems clear is that his epic detention is way out of line. It makes you want to cry habeas corpus, but it seems to be the Fischer side delaying things because they aren't getting the result they want.

Journalist Rene Chun, who is writing a Fischer biography, has an interesting new article with more info and background at ChessCafe.com. (Is it only the editor in me or is the orthography rather bad? "irregardless", "pouring over", "looses money" ... Copy editors earn their money!)

The expression "death and taxes" has been around a long time with good reason. During my ten years living abroad I spent a lot of time dealing with tax issues and filing 2555 forms. If you're holding a US passport the government wants its cut of whatever you make wherever you are. (Thank goodness for the Argentine cash economy!) As for Fischer, I'm still hoping for a quiet retirement in Iceland.

Kasparov to FIDE: "Make It Official"

In brief comments during the Linares tournament, Garry Kasparov has said he would consider playing in a unification tournament. "When everything is arranged and I have received an official invitation, then I'll make my decision. There's nothing for me to say now because there is no concrete proposal."

Well, exactly. This highlights the foolishness of FIDE's habit of making announcements, giving interviews, and setting deadlines instead of organizing events and issuing invitations like a professional organization. Ilyumzhinov deals in rumors and threats and then acts indignant when someone calls his bluff.

I also stumbled across a Spanish newspaper interview with Veselin Topalov in which he was asked about the unification event: "Sincerely, I don't think this is a real possibility for unification because we already know that of the eight players three - Kasparov, Kramnik, Leko - surely won't participate. Definitely not. In my case I want to see the contract. .. I'm not very hopeful about unification. I stopped being interested in it a while back. These days the world title is something purely commercial. Before, the world champion was considered the best player in the world, but now you can see that's not the way it is. The current champion, Kasimdzhanov, is number 25."

I'll post more at ChessBase.com tonight.

March 7, 2005

Kramnik Interview

Am I the only one who missed this interview by Kramnik done after Corus? I was out of the loop for most of January. Much of it covers the same ground as his recent New In Chess interview, but there is more detail here. Both Kramnik and the interviewer (Mr. Russian chess journalism Roshal) are Kasparov obsessed. Unless he'd been making comments in the Russian press I'm unaware of, Kasparov has been rather quiet on the Kramnik front for quite a while. (They do tend to save their most personal sparring for local papers.) I don't recall hearing either FIDE or Kasparov blame Kramnik for "destroying everything." What is there to destroy?

Sometimes you think that Ilyumzhinov, Kasparov, and Kramnik live in personal reality bubbles. Every tenuous fact is so stretched and warped to serve a purpose that it sounds like they are talking about totally different things. Most of these things have been beaten to death, but they still get dragged out each time. The bit at the end about the contract in London is typical. It was held by a bankrupt company, for goodness sake. The interview reads like one long excuse. (GM Yermolinsky points out below that he used to average 150 games a year. Kramnik declining Linares to rest after playing 27 games in six months does not engender sympathy.)

Anyway, it seems clear that as predicted Kramnik has no interest in playing a unification tournament. He's quite right that FIDE already recognized him as the classical champion, although that doesn't automatically preclude his playing in a unification event on equal footing with others. Unfortunately he wasn't asked what he is doing to develop a cycle or what such a cycle might look like. I don't hold much hope for any level shortcut events. Pressure should be about a cycle.

March 8, 2005

Larsen on Draws

To keep the Bent Larsen love-fest going, here is what he wrote about his style and draws in general. (His book, out of print, has three titles. 50 Selected Games, Selected Games of Chess 1948-69, and Master of Counter-Attack. That unnecessary last thanks to the 92 Batsford edition.)

What Larsen wrote 30 years ago is truer now than ever. It's ironic to see him worrying that elite players played too often when we're currently talking about how they don't play very much these days.

I guess I must be called an aggressive player, because I don't like draws! If you look at the scores of the tournaments I have entered, it is quite clear that I have had fewer draws than the average. Again, I do not like the tactic of playing for a draw with Black and for a win with White. In my opinion it makes no sense to praise a master for not losing any games, if he has taken for instance fifth place in the tournament. In most cases he has played with too much caution and too little inspiration, his games have been uninteresting to the public, and many of his opponents have regarded the game against the 'peace-maker' as a welcome rest during an exhausting tournament.

Naturally, it is a different story if the winner of the tournament has avoided losses. To gather enough points for first place he has probably had to take certain risks in some of the games. All the same to go through unbeaten shows class! A good example was Korchnoi's victory in the Mallorca tournament, 1968. But, occasionally, it is more a question of accident to remain unbeaten or lose only a single game, as I have mentioned in connection with my play in Havana, 1967.

Only very seldom have I managed to avoid losses in the big tournaments – but on the other hand I do not lose so many half-points! Only very rarely have I drawn half my games in a tournament. If a chess tournament is to be of interest to the public, the attitude of the masters must not be too peaceable. But no doubt part of the problem is that many of the leading masters play too much. To the tournaments they want to enter one has to add those tournaments which their chess federation or some other authority more or less forces them to play.

March 9, 2005

Jen Shahade: Women, Beauty, Chess

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from GM Robert Fontaine asking if I'd like to participate in the "World Chess Beauty Contest."

When I went to the site, I was subjected to an image showing a group of cartoon-like forms of women lined up against a rating chart. According to the description of the contest, female players voluntarily submit their photos for evaluation. Visitors to the site serve as judges rating the contestants – from their looks only – on a scale from 1600 to 2700. To the creators, this "grandiose" idea was designed in order to promote women’s chess.

Rather than promote chess, it promotes that women's looks are all-important. Feelings are liable to be hurt by low ratings and unkind comments. And why do they keep calling the participants girls when most of the women are over 18? There is one nine year old participant – if that’s a joke, I’m not laughing.

Sorry guys, but I find this idea as grandiose and innovative as the Scholar's Mate.

There is nothing wrong with making chess sexier by highlighting the hip, interesting players who participate. But I find the World Chess Beauty contest project misguided and juvenile and would be embarrassed to be a part of it. Sure, many other sports have similar contests – one of the disturbing aspects of this one is that the arbiters and creators are not anonymous fans, but prominent members of the chess community who are very proud of their idea. Would you ever see Tiger Woods bragging about how he started a golf-babe contest?

And what if there were a corresponding contest to rate the appearance of men? No one would take this seriously since men are not judged on the basis of their looks as women often are. (I write about this topic at length in my book Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport.)

On a positive publicity note, March 1, 2005 was a great day for women's chess in America. Susan Polgar was featured in the Wall Street Journal. On the same day, Irina Krush and Zhu Chen played the most public women's match ever in America in the Accoona match held in the ABC Studios in Times Square.

I recently started playing poker and I'm constantly comparing it to chess. (More on this in a future entry.) Watching the World Poker Tour makes me think that events like the Accoona match really could make it on TV. Poker players are no more charismatic or exciting than chess players like Zhu Chen or Irina Krush. What makes the WPT fascinating to the average Joe or Sue are the pumped up commentary, pre-game interviews, snazzy editing, and large prize funds. I believe that with all these elements chess too could make for thrilling television.

[2002 and 2004 US women's champion Jennifer Shahade of Brooklyn contributes monthly to the Black Belt newsletter, from which this is an excerpt.]

[Update: Many excellent comments have been added. One of the beauty contest site's inventors, Arthur Kogan, has posted.]

March 10, 2005

Sofia's Choice

The Sofia, Bulgaria supertournament coming in May (Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Leko, Polgar, Ponomariov) will not have agreed draws and no draws that aren't approved by a panel of arbiters. The players literally won't be able to talk to each other. I don't have the exact rules yet, but it sounds like a good start. Joel Lautier has some thoughts about draws and such at the ACP site here.

Rumor mill: An Italian chess cognoscenti says he believes a similar tournament was being arranged in Italy over the same dates as Sofia, but the Bulgarians put up more money for the players.

[Update: Obviously with Kasparov announcing his retirement he will not be playing. Leko was already listed as a replacement, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. Kasparov was annoyed that one of the organizers, Danailov, had gone around telling everyone that he was playing.]

Wild Linares 2005

A strange end to a very uneven tournament. Kasparov dominated like the good old days only to abruptly play into a losing pawn endgame in the final round and allow Topalov to catch him on points. (..Qd8-Qb6 should have been fine for a draw while his ..Qxf1 was a loss. Even later Topalov blundered with 27.h4?? (27.Kg4 wins) and Kasparov returned the favor with 27...g6?? when 27...h6 draws.) Kasparov was already guaranteed the Linares title because of tiebreaks. (They should keep these secret or do something to avoid so much anti-climax.) They are tied on points and number of wins, but second tiebreak is wins with black. Sad to spoil such a magnificent event for Kasparov, who despite the last round hallucination answered just about every question about whether or not he still deserves to be called #1.

Not to take anything away from Topalov, who was amazing in the final rounds to catch Kasparov. He is just a tremendous fighter and becomes the moral victor. Vallejo Pons and Kasimdzhanov fell apart completely in the second half. When only the top guys are there and draw a lot we complain, but having a pair of zombies handing out points and half points leaves a sour taste as well. Anand lost in the final round to a nice effort by Adams. Anand was often in trouble and really could have done much worse.

What to say about Leko? He played two short draws with white in interesting positions and just couldn't get anything going. I feel sorry for him because he's a nice guy and I know he tries, but this was back to Leko 1.0 in several games. (An Indian paper took my "Drawcula" tag for Leko and said it was something chessplayers often said. And they used it about Anand!? Ah well, it probably won't make the OED.)

Garry Kasparov Retires


Well, the bomb has been dropped. Yes, he is serious. After 20 years as number one, Garry Kasparov has called his last round game against Topalov in Linares his last. We had discussed such a possibility, but until he said it at the press conference today I'd hoped it wasn't really going to happen. I just spoke to him on the phone and it wasn't a spontaneous thing out of frustration with the unnecessary loss to Topalov. (Knowing he was going to retire at the end, "made it almost impossible to think in the last two games. My brain was just off.)

"I'm a man of goals, what else can I accomplish? There is no match and there will be no match. It has to be the real thing and that doesn't exist. I proved – maybe not for others but for myself – that I'm the still best. Everything else is just repetition. Twenty years as #1 on the rating list is good enough."

Of course much more will be written today, next week, and for as long as chess is played. I'll be meeting with Garry next week in NY, so get your questions and comments in here. For now it's hard to be anything but sad, even though he's going out on top and after winning his beloved Linares for the ninth time. Like Michael Jordan (second retirement), he goes out a winner. I think Kasparov is better at politics and writing than Jordan was at baseball, so we'll see. For now Kasparov says his mind is clear, and goodbye to chess.

March 11, 2005

In Vino Veritas

Well, my girlfriend broke up with me a few days ago and my friend and chess idol just gave up being the best chessplayer in the world, so what choice did I have? I went out drinking and dancing with a beautiful (nod to the contest thread) femme chessplayer. Just arrived back home at 4:30am and thought I should post something before I sober up. Just in case the overpriced triple vodkas wear off too soon I've poured myself a tall one. And I bought doughnuts, which are St. Patrick's themed and greenish.

First off, CRAP. DAMN. The greatest player ever of the game I love just hung up his pawns. You Fischer-freaks can make a case for his mighty three years at the top and Garry himself can make politics by calling Fischer the furthest ahead of his peers, but which game compilation would you take to a desert island? Yeah, I thought so. 20 YEARS. Screw Bobby and his technical perfection and crystal clear strategy and anti-Semitic paranoid schizophrenia. If Bobby Fischer had been born in Lithuania he would get half the pages.

Kasparov, as the kids say today, rocked. When I was starting to take the game seriously in the eighties he was a black and white nuclear bomb. He was The Clash in 1979, Nirvana in 1991. On and off the board Kasparov was chess as extreme sport: explosive, dynamic, bombastic, infuriating, glorifying, intoxicating. He shook the foundations of the hierarchy and the game itself.

If you think I'm exaggerating, did you just see the same Linares tournament I saw? Did you see one of the world's best players, Mickey Adams, tossed around like a rag doll? Do you remember Kasparov-Andersson, Tilburg 1981? Kasparov-Salov, Barcelona 1989? Kasparov-Nikolic, Manila 1992? The Evans Gambit against Anand? The immortal against Topalov? How many others? How many of you remember the first time you spent a few hours marveling over a Kasparov win in a magazine? Okay, now I'm looking at games, weeping, drinking, and eating more doughnuts. (Why am I so attached to the '88 game against Smirin?)

More serious (if error-ridden) retrospectives will come like a wave, but right now it just hurts. And I'm out of vodka. Crap.

March 12, 2005

Kasparov in WSJ

Not to create yet another entry in the Kasparov sob-fest, but news it is. I've fielded a few calls from journalists looking for quotes and the wire stories are everywhere. The usual analogies are out in force too. "Surprise move from Kasparov" "Checkmate for Kasparov" "The King Leaves the Board" My favorite was from the Argentine sports paper Olé: "All the Squares are Black."

Kasparov, who is a contributing editor for the Wall Street Journal, will have an article there on his decision early next week, probably Monday. [Not Tuesday.] Many people have sent me kind words to pass on to Garry when I see him next week, but feel free to post them to one of these items here. Questions also welcome. Many refuse to believe Kasparov will really leave serious chess. Of course a return is always possible, but he certainly doesn't believe so now.

But he's still a chessplayer. When GM Alex Yermolinsky posted some analysis of the Topalov-Kasparov endgame here showing a nice drawing line for black I passed it on to Garry on the phone. Ten minutes later he called back having found a win for white! Details will be in this week's Black Belt, along with some cool Kasparov notes on his wins over Kasimdzhanov and Adams.

March 13, 2005

Anand on Kasparov

The Indian Express (curry in a hurry?) has a bland but interesting interview with Vishy Anand on Garry Kasparov's retirement announcement.

Q: Your vivid memories of the Russian?

Anand: He was a controversial figure. But when faced with adversity, his was a classic case of "when the going gets tough...the tough get going." Garry always managed to motivate himself. He read and had a lot of interests in American politics, passionately involved himself in the affairs at the Kremlin, continued to criticise Putin and at the same time ruled the world of chess. He always motivated himself with the fact that he was a Russian chess player and despite the number of victories he achieved...he was never satisfied.

Q: Any off the board meeting that would always remain in your memory?

Anand: Usually he never socialised. So there’s isn’t anything in particular. But I remember a group photo of ours (he, myself and other players) atop the World Trade Centre (WTC) building in 1995. It was like "we’re on top of the world."

This is one of those photos. Almost as nice as having a WC in Libya.

Other comments culled from Spanish papers after Linares ended:

Topalov: "He's going to leave a hole the way Schumacher and Jordan did. Not even Fischer was at Kasparov's level because he left so young." Paco Vallejo Pons came up to Kasparov and said, "It has been a great pleasure playing you." (Not easy words after losing twice!) Garry was quite touched by the gesture.

More comments from Anand.

March 14, 2005

Ice Fisching VII

Taking a much-needed (if brief) break from Kasparovpalooza, a thoughtful piece from the managing editor of the Mainichi Daily News. He visited Fischer a few days ago on Bobby's birthday.

He plainly states that the US has pressured Japan to not allow Fischer to go to Iceland or anywhere but the US. I'm curious as to the channels involved, but there aren't details. This is getting beyond ridiculous. (Then there is the whole egg battle that was all over the wires. Fischer grabbing a guard over not getting his daily egg led to solitary confinement.)

Legally, there should be nothing stopping Fischer from leaving Japan. But the Japanese government has made a political decision to keep this 62-year-old man confined. It is unforgivable.

The reason I gave in my application for permission to visit Fischer was that I was an associate checking up on his health. That being considered, I suppose the center will not mind if I say that Fischer has allowed his beard and hair to grow and now resembles something like a cross between Leonardo da Vinci and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when he was arrested in December 2003. He has lost weight, but looks healthy.

So are they holding him just long enough for the IRS to get its case together and ask for a formal indictment and extradition? If this were a conspiracy, wouldn't it be better organized? But we know follow-up isn't this administration's strong suit.

March 15, 2005

Kasparov's Great Game

I just put Garry's Monday Wall Street Journal article up at ChessBase.com. Some behind-the-scenes comments: It was going to run Tuesday but when they heard the Guardian was going to run their long interview piece on Monday they insisted on moving up the deadline.

Then when it came in Sunday, it turned out the WSJ editor wanted more chess while Kasparov wanted more politics! In the end the compromise was to run a very long piece, almost 1600 words, that included plenty of both. Several of the chess bits were expanded at the request of the WSJ editors, who were aware of questions their lay audience would have. (Why chess is hard work, for example.)

Despite all the articles (with more to come soon in the Financial Times and the Telegraph), no real digging has yet been done on Kasparov's views of his achievements and failures in his long chess career. It will probably take him a while to get the emotional distance needed to say anything as open and honest as we would like to hear. But many have posted good questions to some of the other threads, so I'll see what I can do while he's here this week.

With his energy and temperament it's not surprising to look back and see that many of Kasparov's biggest successes were also his biggest failures. He creates and destroys and moves on to do it again. The GMA, the PCA, million-dollar matches, million-dollar websites (ouch), explosive games and explosive tantrums, huge PR coups, occasional PR messes, relentless chess promotion, relentless self-promotion. He dishes it out but has a very thin skin himself. (That is good and bad. I remember being amazed and shocked to find out that he really wanted to know what the "chess street" thought about things.) I really don't think you could have the good without the bad in his case.

Some are eager to credit his frequent changes in direction to dishonesty. I hope I know him well enough to say that guile is not his strong suit. Impulsiveness can be just as destructive, but I think his motives were, and are, positive. I suppose that to some it's irrelevant if he meant to cause harm or not if the harm was done, but I believe intentions count for something.

March 16, 2005

Tiger on Retirement

Just for serendipity, there's an interesting CNN/SI.com article on golfer Tiger Woods' comments about when he'll retire. I like the way he put it.

"When my best isn't good enough, I'm walking," Woods said. "You'll know when you're not able to produce any more. I don't lie. When I play well, I tell you guys. And I tell you when I haven't played well. I've won tournaments out there when I wasn't playing my best. But if I play my best and don't win, there's no reason to be out here."

Has he ever played his best and not won?

"No," Woods said flatly.

This is quite a contrast with Kasparov's retirement. His was "I'm still the best but there's nothing left for me to do here." Not that it was getting any easier, and it's fair to say he was past his prime at this point. I'm trying to find some of Garry's old comments about when he would leave. I know he's addressed it more than a few times. There's a test, when was the first time he discussed it in public? 1998?

Another Politician in the World

Garry Kasparov just got into NY. He was recognized by the immigration agent when coming through the airport. (First time ever here, he said. The guy was Polish.) He asked Garry what he should put under "profession" now that he's retired. They decided on "politician," so I guess it's official!

March 18, 2005

GK on ABC News tonight

A profile of Garry Kasparov will run on ABC News with Peter Jennings tonight on ABC. It's the last piece of the show, so they said it should be on at around 6:50pm (EST). They did a 25-minute interview that will be chopped into 4-5 minutes. Of course Kasparov wants to talk politics but the producer kept asking about that darn chess thing he used to do.

There was some good stuff, particularly about his childhood and what inspired him to play, but I was too dumb to record it myself. Some choice bits: "At 41 I'm not ready for the social security debate yet." ... "I was on top for 20 years, and not one steroid scandal!" (!) (Maybe he wants to go into American politics, not Russian?) But I did make myself useful by stepping up and switching the black king and queen so they were on the correct squares. (There was a stack of books under the board to put it at the correct height. One of them: "Chess for Dummies." At least they did some homework!)

I'll be doing several interview bits (about chess, I swear) with your questions. That will go up at ChessBase.com in a day or two.

Ice Fisching VIII

AP is reporting that that the Icelanding parliament will vote Monday on granting Bobby Fischer citizenship. This is relatively big news, because according to the report: "One of Fischer's supporters in Iceland said the Japanese government had confirmed it would allow him to go to Iceland if citizenship was granted." That's thrice-removed hearsay, so we'll have to see about that. It may be a race to beat an a US indictment and formal extradition request.

Last time the Icelandic legislators voted on this they declined to grant citizenship, likely not wanting to set a precedent. But the special passport they gave him didn't work, and it seems likely they won't back down now. Iceland has an extradition treaty with the US, but the citizenship issue confuses that, as does the fact that it is likely to be about taxes and not, say, murder or teaching evolution in schools.

Dumb glitch in the the last para of the AP report: "He has also applied to marry a Japanese woman who heads Iceland's chess association and is his longtime companion." Oops.

March 19, 2005

GK on ABC II

Just a note. (I'm sick. Would you like some mucus with your html? Bleh.) I put up more notes and photos from Kasparov's ABC News interview at ChessBase.com. There is also a link to the video itself. It was an excellently done piece, if short. Even Garry couldn't imagine where they had dug up some of the old film clips they showed. Several were simuls in his early 20's, one in Russia. Most game clips were against Short in 93 and the Deep Blue matches, the few chess events to be filmed.

Garry's NPR interview is online. On Monday he will do a long TV interview with Charlie Rose. (Check your local PBS station schedule.) A long NY Times piece will run next Sunday, I believe.

Chess Is Dead

We're never prone to hyperbole around here of course, but US Champion (and Black Belt newsletter contributor) Hikaru Nakamura wasn't shy about his feeling on Kasparov's retirement. From a subscription-only Financial Times article on March 12: (I did the free trial so you don't have to. Just remind me to cancel before they hit my credit card.)

Most agree Mr Kasparov's unexpected departure will also leave the chess world spiritually and financially poorer.

Hikaru Nakamura, a 17-year-old US grandmaster who recently won the US chess championship, summed up the mood of many when he told the FT: "Chess is dead." . . .

Meanwhile, there appear to be few candidates to fill the void his departure creates. When asked about successors Mr Kasparov ruled out the current generation of players, naming instead and without conviction two teenagers: Sergei Karjakin of Ukraine, and Magnus Carlsen from Norway. Others suggested Mr Nakamura.

This year's Corus had tons of great chess despite Kasparov's absence, so it's a little early to pack up our pawns. But certainly explosive games like Kasparov's wins against Kasimdzhanov and Adams in Linares won't be as often seen at the top level.

March 21, 2005

Melody Amber 2005

The annual blindfold and rapid chess event is underway in Monaco. I did some cursory background on blindfold a few years back. The easiest way to impress an amateur player is to offer to play them blindfold. It's impressive in the same way simuls are impressive to non-chess people. Every once in a while there is a brilliant blindfold game in Monaco, and of course it's impressive that they usually play at a very high level. But it's mostly like watching American-style auto racing; you are waiting for the inevitable crash.

With a few months of practice even a weak player can get through an entire game without hanging all his pieces. This sort of visualization practice improves your chess, but more importantly it makes your study time much more efficient. Being able to read through games and analysis in magazines and books without needing a diagram every five moves or a board is a big help.

Anand is off to a 4/4 start. Maybe he's feeling a little extra motivation these days?

March 23, 2005

Ice Fisching IX

Unlike most other sources rumoring of Fischer's imminent release, the Washington Post seems to have better info and flatly states the agreement has been reached. ChessBase reports even more, saying he will be released at midnight tonight. They even mention a possible press conference. I wonder if his supporters are ready to sit on either side of him and cough loudly every time he shouts the word "Jew."

TOKYO, March 23 -- After a series of strategic moves worthy of one of his greatest matches, fugitive chess legend Bobby Fischer reached an agreement with Japanese authorities to avoid deportation to the United States on Wednesday. He will instead be released after nine months in prison here and flown to freedom in Iceland as early as Thursday morning, according to sources familiar with the case.

But...

U.S. officials, however, are already preparing for a legal rematch. They expressed "disappointment" with the decisions by both Iceland and Japan, but note that Washington and Reykjavik have shared an extradition treaty since 1906. U.S officials have suggested that they may file new tax evasion charges against Fischer -- who has publicly stated that he has not paid U.S. taxes since going into self-imposed exile 12 years ago, including on the $3 million he won during his allegedly illegal rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia.

Such charges, U.S. officials say, may fall under extraditable crimes in Iceland.

[Icelandic citizens cannot be extradited, according to this page. So it would be up to the Icelanders to play ball. I still say that if the US had really wanted him badly they would have gotten him from Japan long ago.]

Mainichi has other details, as usual. Apparently no new charges or requests have been made by the US (e.g. taxes), although they still insist on the old ones. Japan could still insist Fischer is American and give him to the US, where his new alternate citizenship would be largely ignored, at least in court. (Renouncing your citizenship or embracing another is not a get out of jail free card. I'm not sure how much they could apply here, but long ago many laws were put in place in the US to deal with these issues regarding the Italian mafia.)

Tax This

Perhaps now irrelevant to the Fischer case, but here's some anecdotal evidence that the tax man doesn't care how you got the money.

M-Tel Masters Announced

Below is the full press release for the M-Tel Masters. (Verbatim and sic.) It's a double round-robin that runs from May 11-22 in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Mentioned earlier here.) The players are Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Adams, Polgar, Ponomariov. In earlier items Leko was mentioned as a replacement for the invited Kasparov, but now it's Adams. Ponomariov is/has been, like Topalov, a client of Silvio Danailov, who is organizing the event.

The regulation of draws is innovative and I hope it is enforced. We know there is a deadly problem, but won't know what works until organizers experiment like this. Players claim draws to the arbiter and only in two cases (they say three, but perpetual check is just a type of repetition): Repetition and theoretically drawn positions.

This is great news. Precedent includes Maurice Ashley's "Generation Chess" event in NY that had a 50-move minimum. (More of my comments here.)

Continue reading "M-Tel Masters Announced" »

Ice Fisching X

All the wires have news of Fischer's release.

Fischer, sporting a beard and a baseball cap pulled down low over his face, left the immigration detention center in this city on Tokyo's outskirts early Thursday.

He was accompanied by his fiancee, Miyoko Watai, the head of Japan's chess association, and officials from the Icelandic Embassy.

He was scheduled to catch an afternoon flight to Denmark en route to Iceland.

With full Icelandic citizenship Fischer can travel anywhere he likes, but if he is still considered a fugitive by the US he'll have to be very careful about where he goes. Even making a mistake about where your plane stops in transit can be costly, as others have found out in the past.

As much as his coterie of supporters/self-promoting bombasts/apologists have made this out to be some vendetta by the US, I doubt Japan would have held him for nine months had the US been dead set on getting him. (I hope he finds a better class of "friends" in Iceland.) This way the US doesn't have to put him on a stage for months in a controversial trial and by they don't lose face by ignoring a 9/11-celebrating scofflaw. Japan and Iceland get to look good for standing up to the big, bad USA.

To continue in that conspiratorial note, I doubt the Bush administration would be very happy about prosecuting a former American hero for violating UN sanctions when the Bushies hate the UN and do everything they can to undermine its influence. If the tax case had been ready, perhaps.

March 25, 2005

Kasparov Media Guide

Kasparov appears on the prestigious Charlie Rose interview show tonight on American public television. (Garry is back in Russia now; it was recorded a few days ago.) It's probably the longest TV piece you will find with him, at least in English. It's 27 minutes, around 20 of which are on political topics. (I.e., not chess.) Rose is a pro and it went very well. The "greatest ever?" item was addressed. It runs at 11pm on channel 13 in NY, check your local PBS station.

A long piece on Kasparov is will come out in the NY Times tomorrow [up now here], in the Saturday Arts section. I'll put up my own long interview + scenes from NY article at ChessBase.com this weekend. At least if I don't die from this @$%!!%*& cough.

March 26, 2005

Fischer on SportsCenter

Thanks to a heads-up from Mark Luna, I set the trusty DVR to record the 1:00am repeat of ESPN's SportsCenter. There was a long Fischer piece with much archival video and new stuff from his first Iceland press conference. But the Knicks-Sonics game went into overtime, pushing the start of the show back 20 minutes, confusing the recorder! By good luck or bad, it cuts off toward what I assume is the end of the 5-minute Fischer segment.

So I got to see the archival material, a few clips of Fischer on the plane to Iceland, and the preview clip at the start of the show which shows a Jeremy Schaap exchange with Fischer in Iceland. Jeremy, who is a regular on ESPN and who covered the Kasparov-Fritz match, is son of the legendary sportswriter Dick Schaap (d.2002) who had known Fischer for many years and did the first interview with him after Bobby won the title in 1972. In Iceland, Fischer complains to Jeremy that his father had later said something about "not having a sane bone in my body." It's hard to tell the exact sequence in the quick clip, but it appears Schaap replies that "you haven't done anything here today to disprove what my father said." Touché!

But I missed any more there was of the conference and interview. There are mentions of the Fischer-Schaap exchange in the blogosphere here, here, and here. Apparently Schaap walked out after defending his father, who Fischer called a "Jewish snake" to his son's face. (According to several reports this clip was on heavy rotation on ESPN throughout the day. (So that's what it takes to get chessplayers on TV. Maybe if we could get some top players to show some porn to kids we'd really strike it rich in the PR department.) It would be nice (probably not the correct word) to have a transcript of the entire press conference. Where are the Icelandic bloggers?

March 27, 2005

Fischer in Moscow

A small group in Moscow have used the Fischer "escape" to Iceland as an excuse for some Bush-bashing according to this report.

I'll add this link here. Probably the most complete mainstream report on the entire Fischer saga. God help us, it's in the Daily News. If you know the Fischer bio and have been following the detention story, there's not much new. But if you missed anything this is a worthwhile read.

Bobby and Him

I hope this is the last Fischer item for a while, but it's a good one. This Guardian piece is by Stephen Moss, who chased after Fischer for days. It also fills in some of the blanks around the Schaap incident mentioned below. Fun read.

Rumor Mill

Latest from Russian chess political circles is a rumor that Anatoly Karpov might run for FIDE president. That would put the Russian federation in an awkward position, since they would almost certainly support Karpov over Ilyumzhinov. Think of how handy this could be. Karpov could sue himself, appoint himself champion (at least for 1997, if not now), and only need one lawyer.

March 28, 2005

H-Bomb Rocks Foxwoods

US Champion Hikaru "H-Bomb" Nakamura just won clear first place in the mighty Foxwoods Open in Connecticut. A last round draw locked up first with a tremendous 7.5/9 score (actually 7/8 with a bye). He started with five straight wins, including consecutive victories over Shabalov, Stripunsky, and Smirin. A win over Becerra in the eighth was the margin of victory over Ibragimov.

[Update: His 22-move win over Smirin is annotated in the best chess column you'll find, Lubomir Kavalek's in the Washington Post. Thanks, Lubos!]

From what we can tell, this adds around 20 rating points for Nakamura. Combined with his many other recent successes he should be well inside the top 50 in the world on the next FIDE list. Before Foxwoods his expected rating gain was 43 points. A 55-point gain is practically unheard of on a single list, especially within the top 100. (Unless your name is Morozevich, who seems to do this every few years.) This would about catch him up with Teimour Radjabov on the top junior list.

It's already time to stop talking "if" with the 17-year-old and switch to "when". The transition from the wild American opens to category 16+ invitationals might require some chess adjustments, but the winning take-no-prisoners attitude is already in place. Or maybe the 2700s will have to adjust to him?

Gata Kamsky will still be the clear US #1 at 2700 after the US Championship is rated. He may play in Ashley's HB Global Chess Challenge in Minnesota. (I feel I should link to them because I feel sort of sorry for the "1,000,000 hits!" animation they have up. I get more hits here in a week and hits is a useless metric anyway.) If Kamsky stays active, US chess fans can drool about a serious one-two punch in the next Olympiad.

Hikaru is probably going to want a pay raise after all this, but I'll mention that he is a monthly contributor to the ChessNinja Black Belt email newsletter. (Just $5 a month for four weekly issues! Buy something, dammit! It supports US chessplayers as well as my cats.) Last week he annotated his interesting Albin Countergambit game against Susan Polgar. Jennifer Shahade is our other expert annotator. She'll be commenting a game or two from Melody Amber in a week.

March 29, 2005

Bored Games

From the American Association of Retired People (AARP) website:

What's your favorite board game?

Scrabble: 42.7%
Monopoly: 28.0%
Chess: 13.7%
Checkers: 10.9%
Clue: 4.8%

Submitter Arthur Berger writes: "I don't mind being beaten by Scrabble, but to be beaten by Monopoly does hurt." Yeah, we need to get Korchnoi on tour to show them what's up. Sure, you can put a hotel on Broadway, but where are your keys?

If they'd included card games chess wouldn't have cracked one percentile. Funny to hear about Scrabble again today. John Henderson was just telling me about the movie Word Wars, about the Scrabble championship. He said it was disturbingly similar to chess tournaments. Best trivia: at the pro level you can use obscenities!

April 1, 2005

Kasparov Unretires

Saying "it is clear the chess world still needs me", Garry Kasparov today announced his return to professional chess. It remains to be seen if Kasparov can shake off the rust and be competitive again at his age.

Of course Kasparov's name hasn't been forgotten during his retirement, although he is now better known for his political activities and books. The chess world is very different from the way it was back in Kasparov's era. The game has moved on; will Kasparov be able to cope with the modern style?

He says yes: "It won't be easy, but I think I can come back to teach these young guys a thing or two. I didn't leave chess entirely and I watched the latest games. My skills and preparation will take some time to recover from retirement, and my physical condition isn't what it was back in my playing days. [His weight has ballooned from 180 to 183 pounds. -ed.] But I've missed the game so much that I just have to give it my best shot."

The precedents are unclear. Retiree Emanuel Lasker returned at the age of 66 after a nine year absence from serious play and had very credible results. Iceland's Bobby Fischer came back after 20 years to beat the semi-retired Boris Spassky. Simon and Garfunkel came back after 25 years and really sucked.

There are also new challenges for Kasparov to face. Players like Karjakin and Carlsen were just youngsters when Kasparov retired. Nakamura has joined the world elite. This new generation is unlikely to show much respect for Kasparov's gray hair. "Of course I've seen his games in the databases and he was great back in his day," said Hikaru Nakamura, "but it's hard to imagine him coming back to play after so long. Chess is much more sophisticated now."

Must Be April

The student paper at Drexel University reports:

Drexel's chess team has been hit with two years of probation from the NCAA after they learned of recruiting improprieties.

The improprieties have been occurring for at least five years and include providing recruits with access to controlled substances and women.

It's pretty much downhill from there. At least we don't resort to such transparent and silly April Fool's jokes around here.

April 2, 2005

Jen Shahade: Clarity at Last

Usually, when looking at the games of the top players, it is hard for me to find instructive games for my students. However, I’ve found many in this year's Melody Amber tourney. The blindfold and rapid format of Melody cause the top flight Grandmasters to make more mistakes, and also offer less positional resistance, creating more instructive and lucid games. Because no ratings points are on the line, they often play lines they are less familiar with, or take wild risks. For those who are enthralled by the careers of the world elite, but often find their games impenetrable, I highly recommend looking through the Amber games.

The instructional value of the Melody games seems to be based on their lower objective quality. This adds support to the idea that studying your own games and those of your peers promotes practical results more than studying the top players games. Chinese National coach Liu Wenzhe, in his book The Chinese School of Chess writes : "Most players keep their eye on the games of the World Champion and other top players in the World. They believe that the more they study the games of famous players, the more their own skills will improve. In fact, this has no scientific basis. It is a fallacy reflecting the obsession with celebrities."

I would differ with Wenzhe in that I think studying top players' games can inspire their fans to study and play harder, even if they don’t always know what’s going on. For chess players to all follow the same games and players also strengthens the chess culture. In that vein, I should mention that Vishy rules!

[2002 and 2004 US women's champion Jennifer Shahade of Brooklyn contributes monthly to the Black Belt newsletter, from which this is an excerpt.]

Guardian Chess

Either it's new or I missed it. (I think it's new because a lot of the dates are screwed up. But they don't call it the Grauniad for nothing.) You used to have to be sneaky to get Leonard Barden's chess column from the Guardian website, but now they have a nice chess section with recent columns. An added bonus is Jonathan Speelman's column. There isn't much non-UK news you don't get from ChessBase.com, but there is commentary and analysis, not to mention the inimitable Speelman punctuation, or lack thereof.

It would be nice if more papers had lobby areas for their chess columns for easy linking. The UK papers are predictably far better. The Telegraph has a nice one with Short, Pein, and Norwood. For example, Robert Byrne's column in the NY Times is available free for just a few days (currently here), so linking to it is a pain. Plus, if you notice the URL, it's under the crossword hierarchy. Ouch. This is only marginally acceptable because the Times crossword is something of a religion.)

April 3, 2005

Nakamura Watch

The New York Times has a good profile and interview with 17-year-old US Champion GM Hikaru Nakamura. (He also holds the even higher title of ChessNinja.com Black Belt newsletter contributor. So much for the Times research staff.)

As predicted, Hikaru is #43 on the latest rating list. (The 20 points he just gained in Foxwoods would raise him another 16 spots.) The article selects the brashest and boldest of his comments, and I'll do the same.

"If I am able to get up there and play for the actual title of the world championship, then once again, everyone will be excited," Mr. Nakamura said, noting how chess gained wide appeal when Mr. Fischer toppled Boris Spassky, the Soviet world champion, in 1972. "There have been plenty of great players since Fischer but none have been American players."
...
"The way I play is very unique," Mr. Nakamura said. "It's more or less that fearlessness. I'll play some of these really crazy moves that people are not going to be expecting. The way I play is not like most people. The moves are more computeresque. They're not the moves that most humans are going to play."

Of course Gata Kamsky is American, hit #3 on the list, and played Karpov for the FIDE world championship in 1996, but the point of his perhaps not being "American enough" for the American media and chess public is not invalid. (Not to mention that Karpov wasn't "world champion enough" in 1996.) Even Nakamura's Japanese name will probably cost him PR points in the lowest-common-denominator-seeking US media.

As for his style, few computers would take the risks Nakamura takes to win. He is the embodiment of the cliches "fortune favors the brave" and "good players make their own luck." It's well known that this generation of players (going back 10 years) are computer-trained to a large degree. They take material more readily and play without dogma. John Watson's acclaimed Modern Chess Strategy books elucidate this impression.

April 5, 2005

Kasparov Retirement Interview

Part 1 of my interview with Garry Kasparov is up here at ChessBase. All I have to say is thank god the typing is over. Seven hours of recording into twenty pages of interview, yeesh. Why didn't I just dump the entire thing into one MP3 file and get it over with? It's a lot tidier this way, since the conversations took place over a week. So I changed the order around in quite a few places.

Many of the pictures at his hotel room were taken by his 11-year-old daughter Polina and his slightly older fiancee, Dasha Tarasova. (Kidding, kidding. She's 23.) I just handed them my camera. There will be pics of them up with part two or three. It's a sort of double byline interview since much of the material comes from when I was present when Garry was being interviewed for the NY Times piece. They used maybe 3% of it and much of that focused on politics, which I've put into part three. With my own questions I wanted to concentrate on the chess questions the mainstream media aren't interested in.

In much of that I tried to pin him down on the theory of evolution, chess evolution. After his work on My Great Predecessors no one is better qualified on the topic, so I asked him a lot about whether, for example, today's top players are really better than he and Karpov were in the 80's. As for best games ever, we discussed different criteria. From Part 2:

It’s actually going to be quite a problem for me to collect my best games. Even by my judgment there are many that qualify at the highest standards. Let's see, games 16 and 24 from Moscow [1985 Karpov WC match], game 24 from Seville [1987 Karpov WC match], Korchnoi '82 in Lucerne, and the Topalov game [Corus 1999]. But then you’re missing game 22 from Leningrad with Nd7, the sealed move [1986 Karpov match]. Okay, so those would five good and memorable ones. But really game 24 from the Seville match wasn't a great game. So maybe cut that one and I'd take Anand, game ten of the [1995] New York world championship match.

What criteria are you using?

The Seville game would be just as a sort of heroic accomplishment. Korchnoi was a world recognition game. Games 16 and 24 from Moscow were great ideas and important games. Also, the decisive game of the match and a great novelty. Topalov, probably best combination ever.

By pure chess standards it would be the two with Karpov, 16 and 24. The Anand and Topalov games, and... hmm. I would add to this list the Astana game against Kramnik, the Berlin Wall with e6. Runner-ups would be the Seville and Korchnoi games. But I had a problem making a list of thirteen best games! I had modest aspirations of having thirteen “best of the best” games.

He then talks about how the Predecessors series, now expanded to ten volumes, will include two on his own games with over 250 "best games"! That should make the selection a little easier.

April 6, 2005

Fischer-Benko in Serbia?

Several people have sent in reports of something that was rumored last week. Sean Evans sent in this this Russian report, which has the most details. A cleaned-up online translation:

According to the major Russian news agency RIA, chess ex-champion Bobby Fischer, who has recently settled in Iceland, is planning to visit Serbia again.

In a Wednesday press conference in Belgrade, Janos Kubat, Fischer's colleague and friend, said that Fischer wants to visit the small town of Kanizsa, where he lived for eight months in 1993 (located on the border between Serbia and Hungary) to play a chess match.

Kubat said that he has already selected two hotels in Kanizsa that are sutable for a match with Pal Benko - the Hungarian-born American who currently lives in Budapest.

"I have already found a sponsor. Now it fully depends on the Icelandic authorities permitting Fischer to come to Serbia," said Kubat.

Why Benko? Wasn't Lilienthal available? Will it be shuffle chess, aka Chess960, aka FischeRandom? Will Fischer declare himself world champion again when he wins? The 76-year-old Benko hasn't played more than a game or two per year in a decade.

As predicted, it hasn't taken long for the lawyers and others hanging around Fischer to try and make a buck. Playing senior citizens and old friends is one way. (Nothing wrong with it either, but I hope Fischer puts his cut in a safer bank this time.) On a less savory note, Sean also sent this item about the comical $200 million Fischer lawsuit against the US government. [In an amusing follow-up to that story on the lawyer Vattuone, Fischer apparently fired him over a week ago. [Vattuone posts below saying he is still on retainer, and that the lawsuit Fischer filed was dismissed by Fischer. He also says he never received the letter to him linked to above, which was posted at Fischer's semi-official website and is clearly in Fischer's hand.]]

April 7, 2005

Karpov on Kasparov

Anatoly Karpov is in Baltimore for simuls and to train the champion UMBC university chess team. The Sun story on his simul is here, but the other one with Karpov's brief comments on Kasparov's retirement and political plans is free registration only. Thanks to Susan Grumer.

Karpov, apparently having watched a different Linares tournament than I did, credits Kasparov's decision with difficulties at the board. He had this to say on the politics:

"I don't think he has a big future in politics. I don't think he has traveled much in Russia. Russia is a state within a state. To understand the population of Russia, you need to know the areas of the country, you need an understanding of the people and their interests," he said. "He knows Moscow. He has an understanding of the Russian elite, but not of the people of Russia. This is his problem." ...

"In general, I believe Putin has [done] the necessary things to keep Russia as one country. Putin needs strong moves to keep the country as one," he said. "There is some criticism that he is centralizing power, but in Russia, if you don't centralize power, you have the risk of losing the country."

I won't get into how close that last is to what the Soviet leaders said about Latvia, et al. Those pesky elections! Coincidentally, Kasparov announced the formation of a new party yesterday in Moscow. In recent interviews he has said he's going to tour the regions of Russia, and that the All-Russia Civil Congress he co-chairs will have its big meeting away from the capital.

It's interesting that both Karpov and Kasparov are/were very ambitious and often ruthless and unscrupulous in achieving their aims, but in very different ways. Karpov's method has been to ally himself with power, Kasparov's to go against it.

April 8, 2005

Friday Cat Blogging 2

Bagley and Morrigan, my coworkers. Open thread. Topic suggestions, revisits, get your rant on. Play nice.

April 9, 2005

Log Jam: Deep Blue and Kasparov

In Part 1 of my March interview with Garry Kasparov, he repeated his well-known suspicions and accusations about human interference in the 1997 match with Deep Blue. He repeated his demands for evidence that DB was "real." This business as usual was fresher because of his retirement and the recent distribution of the movie "Game Over: Kasparov vs the Machine," which focuses on these suspicions.

The refrain "why don't they release the logs?" was a significant part of the conspiracy battle cry. Kasparov asked for them during the match (which would have been anti-competitive, at least for him to have access instead of his technical advisor or arbiters). This was reiterated right after the match, when IBM team leader CJ Tan said the logs would be published "in the near future."

That turned out to be years later, although the precise date isn't clear. The earliest reference I can find to the game and log page at the IBM site is May 1, 2000 in a Usenet post from Taiwan. For something of such apparent importance, it received astonishingly little attention. There are only a handful of links to the page and the logs, but it seems clear that they were available by May 1, 2000, almost exactly three years after the match. [It now seems that March 2, 2000 is the earliest date tracked. See below.]

Deep Blue designer Feng-Hsiung Hsu said in a 2002 interview on the ICC (coinciding with the release of his book), that "Kasparov received all the relevant log [sic] he asked for right after the match." (More on that in the NY Times here).

Yesterday Kasparov said he had not been not aware that the logs were available until I told him and that he is eager see them analyzed and the evaluations compared with those of Deep Junior and Deep Fritz. His ignorance of the logs' availability would seem improbable, except that I didn't know about them either, at least not in such a complete form. (Some segments were given to the NY Times a while back.) This is more than a little embarrassing because it would have been nice to go through this with him while he was here. I also feel stupid "breaking" five-year-old news.

More bizarre is that as far as I recall, no mention of the log availability is made in "Game Over." (Amusingly, I wasn't sent a review copy of the US DVD release. I'm in the film, but am not a member of the "Chess Journalists of America," whose members got review copies. From all I've ever been able to tell, the CJA exists to give itself awards (a comical 40 categories) and, we can now add, get the occasional free DVD.) They talked with members of the IBM team, so why didn't this come up? Didn't Benjamin or someone else tell them the logs were available online? It's either a glaring error or an intentional omission so as not to deflate the conspiratorial tone of the film. I'll ask the director and maybe Joel can chip in here or by email.

You can't say "everybody knows" they are available because it's clear that's not true. The release of the logs received very little coverage, as Google attests. Feng-Hsiung Hsu says he wouldn't read the Khodarkovsky book on the match, so it's not surprising Kasparov doesn't read Hsu's stuff. Still, this is rather much considering the film and the jihad Kasparov has waged.

I hope this will finally put the nail in the human interference coffin for Kasparov. IBM behaved badly, possibly even with intent to provoke Kasparov's paranoia. But we can't confuse sharp practice with OTB cheating. The human interference angle has been dead to me for years since today's programs emulate Deep Blue's play, even the moves that in 1997 were acclaimed as human-like. DB was simply five or six years ahead, hardly a surprise.

Of course if you think IBM cheated at chess, doctoring the logs would be a relatively minor charge. Let's hope it doesn't go that far. I'd still like to know when they were first released, why it took so long, and who finally authorized it. Have they ever been comprehensively analyzed?

April 10, 2005

Anand Wins 2004 Oscar

It was no contest. Vishy Anand won his second consecutive "Chess Oscar" as player of the year for 2004. The voting:

1) Anand (5205), 2) Kasparov (3664), 3) Leko (3485), 4) Kramnik (3344), 5) Kazimdzhanov (2088) , 6) Topalov, 7) Ivanchuk, 8) Adams, 9) Morozevich, 10) Grischuk

There was no clear second place in my opinion and I would have been happy just to send in a ballot with one name, but they insist on ten. I prefer to emphasize classical chess and tournament wins over rapid results and many "place or show" results. E.g., Leko had a good year, but didn't win anything. Only Anand won more than one big event, plus his great Olympiad performance.

Kasparov had the best single tournament of the year in Moscow so I put him second. Kramnik won a turgid Linares and came third. Both had otherwise mediocre results. Kramnik reached the Dortmund final by drawing all his games and Kasparov was tame-to-blah in his other classical events.

It's hard to decide to reward both or punish both Kramnik and Leko for their drawn match, but Leko deserved recognition for his achievement and his good Corus showing. Kasimdzhanov could have been as high as second in my book, even though he didn't win his classical games in Tripoli. It was an amazing tale of survival. It wouldn't be good for a first-place vote, but with Anand locking that up a shout-out to Kasim is deserved.

Anand Interviews

So that everybody knows it's all Anand all the time around here, I'll give the link to a recent interview with him. There are links on the page to older interviews as well. As Jen Shahade said here a few days ago, Vishy rocks! How long will he be #1? Is it going to be a pack of equals with Topalov and Leko (and Kramnik if he wakes up in time) swapping the top spot for a while?

April 11, 2005

By the Numbers

Chess stats man Jeff Sonas posted some these and other numbers from his ChessMetrics site to the Anand Oscar thread.

Top performers of 2004:

#1 Viswanathan Anand: 2829 performance: 28.5/43 (66%) vs 2691
#2 Alexander Morozevich: 2799 performance: 25.5/39 (65%) vs 2669
#3 Peter Leko: 2789 performance: 30.5/55 (55%) vs 2725
#4 Garry Kasparov: 2776 performance: 20.5/34 (60%) vs 2689
#5 Michael Adams: 2770 performance: 38/59 (64%) vs 2633
#6 Veselin Topalov: 2766 performance: 25/42 (60%) vs 2677
#7 Vladimir Kramnik: 2764 performance: 26.5/50 (53%) vs 2721
#8 Alexey Dreev: 2760 performance: 55/82 (67%) vs 2593
#9 Alexei Shirov: 2759 performance: 43.5/73 (60%) vs 2655
#10 Rafael Vaganian: 2754 performance: 24/35 (69%) vs 2601

We all love numbers, but their immutability is a danger. It would be sad to award the Oscar on performance rating since you would have someone like Leko, who didn't win a tournament, finishing ahead of Kramnik and Kasparov, who both won supertournaments. Morozevich did his usual job of pounding <2700 players and tanking in elite events (although he won Melody Amber).

Jeff also posts some of the top single event performances of recent years and the top performers going back ten years. There are several great statistical performances that were only good for second place, or even third. This leads me to a topic I've touched on before, great second-bests. How many players have had their best-ever performance and not won the event? Anand's phenomenal +6 at Corus 1999 comes to mind in modern chess.

April 12, 2005

Ashley Teaches Teachers

American GM, teacher, and organizer Maurice Ashley is the subject of the latest chess article on the homepage of the New York Times. That's three in a month, believe it or not. This one is a new class Ashley is teaching at City College in Harlem on using chess and chess metaphor to improve thinking and teaching methodology.

This is going to be an even bigger topic when Kasparov's When Life Imitates Chess comes out in the fall. Both chessplayers and non-players seem divided into two camps on such material. One says that it's contrived BS that could be done just as well with cycling or darts. The other says that since chess is itself a metaphor, and is a game of thinking and thinking about thinking, there are many useful parallels, especially in the business and teaching spheres.

I was somewhere in the middle for a while, but after working on speeches for business groups on chess and strategy, with asides on politics and the military, I realized there are many interesting and insightful analogies. Of course some of the examples are trite and others could be about anything, but concepts like material vs time, understanding your own weaknesses, the initiative, and strategy vs tactics are powerful in business contexts. Many aren't unique to chess, but the game provides a vivid metaphor with a rich history of examples and anecdotes, which makes for interesting listening and reading.

April 13, 2005

Scandinavia Heats Up

Two interesting tournaments are starting up now in the not-so-frozen tundra. 14-year-old Magnus Carlsen is playing in the Gausdal Classics in Norway. The Swedish-Danish Sigeman Tournament starts on the 15th with Nakamura and Sasikiran as top seeds. Of course Hikaru is a sentimental favorite around here since he's a contributor to the Black Belt newsletter. You can give your own opinion at the the poll to pick a winner in the Ninja message boards.

National Rating Lists Wanted

An arbiter friend is looking for links to national rating lists. Some of them are hard to search for since the official sites are in various languages. And many links are out of date. Tops on the search list are Serbia & Montenegro, Philippines, and most Eastern European countries. If you have links, please post them. Links to link pages also welcome.

April 14, 2005

Kasparov Interview Part 2

I just posted Part 2 of my interview with Garry Kasparov to ChessBase. This part focuses more on his play, with specific games, tournaments, and periods of peak performance. His choice of best performance ever might surprise you.

There's some rehash-and-bash of a few old political scores, but most of the comments about the future of chess and chess politics are intriguing. He endorses experimenting with shuffle chess and admits, "You have to sell a package where no player is more important than the system. That’s why I think that without me they have a chance. Maybe not a big one, but a chance."

I've spent a lot of time debating "chess evolution" with Kasparov. He gets into various aspects of this in My Great Predecessors. Sure players today are better than 80 years ago, but what about 40 years ago, or 20? Using the objectivity of Fritz to check a few hundred Tal and Smyslov games doesn't turn up more blunders than you see today, percentage-wise. Of course players aren't getting worse, but with faster time controls I don't think the games are getting any better. Maybe in 20 more years as players continue to absorb more and more patterns at a younger age?

Our discussion of Part 1 is here. There won't be such a long delay before Part 3, which is mostly about Russian politics.

April 15, 2005

Surprise Attack

It's hard to beat Garry Kasparov at the chessboard, but today someone beat him WITH a chessboard. He has a bruised head, but is otherwise okay. This frightening incident is being tracked at ChessBase.com. Luckily he's hard-headed.

A Kasparov advisor on the scene was quick to place blame on the militant pro-Putin "Nashi" ("Ours") youth movement, which was mainly organized to deal with an anti-Putin youth group in St. Petersburg and which has been blamed for several violent incidents against anti-Putin groups. All the interview talk about Kasparov's physical safety doesn't seem so melodramatic anymore.

Update, 16.4.05, 16:00: I talked to Garry and he's doing fine, just a lump and a sore head. His exact quip right after it happened: "I'm lucky that chess, not baseball, was one of the most popular sports in the Soviet Union." He called this his official welcome to Russian politics. He also said they didn't call the police or do anything to the guy who did it, since that was clearly what the attack's organizers were hoping for. (The attacker was shouting "Go ahead, beat me, call the police, I don't care!") Not only that, but the guy came up later and apologized! Apparently the best way to refute a sacrifice is to decline it.

April 18, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh

FIDE is moving ahead with the latest brainstorm of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Instead of a KO, this is an eight-player double round-robin scheduled for October. It's clearly intended as a unification event with Kramnik and Leko as special invitees.

The list: Kasimdzhanov, Adams, Kramnik, Leko, Kasparov, Anand, Topalov, Morozevich. Kasparov has retired, so they'd have to move down the rating list for a replacement. They're using an average of the July 2004 and the January 2005 list, so it's probably Svidler. The big question is whether or not Kramnik will play, and without saying his title isn't on the line.

Without Kramnik's participation this is another Linares (it's even classical chess, not the FIDE KO control) and does little toward unification. Kramnik should just put his diluted title on the line and get it over with, but I'd like to see some plans for the future from FIDE about what they plan to do with the title after this if Kramnik does play. A candidates tournament like this one isn't the worst thing in the world, but plans for a new cycle should be on the table beforehand. Kramnik should use any leverage he and the ACP have to get FIDE to lay out a cycle before this event takes place.

As usual, FIDE has announced this unilaterally without talking to the players first and without having any sponsorship. Kramnik is the only one with a conceivable reason not to play, but I'm not sure why splitting half a million (still imaginary) dollars between eight players is better than doing so among 64 or 128. At least the KO had the virtue of being democratic. Will people take the winner of a Linares-style tournament as a more credible world champion? Enough to force Kramnik to unite or be marginalized? Six players and four rounds would get closer to the sort of rigor you'd hope for.

I would have no problem using this event as a candidates tournament, winner to face Kramnik in a match in 2006 for the unified title. But that opens up another massive sponsorship and scheduling mess. It would also require Ilyumzhinov to admit a change of mind, which he seems physiologically incapable of doing. (Unknown is how the players would feel playing to qualify for a shot at a title they don't all believe in. Money might salve these wounds considerably.) I just want a unified title as quickly as possible, and Kramnik playing in this would do that, although it would be nice if there were more rounds.

Both sides of the title schism are so damaged and invalidated now that they should realize they need each other desperately and get together before they are both completely worthless. On Kramnik's side they have been unable to organize and provide democratic access to the title. On FIDE's side they don't seem to understand the term "credible world champion". So just maybe they can join the last vestiges of Kramnik's credibility - gained from beating Kasparov in 2000 - with a still-current democratically victorious FIDE champion, Kasimdzhanov. Toss in the rating favorites for good measure and it's not the worst thing that could happen for a quickie solution.

April 19, 2005

Lion Bites

The Swedish half of the Sigeman tournament is over and aging lion Jan Timman is leading with an impressive 4/5 score. Young tigers Nakamura, Sasikiran, and Iordachescu are a half-point behind. (Actual Tiger Hillarp Persson has 1.5.) The 53-year-old Timman didn't play at Corus this year for the first time in ages. Keeping up with the 2700's is no walk in the park and as the Dutch legend got older, the tournament got stronger, a bad combination.

His humble rating doesn't mean Timman isn't the class of the Sigeman field. Even should he eventually falter, he has forgotten more about chess than his pursuers could possibly know. Of course forgetting isn't exactly a good thing in chess, and energy level is critical. The intense preparation, lack of rest days, and faster games make it tough on the veterans. The chess world's obsession with youth is hardly new, but it has grown more acute. It almost makes you wish for a chess "senior tour" with slower time controls and more rest days. Just because greats like Timman, Karpov, Ljubojevic, and Portisch can't keep up with today's elite doesn't mean they don't still have a lot of great chess to offer.

April 20, 2005

Gassed Up

World Junior Champion Pentyala Harikrishna recently bemoaned his economic status. According to this note, he was granted five lakhs by the his regional government. (That's around 14,000 Tunisian dinars. But I think five lakhs beats a flush.)

He has now been "adopted" by Gas Authority of India Limited and hopes to work with Anand's long-time trainer Elizbar Ubilava. (Nigel Short is mentioned in another report.) There's more in the Hindu. Individual sponsorship is nothing new in chess, not even by large utility companies. Peter Leko has long been sponsored by RWE Gas in Dortmund.

April 21, 2005

FIDE WCh in Argentina, Che!

Today FIDE announced they have found a site and sponsor for the 2005 FIDE world championship tournament we were discussing here a few days ago. It's the Argentine province of San Luis, rural domain of one of the country's political dynasties, the scandal-ridden Saa family. (This is one thing that hasn't changed much since I lived in Buenos Aires from 1992-99.)

The announced prize fund is everyone's favorite big round number, one million dollars. The dates are Sep. 17 - Oct. 16. It's a double round-robin with eight players. There's no mention of players and deadlines for deciding the field. (See below for the full press release text.)

Note that the tournament regulations say "The four top players of the WCCT will automatically qualify for the knock out matches of the next cycle." If the abysmal knock-out format is still FIDE's idea of a world championship, I hope Kramnik stays away from San Luis. This was supposed to be a unification event (the only point of it, really), but it seems FIDE just wants to absorb Kramnik's classical title in order to destroy it. Maybe Vlady can play hors concours? Or maybe the matches referred to could also be candidates matches?

I've been to San Luis (pop. 180,000) a few times and it doesn't give up much to Brissago when it comes to pastoral charm. Chess is quite popular in Argentina, and this is close enough to the second city of Cordoba to attract some spectators and local media. Still, it's wacky not to have it in Buenos Aires, a true chess capital. I'll certainly try to get down there, especially if I can wrangle conditions. But of course this is FIDE, so we shouldn't get our hopes up (or buy plane tickets) until the first pawn is pushed.

Continue reading "FIDE WCh in Argentina, Che!" »

April 22, 2005

Friday Cat Blogging: Guest Edition

Not that I want to turn this into a forum for exhibitionist felines the world over, but in case you're sick of looking at my cats, here's my friend Anna's cat Sigfried. He's from Spain, now living in Brooklyn.

As usual, open thread, complaints, topic suggestions, rants, marriage proposals, whatever. But keep it happy; think of the kittens.

Nakamura's 2.Qh5

It's already taken over the below thread, so I'm taking it as a topic suggestion. US champion Hikaru Nakamura played 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 against Krishnan Sasikiran in the Sigeman tournament today and lost in 87 moves. It was a critical game in standings. Nakamura was alone in second behind Timman, a place now occupied by Sasikiran while Nakamura is equal 3-4 with Hansen.

It won't surprise to learn that 2.Qh5 has never occurred in serious GM play. The Megabase turns up one game by Westernin from 1973, who was an IM then. Anyway, that's the only serious Master game I can find. Other than that you have the predictable U12 and open events.

It has caused some shock and horror among fans, but after a half-dozen moves the position was nothing special and White was doing fine. Later, Nakamura spurned exchanges and ended up in a worse position and a lost endgame. But don't blame the opening! Full game in PGN below.

Update: Toward the end of the nearly 200 comments, many from the originators of Qh5 in American Master chess, Hikaru Nakamura himself explains his rationale.

Continue reading "Nakamura's 2.Qh5" »

April 24, 2005

Dreams of Argentina

The Argentine papers are following up on the announcement that the FIDE world championship will be held there. A few mention that the event is a "life-long dream" of San Luis governor Alberto Rodriguez Saa. (Not to be confused with his brother, Adolfo, who was President for a week during the turmoil of 2001.) This Clarin report says he is a long-time fan of the game and that he brought IM Jaime Emma to San Luis. (If Emma's name rings a bell it might be for the famous double-blunder game against Stein in Mar del Plata, 1966.)

Clarin also states that Polgar will play since Kasparov will not. According to FIDE's stated formula, this isn't the case; it would be Svidler (2731 average of July 04 and Jan. 05 lists over Polgar's 2728). If Kramnik doesn't play they would both get in. La Nacion mentions Ivanchuk, so they are probably looking at the current (April) list, which is irrelevant according to FIDE. It's an anti-Svidler conspiracy!

Also notable is that Argentine GM Miguel Quinteros was at the Saturday press conference with Rodriguez Saa and various cabinet members. Quinteros was a buddy of mine in Buenos Aires, and he was the main organizer behind Kasparov's three visits to Argentina. His record of involvement in organizing big events has been spotty. Fischer's 1996 visit ended in catastrophe, then there was the Ponomariov-Kasparov match that never happened. I'll get some details in coming days.

Ah, just as I was posting this Clarin has the first piece of actual reporting on the event and the deal. Much of the report is spent wondering if the event will actually happen. Quinteros represented FIDE in the negotiations. The article delves briefly into his recent failed attempts at organizing and the (successful) Kasparov visits. The financial guarantees ($200,000) have been signed, according to several reports (all quoting the same sources). That's certainly news.

Sosa, the local council president, is against San Luis hosting the event, saying the money should go to schools and "the other problems facing the province." Rodriguez Saa said they will sell tickets and use the event to promote tourism. Sosa replied that a recent local tournament attracted only 34 players and that there are only 25 first category (expert) players in the province.

Nicolas Barrera, president of the Argentine Chess Federation, said the event has the support of the national sports ministry and, somewhat surprisingly, the office of the President. (Rodriguez Saa is generally considered to be at odds with Argentine president Nestor Kirchner.)

Apparently another site considered was Linares, but they wouldn't change the dates of the annual supertournament. Many of the reports are full of errors big and small. Most are name and date mistakes (listing Kasparov as Azerbaijan), but this one makes the sensational statement that FIDE will try and get Kasparov (?!) to play the winner to "unify the crown." Which crown would that be? (Don't get excited, it's obviously just an error.)

I'm excited about the event, it's just hard to stop from wondering and wishing about what it will and will not be. If Kramnik doesn't play the schism is perpetuated. In these early days it's worth trying to see if FIDE and Kramnik can get to the table. Once it's clear one or both aren't interested, we can just enjoy the chess and the tournament like we would any other.

April 25, 2005

Brainpower Drugs

Tony Mayo sends in this story from the Washington Times on drugs to boost concentration and other things that could aid chessplayers. Susan Polgar is interviewed. I excerpted a similar piece in the LA Times last December at ChessBase. Jeremy Silman has an epic compendium of thoughts on the subject here. Some USCF discussion record is here. Larry Parr might have some content hidden somewhere in here. The most sensible take on the topic is here.

"Even if a drug makes you bigger and stronger, it won't help you think better," Mrs. Polgar said. "You need logic, planning, concentration. To my knowledge, there is no drug that would help us play better chess."

In the near future, that may not be the case. While muscle-building drugs spawn home runs and congressional hearings, a coming era of cognitive enhancement promises boosted brains to rival baseball's bulging biceps.

Picture a golfer who never gets nervous, a basketball player learning to shoot perfect free throws with the help of a pill.
Can't quite conceive it? Don't worry — there may be a pill for that, too.

"The idea of [cognitive enhancement] is starting to take hold on a larger and larger scale," said Dr. Vernon Williams, a sports neurologist and pain-management specialist at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles. "Lots of people are still kind of unaware. But that's only temporary.

"Before long, this will be something that is potentially as much an issue in sports as steroids."

I've long maintained that it's wrong to assume that some drugs cannot help some people play chess better just because there is no universal Elo pill. Caffeine is an obvious one that we all know staves off feelings of tiredness. (How it works was recently in the news). There is also a problem separating drugs from supplements and even food. Scarfing a lot of ginseng has strong effects on some people, for example.

The prevailing sentiment is to discard the invasive and insulting practice of drug testing until something is conclusively proven to improve performance and/or do harm. It's the harm part that led to things being banned in most sports. If something makes you perform better and has no harmful effects, it's hard to say what's wrong with it. Is it any more an unfair advantage than eating better food or having a personal trainer or a better bike? Perhaps.

What does seem silly is testing chessplayers for the same things as weight lifters and cyclists. This was/is necessary to comply with the IOC rules and qualify chess as a sport, which helped some federations get state funding. But drug testing is not cheap.

April 26, 2005

Massive Matches

I just posted an interesting item on the recent 100-board Estonia - Latvia match. It was sent in by a Latvian chess journalist and also goes into the 30-year history of these matches. Such big events, where amateurs get to play alongside top stars, are great for the sport. Club matches are also excellent for this. I used to play for the Club Argentino in matches that went to 30 or more boards including sections for juniors. Great fun, especially if your game goes long in a tight match and you have a crowd of GMs milling around you down on board 11, as happened to me once.

A city/club chess league in the US would be a great way to popularize the game and also provide a platform for true professionalism in US chess. A steady per-game paycheck is very different from hoping you finish in the money so you can pay the rent. Of course travel is a problem in such a large country, which is where the internet comes in. I talked about this years ago, but perhaps it's time to get more serious. Greg Shahade is actually forming teams across the country, but I'm not sure he wants publicity for this project just yet, so you didn't hear it from me.

April 27, 2005

Gelfand Speaks

In an earlier thread Vlad posted a link to an interesting interview of Boris Gelfand on the ACP site. His remarks about Nakamura's concrete style of play being of "another dimension" jibe with Nakamura's own comments about his play being different and computer-like.

It's hard for those below the master level, perhaps even the GM level, to understand the underpinnings of such discussions of style. Good moves just look like good moves and most fans need computers to sort those out anyway. So it's interesting to get the opinion of someone of Gelfand's playing level and erudition.

It seems natural for the US to produce the first world-class player of this new generation. There is no classical tradition of trainers working with the sacred texts. Players immediately enter the cauldron of open competition where only results matter. The prevalence of computer training and constant online play emphasize objectivity over general principles.

April 28, 2005

Gone Fishin'

Not Fischering this time. Actual, honest to goodness fishing for fish. My dad has organized an excursion to the Sea of Cortez with a group of friends and I'll be at a remote spot in Baja Mexico for the next few days. I used to hunt and fish all the time, but haven't done much of it since I left California 15 years ago. I'm hoping not to embarrass myself by being pulled in by a roosterfish or worse. (Roosterfish?!)

Imagine, days and nights without internet! Somebody hold me! A friend will be taking care of my apartment and cats, but unfortunately she's not exactly qualified to run a chess blog. I didn't have time to set up a guest blogger this time around. Next time, who should it be? Nominations for guest and vacation bloggers, please!

Meanwhile, behave yourselves. I just might find an internet kiosk in a palapa hut down there and check in. If I'm eaten by a 600 lb marlin, please remember me kindly until the servers are shut off.

May 3, 2005

Tuesday Fish Blogging

Will someone please tell my keyboard to stop rocking back and forth? After spending so much time on a boat the world won't stop moving. Five days with no internet and no phones, just sea, sun, sand, and fish. Very Big Fish. There were ten of us on three boats. Our boat caught three marlin and I even won our group's biggest fish prize for the day and the trip when I brought in a 150+ pound marlin on Sunday. A triumph for the geeky NY writer over the nine hunting, fishing, NASCAR-watching guys from upstate California.

(A great pic of another marlin caught by a boatmate is below.) That's some serious work, but much easier when you know what you're doing. Which we most definitely did not on the first day, when it took all three of us taking turns to bring in a 100 lb. marlin in an hour. My forearms are still aching. After getting some instruction I brought in the big one in 25 minutes, but I admit he was very cooperative. We'd planned to catch and release, but he swallowed the hook and died very quickly. Nothing goes to waste though, we ate all we could and most of the group took back coolers full of fish steaks. We also caught dorado, tuna, and triggerfish.

Beautiful place, great time, good to be back to ridiculous amounts of work. Now I'm trying to figure out why and when my router shut down, making it impossible for my automated mailer to send out last week's newsletters. Crap.

Continue reading "Tuesday Fish Blogging" »

Kramnik's Nyet

As we expected, Vladimir Kramnik has declined his invitation to play in the FIDE world championship tournament scheduled for San Luis, Argentina in September. He says he still supports unification and so would be prepared to play the winner of the FIDE event. This is what we expected to hear, and also what I hoped would happen after finding out that FIDE was planning on holding another knock-out after unification. If Kramnik just hands over the classical title Ilyumzhinov will toss it down the deepest outhouse in Kalmykia.

I support Kramnik's stance on not playing in San Luis. This doesn't mean he can defend the classical tradition by just sitting around. A cycle and a system must be in place for after the putative unification match. FIDE could come to its senses (ha ha) and announce such a cycle itself. Or Kramnik could fail to put together a reasonable alternative. In either case Kramnik's position, and that of the classical title, would be seriously undermined. There's no free ride for the champion. FIDE is doing some dumb things, but at least they are actively doing something for chess and for chessplayers.

May 4, 2005

FIDE Gets Real

FIDE has gone sane. Hey, maybe the rumors that the DD is read in Kalmykia actually have some credence!? The international chess federation has announced an outline of a full 2005-2007 world championship cycle that includes candidates matches and a world championship match. That is, beyond the knock-out, which now, instead of a world championship, becomes something we recommended years ago, a "world cup" that sends top finishers into the candidates matches. The outline is in Word format here.

Much is left unsaid and even more left undone. How long are these matches? Long enough to be part of the classical world championship tradition? (14 should be a minimum for the final. 20 or 24 would be nice...) A last-minute addition to the doc says that the later stages will even use the classical time control instead of the FIDE semi-rapid that will still be used for the KO (now formally the World Cup).

This is almost too much good news to handle, despite the lack of sponsorship. There are some clouds on the horizon. Item 2.3.4 mentions the 2005 World Cup, last year announced for Vietnam. Last month a Vietnamese news story seemed to shoot down this possibility, despite FIDE's typically unwarranted optimism. A FIDE delegation went to Vietnam last month, but the announced April announcement was never announced. They never learn.

The FIDE turnaround toward the classical tradition is obviously very welcome. (Almost unnervingly so, since this is basically what I was asking for.) The trick is that we already have a classical world champion and Kramnik has stated he won't play in the unification world championship tournament in Argentina. Would all the San Luis players play if the winner had to play Kramnik for unification in 2006?

Now it's a tough call. Just yesterday I reiterated my support for Kramnik staying away from San Luis because FIDE would destroy the title with a KO. But if FIDE embraces the classical tradition Kramnik is running out of things to defend. If the outline is followed, the new FIDE champion will more credibility than Kramnik retains. (Following my formula of rigor + democracy = credibility.) There are still some vestiges of tradition from Kramnik's win over Kasparov in 2000, but what we really need is a classical cycle, and FIDE now seems intent on providing one. Kramnik won't be defending the classical tradition (other than succession) or anything other than his own right to the title.

In sum, my preference is for the San Luis winner to play Kramnik under FIDE's auspices. But if FIDE ignores him or if the San Luis players balk at this, especially Anand, Kramnik will have to think fast and consider playing.

May 5, 2005

Nakamura on 2.Qh5

In this week's issue of Black Belt, coming out Friday, US champion Hikaru Nakamura annotates his Sigeman loss to Sasikiran. His comment on 2.Qh5:

SURPRISE! I actually wanted to avoid Krishnan's theory in both the Ruy and Scotch, as I felt he was very booked up. I also noticed that Kramnik had prepared this opening for some rapid games against Kasparov if Kasparov decided to play 1...e5. As the saying goes... "If any World Champion studies it then it has to be good!"

In case you've been in a cave, we've had an epic and fascinating discussion and investigation of 2.Qh5 and its origins here. Nakamura's entertaining game intro also deserves a larger audience:

Before delving into the game, I am going to give a little bit of historical background. Malmo is a town in southern Sweden primarily known as a seaport. It is separated from Denmark by the Oresund Strait. However, in 1999 the two governments decided to build a bridge which connects Sweden and Denmark. I must say that although there wasn't much to see in Malmo; the weather was pleasant and there were plenty of hot chicks all around!

The 2nd half of the tournament was played in a little town in Denmark. However, there was a train station five minutes away; so on the off day I decided to catch a train into Copenhagen and see the world famous "Tivoli Gardens."

I did not win this tournament, but I scored 6/9 and picked up four rating points. As always, you cannot win every tournament and I didn't win this one. I had a solid tournament though, so I am not overly disappointed.

Lastly, I would like to thank the sponsor Johan Sigeman, and the organizers Johan Berntsen and Lars Bech-Hansen for running a good tournament.

Good to see that despite his drive to the top of the chess world, he takes the time to notice the truly important things! I guess we know where he would be in the old "Alekhine and Capablanca go to the theater" anecdote.

Update: Hikaru later posted the following explanation to the other 2.Qh5 thread:

Hello everyone! After so many random comments I feel like explaining why I played 2.Qh5 and what inspired it. So here it goes...

The night before I was to play GM Sasikiran in round 7, I decided to connect to the wireless internet from my room in Denmark. As such, I couldn't avoid logging on ICC and chatting with friends. After talking randomly with some people Jason Doss a.k.a. Jdoss on ICC suggested that I play 2.Qh5! Although I think Jason was only half-serious at the time I thought it was a practical opening choice and more importantly a surprise. I have analyzed this line thoroughly, and will probably play 2.Qh5 in the future...maybe in Minnesota, who knows? I think that in order for chess to be interesting in the future people need to come up with new ideas and avoid all the computer-prepared variations, which makes chess dull and unexciting as players do not have to exhibit real skill.

Anyways in response to what some other Grandmasters have said; I do believe that 2.Qh5 is a playable move, in fact I had a very good position in the game, and was close to winning if I had in fact played 23.e5. Alas, due to my style I went for all or broke and lost the game. I truly believe that one only has one life to live, therefore one must enjoy this world. What does one loss mean in the scheme of life?

["do believe" was "do not believe" in his post, presumably a typo]

May 7, 2005

Kasparov on 2.Qh5

Well, sort of. I told him that the story going round is that Kramnik had prepared this for blitz against him. His answer, "Funny, but for me to play ..e5 first Kramnik would have to play e4!" Good point. If Kramnik had prepared this for Kasparov, why didn't he ever play e4? How well grounded is this story? Perhaps Vlady was pulling Short's leg?

Garry didn't comment on the legitimacy of 2.Qh5, not unexpectedly. But he did say he was recently shocked to see Nakamura on Playchess.com playing dozens of 1 0 games against a computer! Not exactly the Botvinnik school, I suppose, but it's hard to argue with results.

May 8, 2005

New Kramnik Interview

There is a new interview with Vladimir Kramnik by Dagobert Kohlmeyer up at ChessBase.com. Some items of interest about his personal opinions and life, not much in the way of news. As several posters in other threads have noted, Kramnik brings up the Prague agreement as a rationale for not playing in Argentina. This not long after saying Prague was dead. But in general I agree with his conclusion, that according to how things were defined before there is nothing to oblige him to play in a unification tournament.

But the situation is changing. Prague died with Kasparov's retirement and FIDE's announcement of the San Luis unification ("unification") tournament. We may speak of the spirit of Prague, doing your level best to unify the title for the good of the game and all the players. Somebody is going to have to bite the bullet. FIDE can have the San Luis winner play Kramnik and continue with a classical cycle, as they have announced. That would be optimal. Or Kramnik can play in San Luis with his title on the line and a classical cycle begins.

There are sacrifices and leaps of faith involved no matter what, but I don't see how things can get any worse than they are now. The schism will persist, perhaps with two classical chess champions, and they will continue to split the small sponsorship pie. Can we trust FIDE to hold the classical cycle? I don't think they would go as far as a bait and switch. One thing is for sure, it will be a lot easier to find sponsorship if it's for THE world championship instead of one of them.

He asks people to check the statistics on the number of draws he plays. Okay. Draw percentage since the start of 2003, not counting blindfold and blitz: Leko 68%, Kramnik 62%, Anand 52%, Topalov 48%.

May 9, 2005

Anand Confirms

As Sri posted in the message boards, Vishy Anand has confirmed to FIDE his participation in the San Luis world championship. A brief interview with him is here. I first met Anand in 1994 at the Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic in Buenos Aires. (Spectacularly called the "Polugaevsky Memorial" by my friend Javier Erbe in the Buenos Aires Herald despite Polu's quite corporal presence at the tournament.)

The only way this tournament solves anything without Kramnik participating is if it provides the winner with credibility enough to marginalize Kramnik. I don't think it does. But the winner of a serious cycle, such as the one planned by FIDE, would, especially if Kramnik can't get anything going on his side. Does popular opinion matter? What would it take for FIDE to offer the winner a match with Kramnik?

You have one group saying FIDE and its title are irrelevant and another group saying Kramnik and his title are irrelevant. My impression is that there is a larger group in the middle, where I am, saying they are all relevant and should get together, and that the chess world would be a better place if this happened, assuming FIDE's bout of sanity continued.

May 10, 2005

Mtel Masters Begins

The year's strongest tournament starts Thursday in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Mtel Masters is the brainchild of Bulgaria's top player, Veselin Topalov, and his manager Silvio Danailov. I was impressed by the rare display of marketing outreach. The organizers actually contacted me about advertising the event here.

The field of the double round-robin: Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Adams, Polgar, Ponomariov. There's a poll in the message boards to pick the winner. It is surprising that Anand is dominating with more than 50% of the votes. There is no doubt the Indian star is very popular with fans. And he has the best rating and the best overall recent tournament record. But he has rarely excelled in super-strong, tight events with this format. Surely Kramnik, "Mr. Plus Two," should be the favorite for a share of first, although he hasn't shown good form in a long time.

The no-draw rules won't be noticeable unless there is a controversy about accepting a draw. The players can't agree to a draw on their own. They inform the arbiter, who can refer to a judge (Azmaiparashvili) to rule on whether the position is really a forced repetition or a theoretical draw. It's hard to imagine telling the players, "no, stop the repetition and play something else," but that shouldn't be necessary. Just taking the ability to offer a draw off the table is a huge positive step for chess as a sport.

May 11, 2005

Pics 01 - Model Kasparov

I'm going to start posting the occasional cool chess photo, with different sizes available for download in case you are chess geek enough to put something like this up as wallpaper. Or in case you are just tired of the tiny and over-compressed photos you get on most websites. Requests welcome.

Garry Kasparov, New York, March 2005. Photoshoot for his upcoming book.

Here it is uncropped and in larger sizes. You can right-click the link and save or click the link and then right-click the image and save. No copyright for not-for-profit use.

800x600 (46kb) - 1024x768 (71kb) - 1600x1200 (174kb)

May 12, 2005

Mtel 2005 r1

Ponomariov looked really bad today, and Kramnik made him look even worse. Terrible opening and then Black looked just helpless. Anand-Topalov was spectacular, although it left the usual questions about where their preparation ended since they just played this line. Adams-Polgar showed the value of prohibiting draw offers. Sure it was clearly drawn, but playing it out was instructive and interesting. Games for replay and download are here at ChessBase.com and there will be a full report soon. There Kasparov has a few pithy comments on the tournament and the no-draw rule.

May 13, 2005

Mtel 2005 r2

A boring Petroff draw between Kramnik and Anand. (Yes, Kramnik won the draw and started with two whites.) They added little of interest to the stem game, so you have to wonder what Kramnik was thinking by playing this. Boo. Ponomariov-Polgar was an interesting game that would have been drawn a little earlier, but was good to see played out.

Adams played an interesting type of delayed Marshall Gambit against Topalov and had plenty of play. (I annotated a Sigeman game with a similar idea by Jonny Hector in Black Belt #124.) They repeated moves starting with move 23, Topalov still with the extra pawn. The first GM draw came early in this event. Again, it's hard to imagine the organization stepping in and telling Topalov or Adams to play another move, but doing just that at some point will be the true test of this concept. Report and analysis will follow at ChessBase.com.

For some reason they're not up at ChessBase, but Garry Kasparov had a few comments to me about this tournament yesterday. 1) Ponomariov has lost his touch and is out of place in this tournament. 2) It won't be won by as little as +2 because they no-draw-offer rule will eventually tire the players out, which should be visible in the second half of the tournament.

Ninja Tournaments

The busy folks in the message boards recently completed a large online tournament and are currently taking sign-ups for the next. Kudos to the organizers and the winners. What the heck, kudos to the losers too. Here is the announcement from Rondino:

ChessNinja recently celebrated the completion of its most successful online chess tournament: Tournament Of Ninja Champions 3 (TONC3). It was a rousing success, with over 50 participants at its peak. Kevin D Plant won the Masters section, Petrosianic won the BlackBelt section, and NeoFight won the WhiteBelt section, with hard fought battles throughout. Once again, littlefish and I have decided to organize and co-TD another event. We are calling it -- get this -- TONC4! (Which, while lacking in originality, is nevertheless highly consistent.)

A few reminders about the format:

* 7-round Swiss (most likely)
* 2 weeks/round
* G/30 (standard, and minimum time control, though both participants may agree to a longer control)
* Starting date: May 23 (tentative)

More information can be found here.

Get your game on.

May 14, 2005

Mtel 2005 r3

Some days you just seem to have a little angel on your shoulder. Today reminded me of that scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" where they are in line at a movie arguing about Marshall McLuhan, and Allen produces McLuhan himself to step over and tell the other guy he knows nothing about his work. Then Allen, vindicated, says to the camera, "Boy, if life were only like this!"

Yesterday, after being hassled by the usual suspects here for suggesting Kramnik wanted no more than a draw yesterday against Anand or he wouldn't have played the lame Petroff line he played, I said that the 13.Re1 line was sharper. As if on cue, England's Mickey Adams took out Kramnik today in the Petroff with 13.Re1. Boy, if life were only like this!

Okay, patting self on back segment over. Great game, and Kramnik brought the complications on himself, to his credit. He won Adams' queen with a deep combination, but the white pieces picked off Kramnik's pawns one by one and the world champion had to resign. An exciting battle all round, and the third win in a row by Adams over Kramnik. (Corus 2004, Dortmund 2000, plus a bunch of draws.) Polgar-Topalov (Berlin?! Say it ain't so, Veselin!) and Anand-Ponomariov were drawn, so Adams is in clear first. Games and analysis now at ChessBase.com. Should be some exclusive photos there soon.

May 15, 2005

Kasparov Interview Part 3

Part 3 of my March interview with Garry Kasparov is now up at ChessBase.com. It's all politics, but in more detail than you've seen in his WSJ or other interviews. I tossed in a few behind the scenes photos despite their being off-topic. Better than pics of Putin and Bush. There are links to the first parts at the top. Here are the DD discussions of Part 1 and Part 2.

Mtel 2005 r4

We had another quick repetition game that shows you can't legislate blood on the board. Polgar-Anand was amazing. She was on the attack but Vishy's exchange sac novelty created some miracle counterplay with queen and knight and he ended up better when Polgar continued to sacrifice. Topalov tried 5.Nc3 against Kramnik's Petroff and didn't get much. It seems to me like he played h6 around eight moves too late. ChessBase.com report here.

San Luis Field Complete

According to this FIDE communique (Word format), the field for the 2005 FIDE world championship in San Luis, Argentina (Sep.27-Oct.16) is complete. It came out the way we predicted it. Kasparov and Kramnik out, Svidler and Polgar in. The field of the double round-robin: Anand, Topalov, Leko, Adams, Morozevich, Svidler, Polgar, Kasimdzhanov. Should be a fantastic event. There is not even a mention of Kasparov or Kramnik.

Many fans want to interrogate the players on whether or not they recognize Kramnik's title, or if they would play him in a unification match. This isn't really fair to them. It could burn bridges with FIDE and the San Luis organizers, who are putting on a fine event with an excellent prize fund. And it would achieve little else. The good news is that so far FIDE hasn't painted itself into a corner by issuing ultimatums or prohibiting players from playing in a unification event. (At least not to my knowledge. I haven't seen the official 'player's undertaking' document, but I was told it didn't have this language.)

(You can find our many previous discussion of this event and the world championship debate in general by searching for San Luis on the left.)

May 16, 2005

Kasparov Nearly Arrested

From Igor Stein and a few others, Garry Kasparov was almost one of several arrested while protesting outside of the trial of Mikhail Khodorkhovsky today. No bashes to the head this time though. [Actually I just talked to him and he was indeed grabbed around the neck and also whacked a few times by police. If he ever plans to return to chess he'd better start wearing a helmet.]

Mtel 2005 r5

After the first half of the tournament Adams and Kramnik are tied for the lead at +1. As expected, it's an extremely tight and drawish crosstable. Half of the four decisive games came today. Ponomariov beat Topalov in a beautiful effort. The combination that led to a remarkable bind came when Pono was already up the exchange, but it was still quite a sight. (Report at ChessBase.com)

On the other boards it was favorite client day at the office, but only one held true to form. Despite draws in their most recent encounters, Polgar has a truly miserable record against Kramnik. Her kingside attack never got anywhere and she landed in a pawn-down endgame that Kramnik won with impressive speed. The knight wheel started by Kramnik on move 50 might remind aficionados of Capablanca-Yates, NY 1924.

Just as Kramnik did a few days ago, Anand played a pretty sacrifice against Adams in a balanced position. It was only enough to net a pawn, which he had to give back, and the endgame was drawn. Fun combination though, similar in several ways to Kramnik's against the Englishman. Either Adams is seeing everything or he's leading a charmed life!

May 17, 2005

Maxim Dlugy Arrested in Russia

It's been a rough week for chessplayers with the Russian law. According to this report Maxim Dlugy, a top American GM in the 80's and former president of the USCF (90-93), has been arrested in Russia on a warrant regarding an embezzlement case and an investment fund he used to represent. I heard about this only when the Moscow Times asked me for info on Dlugy! The case sounds complicated, involving various companies. [Update: As came out later, he was actually detained in Russia over a month ago, on April 12. No word of this came out until now?! How many Americans are arrested in Russia? Did no one want to mention this with the Bush visit to Moscow? Bizarre.]

Obviously I'm not privy to his business doings, but Max has always been one of the good guys on a personal level. He is currently being held in Perm, where the case was filed. As of yet I don't know of any way to contact him or pass on support if you're a friend. Link below to a better report at the Moscow Times, but only for a short time.

May 18, 2005

Mtel 2005 r6

A day of incredible, mind-bending chess that won't soon be forgotten. Also a good day to remember to be really annoyed with people who watch live games online with Fritz & Co. running, making a constant stream of remarks about how the top players in the world are "missing" moves or are "definitely" going to play X. These games are being played by humans, so shut the damn engines off and realize how damn hard this game is!

Anyway, some spectacular stuff that will take a long time to analyze even with computers. Topalov sacrificed a piece against Anand and won. Kramnik sacrificed a piece against Ponomariov and lost. Polgar preferred to sacrifice the other guy's pieces and beat Adams. All were tactical nightmares for long stretches. Suddenly Ponomariov is the clear leader at +1 and Anand is in the cellar! Report soon at ChessBase.com. Whew!

Update: Kasparov is on political tour in Siberia (yes, people go there on purpose now) and without internet, so I just read today's games to him over the phone. "18.Re6..." "Oooof!"

HB Global Challenge

The richest, and most expensive, open in history starts today in, of all places, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm sure it's lovely, but as many of the visiting GMs found out, it's not trivial to get there! The list of invitees is impressive, although it falls short of the strength of recent events like the Aeroflot Open. Gata Kamsky is back in action and is the top seed. Other favorites include Beliavsky, van Wely, and US champ Hikaru Nakamura.

The open section employs a "no early draw rule" similar to that used in the NY Generation Chess event, also organized by GM Maurice Ashley. There are no draws before move 30 without special permission. (Tournament policy here.) It seems almost tame now that the Mtel Masters has taken it a step further by banning draw offers entirely. But it's a little different if you're paying your own way at an Open. There are other interesting rules, such as giving GMs free registration in exchange for simuls and interviews.

First prize is a massive $50,000, out of a $500,000 guaranteed prize fund. The entry fee was $345-400, depending on how early you signed up. If you're there, send in some tidbits. I'm sure Hikaru will annotate a game for Black Belt when it's over.

May 19, 2005

Mtel 2005 r7

I'm putting his up early so people don't start freaking out in the r6 thread. Kramnik just lost in 20 moves to Anand in the same Petroff line he lost in to Adams. He hung a piece to a fork. It was more complicated than that, maybe he missed that in the final position 20...Qxc1 21.Bxc1 wins a full piece. 21.Rxc1 Ba3 is probably what he saw, hard to say. Still, very ugly and an immediate candidate for worst-ever blunder by a world champ. (17...Qe4?? loses a piece by force.) I'm still calling it poetic justice for the lame line he played in this same Petroff against Anand in round two! He brought down the Petroff Curse!

Polgar-Ponomariov a Berlin draw. Topalov scored the first black win by beating Adams. The Englishman had a small plus but couldn't manage to extricate his knight without losing material. With 5/6 games decisive after the break, you have to wonder if the players are getting tired.

May 20, 2005

MinneMania Report

Dave Arganian sends in this report from the HB Global Chess Challenge underway in Minneapolis. If someone also sends in some pictures you'll be famous in a ChessBase.com report. (To be rich you have to win the tournament, sorry.) Tourney hall, top players, inside and outside the building, the city, anything and everything would be great.

The big news before rd 1 yesterday is some guy asked permission to interrupt the opening meeting to propose to his girlfriend (she accepted). Hooray.

So far I count 1221 entries as follows:

Open: 244 U-2200: 167 U-2000: 218 U-1800: 226 U-1600: 172 U-1400: 150 Unrated: 44. Of course, that doesnt count the folks who will be in the 3-day schedule starting tomorrow - I'd say another 400-500 is a safe bet.

In the open we have guys like Larry Christiansen, Nick DeFirmian, Epishin, Milov, Gata Kamsky - all have 2-0. Nakamura is also playing. Jussupow dropped a 1/2 pt to IM Jay Bonin.

I have to say things look pretty well run here - 1st rd last night was only 20 min. late. Conditions are good except it is somewhat noisy when players move their chairs on the hard ground floor. Sets and board are provided - clocks aren't.

The biggest job TDs have is setting those CHRONOS clocks for those of us (like me) who find it too complicated to figure out how to set them.

Thanks, Dave! (Good luck!) I didn't know Epishin was going to be there. He becomes an immediate favorite. The official site just put up some PGN files, that's good news. Once we have a few pics we'll do a report at ChessBase, so if you're there, send in some notes and photos. Dirt always welcome...

Mtel 2005 r8

All three games finished drawn. Topalov is a man on fire, unbelievable. His exchange sac against Polgar was sensational, but she held on and forced him to force her to force a draw. Something like that. Ponomariov and Kramnik had mild pressure on Anand and Adams, respectively, but both were drawn without acrobatics. Ponomariov looked like he had the better chances.

Many of the notes on the nice official site are badly translated and occasionally incomprehensible. "I wouldn`t say I am a favorite. I came just to play my game. But since I was not involved in the World Championship in Argentina, the system of completion is not that good." That from Ponomariov. I'm not sure if this refers to his cancelled match against Kasparov and his poor subsequent results, or is about not being able to play in San Luis. I assume the latter.

This one from Kramnik yesterday, oddly timed after his disaster against Anand, is clear enough: "This tournament is so strong and the games so exciting that it could also be named "World Championship." I think I get his point, and I certainly agree about the Sofia games, but hasn't anyone shown him the Brissago games?! If he had played such exciting chess in Brissago it would have been a world championship for the ages. Of course Leko would also be champion...

May 21, 2005

Mtel 2005 r9

Another spectacular showing by Veselin Topalov at the Mtel Masters. His strong Linares showing had elements of luck, but in Sofia the hometown boy is looking like a combination of Boris Spassky and Vasil Levski. Today Ponomariov sharpened the play and quickly paid the price, losing to a brutal sacrificial assault. Anand somehow bamboozled Adams, proving once again that no matter how well Adams plays or how good his position, chances are always on Anand's side when they play.

Kramnik went back to the Petroff yet again, this time against Polgar, and earned a steady draw. It's been a while since we've seen so much theoretical activity in one opening during a tournament. It used to happen with the Najdorf when Kasparov, Anand, and Topalov were all matching novelties.

Adams has lost 3/4 after briefly leading near the start. Topalov is the very deserving clear leader with Anand right behind him. Final round tomorrow. Anand-Polgar and Kramnik-Topalov should mean first place is still up for grabs. You'd like to think Kramnik would want to avoid finishing with a negative score. (At which point the "when was the last time a world champion finished with a negative score?" trivia can start.) Games and more at ChessBase.com.

May 22, 2005

Mtel 2005 Topalov Rocks!

Bizarre finish to this amazing event. Veselin Topalov pleased the home crowd with a final-round win over Kramnik that gave him first place by a full point over Anand, who pressured but couldn't take out Polgar. Ponomariov-Adams was also drawn.

In case you thought Kramnik's loss to Anand in 20 moves was a candidate for worst-ever world champ blunder, he cleared that up for all time today. And worst-ever tournament result also looks in the bag, the loss sending him to -2, tied for last with Adams. Clearly something has gone very, very wrong with Kramnik in the past year.

Both players were in minor time trouble when both overlooked that White could win a piece with 31.Qxc5 (31...Bxe2 32.Qf2). Then Kramnik, apparently believing he could trap the black queen, played 34.Nc1??? and resigned after Topalov took his bishop. After the planned (?) 34.Nb3 the queen can capture on e4. Oops. Horrible. Painful to watch. Poor Vlady. (More quick notes on this now up at ChessBase.com here.)

A great tournament with many fantastic games. Congratulations to the organizers. Topalov played sensational chess from start to finish. The Bulgarian may now actually pass Anand on the rating list, which would make him the unofficial #1 for the first time. You can't give all the credit to the anti-draw rules, but there is NO DOUBT that it made watching and looking at the games more interesting, even the long draws. It will be interesting to hear what the players say, especially those who did poorly and who might be looking for a scapegoat. Another rest day couldn't have hurt.

May 23, 2005

2006 US Championship Site

Are you ready for San Diego? I just put the new site on the air at http://www.uschesschampionship.com. Pretty much bare bones for now, so people know the when and where and all about the qualifiers. But I thought you might like to poke around.

Some things about the tournament are still up in the air, and other details will be posted in coming days as I get them from the NTC people. The prize fund will be announced soon, but there might be some wait on the format, which will almost certainly change a little from last year.

There were a few 2005 USCh site links broken during the move, but nothing critical and I'll get to them eventually. Then there's the usual nightmare that is Internet Explorer. Elements that are identical in the code and that look identical in Firefox and Mozilla magically move around when viewed in Explorer. Security problems are reason enough to never use IE, but it doesn't even handle html correctly.

I was pretty happy with the site last time, particularly the player blog idea, which I'll definitely continue with a few improvements. We'll also have profiles of all 64 players this time, since we're starting now and not two weeks before the event like last year.

May 25, 2005

Hydra vs Adams

I heard about this a month ago but either forgot about it or preferred to wait until the event was closer. But now it's in the media (here, here, and here, with a cool promo photo of Adams at the bottom) and everyone is sending me links, so here we are, a month early. From June 21-26 English GM Mickey Adams will play a six-game match against the chess computer Hydra of the UAE in London. (BBC has a cute article here, with the writer playing a (horrible) game against Hydra.)

Hydra is a hardware-based system; that is, it's a not a software program that runs on a general-purpose CPU like Fritz and the rest. Hydra was formerly the ChessBase Brutus project. [Search here for Hydra for more on that.] It's not clear to me how much UAE technology is involved. They are using Xeon processors, FPGA cards and the programming wizardry of Austrian Chrilly Donninger, who created the program Nimzo. But it's a promising method for a sort of off-the-shelf supercomputer and the technology has potential beyond dominating chess. Kudos to the sponsors and organizers.

I do wish these press reports wouldn't act as though we don't already have computers much faster than this thing. They are just very, very expensive and not specialized in chess. There also are other clustered machines that are among the fastest in the world.

There is little doubt that Hydra can beat the top PC programs. Search depth is critical in comp-comp games. But a few million more moves here or there isn't decisive against a human, where the type of position out of the opening is everything. (That and human blunders, which any computer will punish instantly.)

One thing that is long past due is that the Hydra team seem content to let their monster off its leash very early instead of getting into an opening book war. At least that has been their policy against other computers. There are the usual errors in the media reports (Adams #3 in 2002? Can boil an egg?), and also some confusion. The Hydra site, which continues its strange tradition of copy-pasting content from other sites, says the new version uses 32 FPGA cards. The press reports, no doubt all based on the same press release, say 64. The Times story says the upgrade to 64 will come later in the year.

Another number they all latch on to is that Adams sees "1.4 positions per second." The old made-up number, much used in the Kasparov matches, was 2-3. As if we really know, or could ever know. The human brain doesn't work in convenient numbers like nodes per second when it comes to chess thinking.

May 27, 2005

Post-Sofia Kramnik Interview

Since it's taking over the Mtel item, here's a bit on the Sport Express interview with Kramnik after the Mtel Masters tournament ended. There's really not much new, although it's good to have things in Kramnik's own words regarding reunification. And the interviewer, Vasiliev, makes clear one doubt we had: Yes, there is language in the San Luis player agreements that prohibit the players from participating in alternative world championship events.

That's foolish on FIDE's part, since they gain nothing and sort of rule out a possibility that could be very good for them. Since FIDE will certainly go back on this if they can get a 15% cut of a big money match between the San Luis winner and Kramnik, it mostly shows how little regard they have for their own contracts.

Kramnik's only option, other than to play in San Luis, is to act as though such a match is inevitable and to raise money for it, which is the only way he'll get it. If he can show up with a few million dollars guaranteed for a 2006 unification match, FIDE and their champion would be foolish not to accept. And if they actually proceed with their announced classical cycle we could be back in business with a legitimate champion.

Kramnik is in a tough spot. FIDE clearly feels they can ignore him and his recent results only make that easier, and fundraising harder. If he can't bring sponsorship to the table it will only prove to them that they were right to ignore him. (To be fair, they didn't ignore him entirely. They invited him to San Luis as classical champion. That's their answer when Kramnik brings up Prague.) Kramnik has enough connections to get a another pseudo-qualifier and a match, but if the FIDE cycle gets going that will only get tougher and be less relevant compared to a championship with hundreds of participants - basically everyone but Kramnik - and candidates matches. I agree with his stand; it's just going to be a lonely one.

Not to pick on him, but what's with saying he's still damaged from the Leko match? Wasn't that seven months ago? He played 15 games between that and Mtel. At this point even if he does think he's still sick he probably shouldn't say so; it sounds neurotic at best. He even says Leko will be the favorite in San Luis (I agree), but that he (Kramnik) would be at a disadvantage because he played in Brissago a year earlier?! Wacky. Anyway, let's hope he comes back to form in Dortmund, where he usually plays well.

May 28, 2005

Women Competitors

This isn't flame bait, really. The question of why there aren't more women in chess, and why there are so few among the elite, has been around forever. It's something I've delved into on many occasions as well. A recent NY Times article covering the giant girls' championship talked about how friendly the girls were and how much friendlier the atmosphere was without any boys around.

The most popular article at NYTimes.com in the past week was a Tierney op-ed on an experiment that showed very different attitudes toward competition in men and women. This is something that many would call obvious, at the risk of being called politically incorrect, so it's interesting to have it illustrated by such an elegant experiment.The article will disappear into the Times archives in a day or two, so here's an excerpt. Please read the whole thing if it's still up.

Economists recently tried to find out in an experiment in Pittsburgh by paying men and women to add up five numbers in their heads. At first they worked individually, doing as many sums as they could in five minutes and receiving 50 cents for each correct answer. Then they competed in four-person tournaments, with the winner getting $2 per correct answer and the losers getting nothing.

On average, the women made as much as the men under either system. But when they were offered a choice for the next round - take the piece rate or compete in a tournament - most women declined to compete, even the ones who had done the best in the earlier rounds. Most men chose the tournament, even the ones who had done the worst.

The men's eagerness partly stemmed from overconfidence, because on average men rated their ability more highly than the women rated theirs. But interviews and further experiments convinced the researchers, Muriel Niederle of Stanford and Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh, that the gender gap wasn't due mainly to women's insecurities about their abilities. It was due to different appetites for competition.

"Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much," Professor Niederle said. "The men who weren't good at this task lost a little money by choosing to compete, and the really good women passed up a lot of money by not entering tournaments they would have won."

The working paper that the article was based on includes much more of interest and is here (PDF). That a combination of less testosterone and a culture that raises them to get along makes women less competitive than men is hardly big news. And it's not about "curing" them. As the study also shows, men are competitive even when it goes against common sense. Just about any management book you pick up tells you women make better managers because they tend to want to work together and encourage others more than men do.

In the very competitive game, and world, of chess, you have to really enjoy competition for its own sake to want to stick around long enough and work hard enough to make it anywhere near the top. As many wits have pointed out, it's to the female gender's credit they put so little interest into something as trivial as chess! (But what about the shoe thing?)

May 29, 2005

FIDE, Meet the ACP

At long last FIDE has met with the Association of Chess Professionals in a formal encounter of board members. A summary of the meeting by GM Tregubov is here. Most of it seems to have been agreeing to talk about things later when a joint FIDE-ACP commission is formed. This is excellent news, as the crucial role of the ACP is to provide a voice for the players, who in many cases are isolated from their national federations, which are the real members of FIDE. Federations have many responsibilities, not just the pros. But the lives and livelihoods of the pros are directly affected by FIDE, not the case of the 99% of federation members who are amateurs.

Bad news: continuing with drug testing and the fast FIDE time control. I would love to know what proof FIDE has of the 90+30" control being "more attractive for the media and spectators" as they claim. When I ran a poll about this at KasparovChess.com a few years ago, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the classical control. If the "shorter is better" theory were correct, rapid chess would have more spectators and media coverage than classical. It doesn't.

As for player votes and preferences, they should be listened to, but I don't know many sports where the players can vote to work less and give the sponsors and fans less bang for their buck and a lower quality product. It's a tribute to the respect GMs have for their art that they vote for the classical control at all. But right now it's still up to event organizers. This could change if FIDE insisted it would only rate games of a certain span or if the ACP pulled enough weight with organizers to insist.

Good news is that they agree to take on making the rating system more dynamic. I'm going to send both sides the work I did with Jeff Sonas, Denis Bilunov, and Alexander Matros, among others, in Moscow three years ago. Unfortunately our work on how to reform the rating system never saw much light of day. More good news is that they are looking into institutionalizing anti-short-draw rules such as those used at the Mtel Masters.

May 31, 2005

Tuapse Calling

The Russian town (pop 70,000) on the Black Sea now has at least two famous progeny. It provided us with Vladimir Kramnik and now with Miss Universe. Sure, Natalie Glebova is Canadian, but the Russian-born winner is receiving more attention in the land of her birth than in Canada. Plus, Canada isn't allowed to win anything.

Oddly, Kramnik's official site bio page doesn't mention the town of his birth. Nice to see they got some use out of one of the pics I took of Vlady signing for kids in Bahrain. It also says he's in the Guiness Book for his 98-2000 80-game unbeaten streak. While amazing, and more impressive considering level of opposition, that is shorter than one, perhaps two unbeaten streaks by Mikhail Tal. They just didn't have that many all-GM tournaments back then, although they played more often and Tal's opponenents weren't all wimps.

Pics 02 - #7 Meets #14

Continuing to put up some of my photo archives. The 7th world champion, Vasily Smyslov, shakes the hand of the 14th champion, Vladimir Kramnik. This was in Moscow, at the closing reception of the Botvinnik Memorial match series between Kasparov and Kramnik. The legendary Smyslov, then 80, attended most of the rounds and sat in the audience. He is nearly blind, so his wife would whisper the moves to him. On several occasions she would be distracted by well-wishers and friends and lose a few moves, but he seemed unperturbed.


Vasily Smyslov and Vladimir Kramnik. December 9, 2001

Slightly larger size here (137kb)

June 2, 2005

Leko-Adams Rapid Match

If you aren't too distracted by the Miskolctapolca Cave and Thermal baths or the Junior Men's Handball World Champoionship [sic] you should check out the eight-game rapid match between Peter Leko and Michael Adams in Miskolc, Hungary. June 2-5. Adams is famous for his nerves of steel in rapid play (he was ranked #1 on the rapid list for quite a while). Leko is no slouch of course, and didn't play at the recent Mtel. If I were a betting man, I'd go with the Hungarian on his home turf. Both will play in Dortmund next month.

June 3, 2005

Chicken on Fire on Board

Not to start a tradition of previewing events too far in advance, but there's a talking chicken out there you just can't miss. The "Fire on Board" website for the June 25-26 four-game match between Alexei Shirov and Viktor Korchnoi has a bizarre Flash animation for the ages. Don't skip that intro until you hear the talking chicken!

It's an interesting event, as much for the sponsorship and web presentation as the chess, which looks like a mismatch despite the amazing Korchnoi's latest resurgence up the rating list at the age of 74. They are trying to make this out as a big rivalry, although they've only played each other three times since 1996. There are many side events online and off and they plan on live web coverage. The event is sponsored by the Best Western Hotel de Ville. Comically, and in typical miss-the-obvious fashion, you have to work a little to find out what country the event is in. (Unless you know where "Right at the heart of the Euregio" is.) It's in Eschweiler, Germany.

Shirov's "Fire on Board, Part 2" just came out last month, but I haven't picked it up yet. The fireonboard.com website is registered to the hotel chain, which is somewhat odd. I hope that implies a continuing committment to chess and/or Shirov.

June 4, 2005

Kasparov in NIC

As explained in more detail here at ChessBase, Garry Kasparov has started a new column in the magazine New In Chess. It's mostly going to be punditry, although I don't think he'll be as hard on anyone as he is on Putin in the Wall Street Journal.

NIC, expensive and elitist in all the good ways, is sort of the paper of record for the GM set. (I remember being quite delighted when Peter Svidler mentioned my name in NIC right after I started out writing at TWIC. Unbeknownst to Peter I was totally unknown, and wanting to appear in the know he wrote as if everyone knew who I was. I'm sure 98% of NIC's readers thought, "who?!") Many amateur readers of NIC probably don't spend much time with the analysis, but the interviews and tourney reports and columns are more than enough for many subscribers. It's well worth the price.

Kasparov has written most entertainingly when he has dropped the pompous "this is how the champion should talk" tone and shown his humorous side. I've worked on countless writing projects with him and he's gotten quite good, even in English. Anyway, I hope he lets his remaining hair down and has fun with it, which will make these columns a good read. The first one, out this week, covers Linares. He discusses his favorite games, various scandals, and, most importantly, who will get his hotel room now that he's gone!

June 5, 2005

Novikov Takes Chicago

I've updated the US Championship website to include the qualifiers from the Chicago Open. That report and also the update to the Qualifier Grand Prix race were prepared by AF4C press laddie John Henderson.

The Qualifier Grand Prix is a fun idea, a last-chance spot for someone who did well in many of the qualifying events but never managed to get a spot. It seems likely to go to a non-GM, since most of the heavyweights qualify directly or make it in by rating. Another roundabout way to qualify is via the "champion of state champions" event. It's nice to find a way to promote state championships, most of which are languishing. In general, open qualification adds a lot of interest to the build-up and to the event itself. 19 players still qualify by rating, a dozen too many in my opinion.

June 7, 2005

This Is Your Federation On Drugs*

A pity I hadn't read this US Chess Federation press release before bumping into USCF President Beatriz Marinello on Sunday at Kasparov's training session for US juniors.

When most controversy about drug testing in chess is about keeping drugs (and testing) out of the sport, the USCF has gone the other way and is endorsing an event sponsored by the maker of "brain supplements." The event is set for a human chess match on June 11 in Las Vegas. At least it doesn't say the GMs (players to be announced) will be taking the "Natrol BrainSpeed" during the game.

And at least we can be pretty sure it's not a harmful product. Most of these supplements are overpriced, overhyped herbal cocktails that hover around 10% ingredient potency. (E.g. chewing on fresh gingko biloba is one thing, popping a dried capsule of the stuff is another.) You can read the ingredients here. Clubmoss, anyone?

Of course many players already take similar things, not to mention caffeine, energy bars, and power drinks. And as long as it's not harmful, I don't see the problem. Having the USCF endorse it seems a little odd. On the other hand, it's probably healthier than Pepsi.

*This post has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This post is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

June 8, 2005

For Pete's Sake

I'm off to St. Petersburg tomorrow evening. (Russia, that is. My apologies to Florida.) I'll be back on the 15th. I don't know if I'll have a chance to do anything chessic, but recommendations are welcome. My online time will be limited (mostly by choice, not by connectivity limitations) but I'll try to chip in an entry or two. Blog on the road, blog on the run?

June 9, 2005

GMs of the Future

My report on Kasparov's master classes with the top juniors in the USA is now up here at ChessBase.com. The Kasparov Chess Foundation has an intriguing initiative afoot, focusing on the standouts to create world-class players.

The massive number of scholastic players in the US hasn't produced another Fischer. It hasn't even produced a GM. Of course that wasn't the main point and teaching chess to kids is very good for its own sake. But many thought it would lead to a GM boom. With few avenues for chess professionals, smart American kids usually have to choose between chess or university, and they have all chosen university. The exceptions are the super-talents like Kamsky and Nakamura, for whom it was obvious very early that they could make a living at the game and reach world class.

The KCF program doesn't solve that, but creating very strong players is a good way to promote the game and open up other possibilities. Americans (like everyone else) like winners. Consistent success at the international level is the best way to popularize a sport here, as a sport. (Again, scholastic chess has its own agenda.) Obviously Fischer was the best example of this. A 2010 US Olympiad team with an average age of 20 is not impossible, considering the ages of the current top players. There is really no middle generation between the 35-45 crowd and the teenagers the KCF is working with.

Leon's Roar

The 18th Leon tournament is underway in Spain. Anand, Shirov, Kasimdzhanov, and the wunderkinder du jour, Magnus Carlsen, are the players. A typically over-developed and under-functional Spanish chess website hides this interesting and brief rapid event made up of three mini-matches.

Anand is consistently terrifying at this time control, but Kasim is no slouch in rapids. If you remember, this used to be an "advanced chess" event in which humans played with computer assistance. (Still reflected in the site's domain name.) Nobody seems to be mourning advanced chess much. It has potential by letting spectators see what the GMs are looking at during games, especially by downloading the ChessBase files created during play. (Classical time control would be great for this.) So even if the games are boring - no blunders no tactics no fun - the insight would be great.

June 12, 2005

Lights Out for Clubs?

Will the last one out of St. Petersburg please turn out the lights? I'm on a wifi spot in the center of the city at 11pm and it's still quite light outside despite the clouds. Beautiful city.

The legendary chess club isn't in very good shape. There is a calendar of events posted outside, but it's closed today and tomorrow for a national holiday so I might not see the interior. If it's anything like the run-down exterior and hallways they're in trouble. There is a little chess shop in the front. Eager chessplayers can liven up any hall, but it's still sad to see the decline. I remember first seeing the massive Moscow club the day they had rented out their main hall for a wedding reception, even though there was a tournament going on a thin wall away.

Is club play thriving elsewhere? Rents are high and the internet is tempting. Tournament play is a little different, and hard to imitate online. But paying hundreds of dollars to play blitz in a club is hard to justify. What are clubs doing to add value that can't be had online? Lectures and lessons are also online in force now.

June 15, 2005

From Russia With(out) Luggage

Just in from a week in St. Petersburg, where I hope my suitcase isn't. It's definitely not at the Newark airport. If it doesn't turn up I hope someone gets some use out of the two bottles of vodka it contains. Not to mention my best suit, shoes, and new glasses. Grrr.

Two chess encounters on the final days of my trip. I went into the dilapidated old central club. (No, that's NOT it above. That's the Kazan Cathedral in the center.) I wanted to take pictures but they were in the middle of the nightly rapid tournament and I didn't want to be the ugly tourist. 24 people, playing in four categories instead of all playing together and using clock handicaps. Average age was over 50, just two or three teens. You can tell it used to be a lovely space, but judging by the club's decorations, times are tough. The large photos of all the world champions end with two incorrect current champs: "Kasparov 1985-" next to "Khalifman 1999-". The last club champion on the wall was 2003.

On the way home through Paris there was a large advert to promote tourism to Hungary. It was mostly a large photo of none other than Judit Polgar, with a caption giving her identity and endorsement. Is she the most famous Hungarian in the world? Seems plausible. Probably a higher Q score than Leko, worldwide. No musicians or soccer players? Barring chessplayers, who comes to mind if asked to name a famous Hungarian? A living one? Is Zsa Zsa Gabor still alive?! (Kidding!)

June 16, 2005

Rating X

FIDE has released its list of expected rating changes for the July 2005 list. As predicted in various quarters, it looks like Anand and Topalov will be in a dead heat at 2788 for the spot of top active player. (We need an official unofficial name for this "title" since Kasparov is going to be #1 on the list for another year whether he likes it or not. I suppose after waiting for 20 years the world can handle one more before there's a new #1.)

The other top 10 news is Kramnik being passed by the streaky Ivanchuk and dropping out of the top five. (Less than a dozen points ahead of Svidler and Polgar.) Kramnik at the closing ceremony of the London 2000 world championship match where he beat Kasparov: "The only thing I can say is that I'd just like to be first on the ratings also to prove that it wasn't accidental because I'm completely sure it was not accidental. I'll just try to prove it and not just to prove I'm the best, but to be a better player."

What we know five years later is that 1) it wasn't an accident, but that 2) he's not a better player now. Anand, Topalov, and Leko have elevated their games and it's not clear exactly why Kramnik's has suffered. Based on his play it seems he has been trying to be more aggressive, to put up big scores and achieve his stated goal of becoming the #1. This reinvention hasn't gone well so far, but I hope he doesn't give up on it yet. His title and reputation guarantee he won't suffer from a lack of invitations, although Linares can be picky about these things and he'll have to watch out there if he drops further.

June 18, 2005

Freestyle "Chess"

Call it cheaters chess, anything goes, vale tudo, advanced chess, or anything you like. The semifinals of the "Freestyle Chess" tournament were held today on the Playchess.com server. There is no cheating because there are no rules. Three of the four semifinalists were known GMs working with computer assistance. Even the mighty Hydra was no match for the combination of a strong human playing blunder-free chess.

The anonymous American fourth player/team became one of the finalists today. I won't reveal the identity of "ZackS" here since the ChessBase guys have had fun stoking the fires of public curiosity. ChessBase co-Direktor Frederic Friedel is in town – on my sofa, actually – for the June 21 Times Square match between FIDE champ Rustam Kasimdzhanov and the "AI Accoona ToolBar" (wince).

Allowing computer assistance in online events makes sense if only because most online human events become "freestyle" chess anyway. If you can't beat'em, join'em. The four-game final match between ZackS and Russian GM Vladimir Dobrov is tomorrow starting at 6:00am NY time. First prize is an impressive $10,000. Quite a chunk of change for coordinated cheating. Crime does pay!

June 21, 2005

Times Square Toolbar

In a few hours I'm off to Times Square to help run the broadcast of the PR match between FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan and the Accoona Toolbar, a search device that has incorporated a dandy chess element. (How cool is that? Imagine seeing a "CHESS!" button on the Google homepage. It would be a seismic event.)

It's a one-game match, Kasim gets white, 60' + 10" time control. The special opponent is a Fritz 9 prototype. There will be much more about this new engine in my interview with ChessBase's Frederic Friedel in my ChessCafe.com column appearing tomorrow.

[Btw, my suitcase arrived 36 hours later, thanks for asking. Vodka intact, and we always need plenty of that to get through these events alive.]

There's a watch live page up here now.

Accoona Liveblog

A quick pick from the Kasimdzhanov match in progress here in Times Square. White just played 32.Ne6. Exciting stuff! You can see the game here.

White's low on time and sacrificing a piece against a computer. But if he goes down he did it in style!

The game ended in a draw by repetition after the usual flawless computer defense. Nice try by Kasimdzhanov though, especially considering his clock situation. He was somewhat lucky the computer took the repetition since he had only the increment left by the end.

June 23, 2005

Back to the Grind

Been hard to find time to blog for the last few weeks, with travel and events, but it's back to the pixel mines now. There's no shortage of hot topics, but I'll roll them out slowly. Consider this an open thread and topic suggestion platform.

June 24, 2005

Nakamura Wins Samford

US Champion Hikaru Nakamura has won the 2005 Samford Fellowship. That means a salary and expenses so he can concentrate on chess, although he's one winner for whom that won't be anything new. I got into the recent history of the award last year, when it was won by Rusa Goletiani.

Hikaru has said several times that he doesn't see the need for a coach yet, and that he wouldn't know who to turn to in the US anyway. Of course your trainer doesn't have to be as strong as you are, especially if most of the work focuses on openings, which is usually the case. He has expressed concern about working with a Russian (Russian speaker) when most of his competition hail from the same area. But this hasn't stopped people like Vishy Anand from working with ex-Soviet trainers.

Perhaps with his newfound wealth Hikaru can work with a few different people from around the US or the world and see if working with a trainer suits him. Whatever he does, congratulations to him! You can enjoy his annotations each month in the Black Belt newsletter.

London Massacre

Things have been relatively quiet at ChessBase.com because the main editor was in New York for the Accoona match and staying with the other site contributor, me. We were busy, what can we say? So many bagels to eat.

Meanwhile, Mickey Adams is being obliterated by Hydra in their London match. (Their website has been rather overwhelmed. Maybe they have a Spanish web designer.) He has a draw and two really brutal losses. I thought he would lose but fare better than this. Kasparov said that Adams wouldn't have a chance. As Mickey himself put it, Hydra is stronger than Junior and Fritz and Kasparov is stronger than him, so by rights he should have a rough time.

But the transitive theory has never done well in chess, and less so when computers are playing humans. A very well-prepared 2600 would have chances as good as a 2700 without good anti-computer preparation. Two or three extra ply is lethal against another computer, but not nearly as relevant in the clash of style against humans.

That said, Hydra has totally dominated one of the world's best players. It looks like the only way the Hydra folks are going to learn anything is to keep playing in Advanced Chess (aka "Freestyle") events, which are actually a good way for programmers to learn. When strong (or even fairly weak) humans don't blunder, they consistently beat even the strongest machines. Let's just cross humanity's collective fingers and hope Adams can notch a win.

June 25, 2005

Anand Chat

Rediff.com has a nice chat with Vishy Anand. Nothing Earth-shattering. About his most memorable games:

" I remember my win against Ftacnik in 1993 for the beauty, my win against Shirov in game 4 in Teheran for giving me the World title. And my game against Bologan from Dortmund 2003 for winning both the best games and the best novelty of the year."

He's not playing in Dortmund, so next up is his rapid match against Grischuk in Mainz.

June 26, 2005

Road to San Diego

I just posted the latest updates to the 2006 US Championship site. There are qualifiers from the National Open as well as the Senior and Junior championships.

One oddity, mentioned in the AF4C's report on the National Open, is that there were two women's spots available but only one woman paid the registration fee. This meant she would gain entry to the Championship automatically. Kelly Cottrell is rated 1684 and she scored 2/6. (Kelly was good company at the 2005 championship as she watched every move of her beau IM Ben Finegold's games. [Upgrade that to husband, I am reliable informed below.])

To paraphrase an old Saturday Night Live skit, where all da wimmin at? Last year the AF4C had to shift a spot to the men when one woman after another declined to play and they didn't want to invite anyone below the 2000 rating level. Of course this isn't Cottrell's fault, but it is almost certain that new rules will be put in place to avoid a repeat of this situation. If the number of potential qualifiers is the same or lower than the number of available spots, a rating or score minimum should be put into place.

Obviously the carrot of the US Championship isn't enough to bring out the top women players, at least not to Vegas. The number of women's spots will likely be cut in the face of such apathy. Many of the top female players aren't playing in these massive opens. It's an expensive trip under tough conditions with little chance of a prize for a player rated under 2400. Additional affirmative action on the professional level doesn't seem like the right direction.

Addendum: Best wishes to AF4C press dude and Scotsman columnist John Henderson. He broke his leg playing soccer on Friday and just got out of the hospital. Even worse, they took away his morphine drip. Soon to be replaced by a whiskey drip, no doubt.

June 27, 2005

Kasparov the Politician

Just in case you're interested in keeping up with Kasparov as politician, here's an interview. If you thought he would be a dilittante about this new mission, you'll be surprised. He's currently on a trip through the south of Russia to meet with local groups and talk to the proverbial people.

Funny, a few hours after I posted this there was a CNN segment on Kasparov "planning to checkmate Vladimir Putin," in their words. It was odd to see "Garry Kasparov, Russian Politician" under him while he was speaking. Nice segment, lots of interviews with locals and shots of him as he goes through some of the small towns on his tour.

June 28, 2005

Dortmund Pairings

Rolf Behovits, press officer of the Dortmund supertournament, is always on the ball. No other tournament gets its materials out so early and in such organized fashion. The event starts on July 8 and the press releases started coming in April!

I noticed something weird with the last one, which was issued after a press conference announcing the tournament on April 29. The tournament is back to a ten-player round-robin and included in the press release were the full pairings! Unless my mind is playing tricks, I can't recall ever seeing pairings done in advance like this. Quite pointedly they are done in public at the opening ceremony to show transparency, add some suspense, and cut down on over-preparation by the players.

Here they were included without a peep. I don't know if they were done publicly during the press conference or what. This isn't a big deal, but if you're into conspiracy theories the pairings are interesting. Both local favorites (with connections to the organizers), Kramnik and Leko, have five whites. Kramnik has crucial whites against Topalov, Adams, and Svidler. (The only German, Arkady Naiditsch, also has five whites.)

Okay, taking off the tinfoil hat, it should be a good show. Loose cannon Sutovsky has joined the field by winning the Aeroflot Open. Peter Heine Nielsen, Naiditsch, and Loek Van Wely are the other two (very) relative outsiders. We'll also see how Bacrot flexes his flashy new rating against the big boys. And we'll see if the dream pairings help Kramnik break out of his slump. He has always played well in Dortmund, but after he burned me at the Mtel I can't call him the favorite.

One thing I love about this event is that all the participants play in a blitz tournament with local players on the off day. Register for that here: marketing@sparkasse-dortmund.de

[Update: TD Stefan Toth responded to a reader's email, stating the pairings were done in a committee meeting and have been done this way since 2000. Of course the format has been double round-robin or KO since 2001, when pairings are irrelevant. His message and my reply are below.]

June 29, 2005

Anand's Second Helping

Srikanth sends in this Newindpress.com item, an interesting interview with Anand's wife, Aruna, on his training habits. It appears to have been dropped into their registration-only archives already. Some clips:

"Anand's preparation before any tournament depends on the format of that particular event. For classics, he would start preparing at least a month ago. He does a lot of physical exercises and frequents the gym. And he spends six hours a day on his game that includes reading because this format requires grasp over the theory aspect as well." ...

"He stops preparation 10 days before a championship for he doesn't want to reach any tournament jaded and over-prepared. Anand generally has around five 'seconds' to assist him prepare for an event but the number varies depending on the tournament." ...

"And to prevent burn-out, he goes for a sabbatical after three tournaments every year. And the decision about participating in a particular tournament is mainly his even though we discuss the matter."

Five seconds?! That's got to be a record. Perhaps a misunderstanding?! Kasparov was always accused of having a galley full of GM slaves and super-computers cranking out novelties when it was him and Yuri Dokhoian with two, maybe three others brought in for big matches. It's hard to imagine what you would even do with five seconds, unless one is a masseur, another a chef...

More importantly, what can Kelly tell us about hubby Ben Finegold's training secrets?

June 30, 2005

After the Game

Much is being made of Kasparov's move from chess to politics, a high-profile player entering a high-profile field. But what do other GMs get up to when they stop playing? Apart from coaching, writing, chess politics, and other chess-related activities, that is. American GMs have a deserved reputation for early departures from the chess world and so have something of a head start.

One of the highest profile GMs is Kenneth Rogoff, who was high up at the International Monetary Fund and is now a Harvard prof. He didn't exactly set the chess world on fire, but he came a close second in the US championship in 1975 behind Browne and made a respectable Interzonal score.

Gata Kamsky would be the other side of this coin, a huge chess success who fiercely kept out of the public eye in the "private sector" before his current return to the game. (He's playing at Corus next year!) Any European GMs give up the game before reaching 30? Jeroen Piket seems out of the game and into business life. Valery Salov hasn't played since 1999 and had something of a public nervous breakdown. I don't know if his bizarre sites are still being updated, or what he's doing to pay the rent these days. I hope he's found peace. Others? Many women players are "lost" to motherhood.

The oft-posited (by chessplayers) theory that being good at chess is an indicator of broader aptitudes or even genius hasn't really had much of a practical workout.

July 1, 2005

World Open 2005

The latest giant American swiss system torture test tournament is underway in Philadelphia. Right now it's just the long schedule; the big crowd of top players comes in on July 2. As the official site points out, that's the same day the giant Philly "Live 8" concert takes place, so traffic and hotels will be a nightmare.

My mom is in town this week so I'm not going to make the trip. If you are attending and can send in notes and epecially photos, we'll put them up in a ChessBase report. Make sure to include a photo of yourself!

The Healing Power of Dirt

I don't know if I opened the can of worms or just spread the worms around, but the US Chess Federation event sponsored by herbal supplement maker Natrol disappeared and has since become a hot potato in US chess politics and has been followed up around the world. I first wrote about it on June 7. The names of the company and their product have been the most searched for items here for several weeks. (Topping "Finegold", "Kosteniuk", and "Hydra".) The original press release I linked to at the USCF site is long gone, but you can still read the press release here. The special event vanished, but representatives of the company were at the National Open in June.

It's board election time for the USCF and the other day I received a piece of direct mail campaigning that used this debacle to bash the current administration. (Speaking of, I bumped into current president Beatriz Marinello in the street near NYU last night. You can go YEARS without bumping into someone you know in NY.) By the way, here's a pic of the new USCF home in Tennessee.

July 2, 2005

July 2005 Rating List

The much-anticipated list is out. Anand and Topalov are tied for 2-3, the Bulgarian's highest placing ever. It was a big story when the KKA triangle finally broke down after seven years. Now with Kasparov's retirement and Kramnik's drop, their long dominance is long forgotten. The predicted period of inter pares is well underway.

The consistent Anand has outlasted Kramnik at the top and could have been expected to rule the roost after Kasparov's retirement. It's interesting that Topalov's surge came exactly at this time. Apparently the rating list abhors a vaccuum.

Ivanchuk leapt up to #5, although he's been there various times before since 1989. There is news in the continued presence of Bacrot and the addition of Aronian to the top ten. (The highest-placed Armenian since Petrosian? [Several people have pointed out here or by email that I forgot Vaganian, who was up to #3 in the mid-80s.]) It's been a very stable stable of players for many years, with only Grischuk and Ponomariov breaking in (and now out). The amazingly consistent Adams dropped out, joined by the amazingly inconsistent Morozevich. Both will be back. Korchnoi peeps back into the top 100. Other interesting tidbits?

July 3, 2005

Inactivity Points

To pick out one item from the ACP/FIDE meeting and GM John Nunn's comments, let's take up the idea of losing rating points due to inactivity. I'm in favor of doing this in combination with other changes to make the list more dynamic. (Higher K factor, mostly, meaning bigger swings. Also emphasizing more recent events.)

This means redefining our concept of the rating list. Instead of being a long-view measure of a player's ability, as it is now, it becomes more of a performance rating. This turns the list into a more interesting subject for speculation. Using the list to encourage activity by dropping points for inactivity would be a small but fitting part of this.

The end result would be to make the list more interesting for fans and less relevant for things like invitations. If it changes all the time the players would be less obsessed with rating and more inclined to take risks. De-emphasizing the importance of rating is a worthy goal. It's not as if ratings are relevant across eras, due to inflation, and we could easily take averages to generate stable lists for the long view.

It's not about whether or not a player is actually weaker after being inactive for a while. Protesting on those grounds looks like a straw man. The point is to change the meaning of the list to who's playing well now, and playing at all is surely an important part of that. It shouldn't be extreme, but having a dynamic and varied top-20 puts the emphasis where it belongs: on exciting chess, tournament wins, and world championship stages and titles. (E.g. being a candidate should be more important than being a 2700.)

July 4, 2005

Where the Women At, Part 2

After only one woman entered to qualify for the US Championship at the National Open, automatically going to San Diego despite a negative score and a 1600 rating, it looks like something similar is afoot in Philly. There are two women's spots on offer and only three women paid the qualification fee. One is former qualifier Laura Ross, rated 2200. The other two are rated 1937 and 1837, both have 1/5, and one of them is guaranteed a place in San Diego.

The World Open came too quickly for changes to be made in the qualification rules. The AF4C would like to require at least an even score for future events. Last year's lowest-rated player, Vayserberg (2037), qualified at the Chicago Open with 4/7.

July 5, 2005

Chess MasterMinds

A few days ago this press release appeared all over the chess place. It's an internet rapid match over four boards between US and Russian GMs. As presented, the big deal is that it's being produced for TV by "Nashville International Studios" and "will be aired Sunday, July 24th, 2005."

But nothing says where it will be aired. Nashville International Studios doesn't appear to have existed prior to this event. I tracked down their site www.nashvillefilmstudio.com, which mentions the event and little else. The domain was registered two months ago. Weird. I hope someone can enlighten us as to where the match can be viewed.

July 8, 2005

Dortmund's Folly?

The Dortmund supertournament starts today. They have already made news by canceling live internet broadcasting of the games. Chess fans have been spoiled by free live broadcasts at a wide variety of locations for years. Far more people watch rebroadcasts at Playchess.com and the ICC than at the official sites. It would almost be nice if they could reserve rights to the broadcast of moves and use these for sponsorship, but they can't.

Free broadcasts provide general PR for the event, but little or nothing for the sponsors of the event, unless, as in Linares and Dortmund, the town itself is one of the sponsors and name recognition is a factor. Two-thirds of international news entries containing "Dortmund" are about the big Borussia Dortmund football team. And only bullfight fanatics knew about Linares.

Unless the organizers feel they are gaining something from a live broadcast, why pay for one? Well, the costs are minimal (zero, since Playchess would do it) and goodwill in the chess community is a pretty good reason, you would think. The reason they gave for the cancelation, to attract more visitors to the tournament, sounds ridiculous. The games are available online right after the round. Do they think people are so excited at the prospect of watching live chess they will leave their homes and go to Dortmund when they can't watch live online? Maybe a few dozen people who live in the area would do this, tops. Nobody is coming from abroad based on this change, especially since they announced it just days before the first round.

The rest of the world will be annoyed, and will realize that waiting a few hours to see the games isn't a tragedy. Most fans never watch live anyway, but they are the most dedicated, passionate group around. You want to keep them happy and leverage that passion, not flush it. It would be nice to see a flood of spectators at any chess event, of course. But throwing away a live online crowd of five to ten thousand people so casually is foolish.

To think "other sites steal the broadcast so we'll pack up our pieces and go home" is small-minded. But if you're not interested in goodwill and PR, it's not at all clear why you should pay for a broadcast. And nobody else will pay real money for the rights since other sites will just take the moves you show for free. Adding value with commentary and multimedia will attract viewers to your broadcast, but then it starts to cost real money. Of course the ICC and Playchess should still be happy to show the games at their own expense, so the Dortmund folks may actually be serious about believing this will increase tourism.

So, coming around to explaining the question mark in the title, why SHOULD Dortmund have a live broadcast? Are 10 more spectators in the tournament hall worth more than 10,000 online? Remember that most of them aren't watching at the Dortmund website.

July 9, 2005

Oh Canada

The Canadian Open Championship starts today in Edmonton, a great summer town known for hockey, rodeo, and its Klondike Days festival.

The prize fund is modest by the standards of massive opens today, so the top talent on display is noteworthy. I'd rather see Ivanchuk and Shirov (and Bologan!) in Dortmund, but since it appears the German supertournament is plenty exciting without them, we get the bonus of seeing them in action elsewhere at the same time.

I've written to the Open organizers to ask about their success in bringing elite players, apparently with appearance fees instead of a huge prize fund. A lecture by a top star like Shirov (or, as in the National Open, a simul by the Polgar sisters), can attract more paying customers, the amateurs who pay $100-300 to play. They have many such special events on the first four days.

Pros making money from exhibitions instead of prizes at big events means guaranteed income, although it also means PR and name recognition can earn more than results, which is already true in some cases in chess and very true in many other sports where endorsements pay far more than salary.

July 11, 2005

U2000 Intrigue at HB

I received a few messages about this at the time and then another follow-up a week ago. In the final round of the giant HB Challenge in Minneapolis, a player in the under-2000 section by the name of Alexandre Mirtchouk was suspected of receiving assistance. This fascinating scenario was painted by ace TD Carol Jarecki when I contacted her about the matter:

He was suspected of using his cell phone to call someone on the second floor who was looking at Fritz on his laptop. The man upstairs (from Russia) said he was there because his wife was on a business trip to Minneapolis. Mirtchouk was seen by the Chief Floor TD using his cellphone twice with about 5-10 minutes in between -- once in the men's room and once on his way there. He was warned both times -- meanwhile another TD had gone upstairs to see what was going on there. This happened in the final round. Suddenly Mirtchouk bolted and ran out the loading dock exit (he was playing in the back of the very large room). At the time he was 6 - 2.

Wow, hot pursuit! But officially nothing has happened, although a complaint has been filed. His results have been clipped from the crosstable at the HB event site, which seems odd if nothing has been officially decided. His last round opponent was given a bye, apparently good enough for a few thousand dollars.

As Jarecki points out, there is an interesting epilogue:

An interesting follow-up is the recently concluded World Open in Philadelphia. This was the first time, to my knowledge, that Mr. Mirtchouk attempted to play again. Bill was warned about the HB incident and the Ethics Committee filing and pulled him out of the tournament after he played the 5 games of the 3-day schedule (5-0). We spent over 3 hours on the issue and Bill finally decided that there was not enough clear evidence to prove he was cheating. Of course, the concern of litigation is always a strong defense and a serious organizer like Bill must be careful of his actions. So Mr. Mirtchouk went back into the tournament taking a loss for the missed round and finished undefeated 7 1/2 - 1/2, taking a draw in the final round to tie for first U2200. You can be assured that he was watched closely. He says he has been taking lessons from a GM and has improved a lot lately. He lives in NJ and has a history of playing US tournaments for at least 10 years including the USATE, a couple of World Opens, etc. and hasn't been over 2000. I'd like to know which GM is training him -- he'd get a lot more business.

HB Challenge organizer GM Maurice Ashley added, "I, in fact, was looking forward to busting someone so that it sends a clear message that we are deadly serious about removing any person who dares to stain our royal game."

The ACP has been good about pushing for more anti-electronics measures instead of idiotic drug testing. I don't know about metal detectors in the U2000, but this sort of thing, whether or not it happened this time, is a clear and present danger.

The Name's the Same

This tidbit in on the wires.

Local chess player and international [Woman] Grand Master Nguyen Thi Thanh An has been refused entrance to three separate foreign countries reportedly wanted by Interpol international crime agency.

According to a senior leader of chess department in Ho Chi Minh City, Thanh An bears the same family name, first name, date, month and year of birth with a criminal globally sought after by Interpol.

Hmm, and I thought it was annoying having to be questioned every time I come back to the US because I lost a passport six years ago. Exact same name and birth date? That has to be rare, even in countries with relatively few family names. (E.g. almost 30% of the Korean population has Kim, Lee, or Park for a last name.)

July 12, 2005

The Kelly Rule

I just posted the latest update to the US Championship website to include the World Open results. Qualifiers included Joel Benjamin, who will be at his 23rd consecutive championship. If he sticks around a while longer he can pull a Walter Browne and get in by winning the Senior Championship.

Other news includes the expected change in the qualification guidelines (#8) to prevent people from getting in by just paying the fee. A minimum 50% score will now be required to qualify, effective starting with the next event (the US Open). It covers all qualifiers, but is will only likely be a factor for the women's spots.

This is a reaction to what happened at the National Open, when only one woman (Kelly Finegold) paid the fee and so qualified automatically. This situation which was almost duplicated at the World Open. We've had long, interesting discussions of this crisis and related women's chess issues here and here.

This change patches a hole so qualifiers will have to at least earn their spots with a decent performance even if they don't have any competition. The larger issue is what to do with the women's championship if so many of the women don't want to play. Getting tossed to the lions might be an honor once, but we saw many women this year playing in the class sections instead of going for qualification. The carrot of playing in the championship clearly isn't enough for everyone.

Let's hear your suggestions. Back to a round-robin with the women fighting it out amongst themselves? One "ghetto" event per year might not hurt anything, although it seems a shame for them to miss norm chances and playing top competition. Eliminate the women's title entirely? The AF4C is listening...

July 13, 2005

Dortmund Parity

After five rounds the Dortmund crosstable is almost comically balanced. Only one point separates all ten players! +2 looks certain to mean a share of first. The big four of Topalov, Leko, Kramnik, and Adams has a combined even score. (Adams is currently lower rated than Svidler and Bacrot, but in my book he's top ten emeritus until he comes back.)

Kramnik is on an even score after Sutovsky refuted the entire Berlin Defense on move four. He has the lowest-rated opposition in the final four rounds, however. Dortmund livened things up this year by including more outsiders and changing to a round-robin. Usually this has the effect of creating more exciting chess and more decisive results at the cost of a two-tiered crosstable. The chess has been exciting, but parity reigns this year.

The first three places won't be decided until the final round. It ain't gonna be Leko-Naiditsch-van Wely at the end. DDirt posters Sutovsky and Nielsen started strong but have faded a bit. Root for the home team!

Has anyone been watching the ChessBase videos? What do you think?

Tourney Update, Eh

Ninja message board mod Rondino is regaling us with his tales from the Canadian Open, including his simul games against Ivanchuk and Bologan. (Post the scores, man!)

Organizer Adrien Regimbald responded to my questions about their practice of bringing in a few world-class players with appearance fees. The main reason was unexpected: they can't use some of the funds for prizes! But from my experiences and comments from fans, including Rondino's, it's a good way to attract more fans. From Mr. Regimbald:

In our case, it wasn't actually a matter of choice. The money we used for appearance fees came from restricted funds. We raised these funds by volunteering at casinos, and the government places restrictions on how this money can be used. One expense that is expressly forbidden is prize money.

However, in my personal opinion, the expense has been worthwhile. Players of this calibre almost never venture into Canada, and this has been a tremendous experience not only for the club level players, but also as an opportunity for Canada's best players to play high level players they wouldn't often have a chance to play. As far as attendance goes, we have 223 registrations and 215 players actually playing. This is a huge turnout for a tournament in Western Canada, and is still quite large for Canadian standards in general when including Ontario and Quebec.

The tournament is not yet over, but so far I feel our decision to enlist these players was a good one.

July 15, 2005

Found Chess

I have an ever-increasing collection of found chess in advertising and other forms of media. Apart from the usual references and metaphors, the visual element is also appreciated by the marketing types. Here are two I saw in the last few weeks, a Citibank ad tile at the NY Times (where is that white pawn going?) and a sexy/sexist vertical banner ad for the adult-themed (!) site Nerve (where is that white queen going?!).

If your first instinct was to look closer and try to figure out the position on the woman's lap, you are a hopeless chess geek. Yeah, I did it too.

July 17, 2005

Nakamura Goes to Biel

The Biel GM Tournament starts Sunday. It's the usual double round-robin with six players. Gelfand is the top seed and by far the veteran of a youth-skewed event. US Champion (and Black Belt contributor) Hikaru Nakamura isn't even the youngest player in the field, thanks to Magnus Carlsen. Volokitin, who just turned 19, is the second seed. (Bauer and Pelletier round out the field.)

We haven't seen much from Carlsen since he exploded onto the scene by winning the Corus C group in 2004. 2550-rated 14-year-olds seem like old news these days.

July 18, 2005

Women to Russia

FIDE announced a women's world championship for next year in Ekaterinburg. We've been talking a lot about women's chess in the US and in general. A world championship only for women is the similar effects writ large around the world. It gives an incentive and generates interest, but unless Judit Polgar is playing, and she's not, an all-women tournament means nobody over 2600 and only a handful over 2500.

Of course most of these elite women play in open events much of the time, so a few ghetto events against the same players in the same range doesn't hurt development much. It's more a matter of whether or not they would have more incentive to excel if there weren't big paydays like this one for being 2500. Not that they are living easy, of course. But it's likely that with those extra two or three invitationals, the top women can earn as much as the second tier of men rated 2650-2700.

July 19, 2005

Ajedrez y Negocios

For you hispanoparlantes out there, Chilean GM Ivan Morovic has a varied and interesting website. Much of it focuses on business strategy and how it can be viewed through the lens of chess, something I'm increasingly familiar with now that I'm working with Kasparov on his book project. There's also a short interview with Morovic about his site. The affable Chilean was one of Karpov's trainers for ten years and he attempts to explicate insights gleaned from working with an intuitive player like the 12th world champion.

July 20, 2005

Computer Blunder

Staying in America Latina, the 8th Magistral de la Republica Argentina is underway. Each year a top computer program participates in the round-robin, typically crushing the category 8 field. This year Shredder is in the lead again despite a bizarre blunder that lost a piece and a game to Lafuente in the third round. As operator Roberto Alvarez reports, this was apparently a one-in-a-million hash table error. Shredder simply didn't recapture a bishop after spending three minutes on the trivial move. Hard to know if it was a RAM glitch or a program glitch.

In some ways, having machines play in regular tournaments like this is more interesting than the high-profile matches. A quantity of games against a variety of opponents shows how even a relatively weak player (i.e., not 2700, or even 2500) can occasionally draw routinely against a top programs with early exchanges. If the human vs machine battle is to continue in the shadow of the Hydra-Adams demolition, humans had better better book up on this stuff. But such games are monotonous. Watching GMs grovel for draws in dry positions isn't chess and isn't interesting.

July 21, 2005

Lennon or Lenin

Garry Kasparov just left New York City after a brief visit. Meetings with his publisher, Kasparov Chess Foundation sponsors, and other things were finished off by an unusual documentary interview today. A UK company is producing a documentary for the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death and wanted Kasparov to talk about Lennon's influence on him and in the USSR in general. The documentary will be on UK television next year, I believe.

A few years ago Misha Safonov wrote an article suggesting the Beatles had more influence on the break-up of the USSR than Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Kasparov's comments were in a similar vein, about how Lennon and the Beatles were known as symbols of freedom to the young long before most people could hear their music in the USSR.

They probably came to Kasparov because of a questionnaire answer he gave during a world championship match against Karpov in the 80's. To the "favorite composer" question, Kasparov gave Lennon. (Karpov, according to Safonov, gave "Alexander Pakhmutov, Laureate of the Lenin Komsomol award".) I remember this questionnaire and I know it's included in at least one of the 1000 chess books 20 feet from where I'm sitting, but I can't find it. I thought it was one of the 1985 match books. (I believe both gave Lermontov as favorite writer.)

July 22, 2005

Caruana Takes Segovia

I haven't found much about this event, but 13-year-old American Fabiano Caruana won the "Ciudad de Segovia" open rapid tournament in Spain with 7/8. He was the 7th highest-rated player in the event according to this brief news item. He finished a half-point ahead of an old blitz foe of mine from Buenos Aires, Javier Moreno, who moved to Spain to work on his chess a few years ago. The Caruanas have mostly been in Europe for the past year, but Fabiano has been playing here and there and got an IM norm a few months ago in Hungary. Would you bet against him being on the 2010 Olympiad team? 2008?!

Nakamura Leads Biel

Speaking of prodigies and former prodigies, ChessNinja contributor US Champion Hikaru Nakamura is in clear first place in the Biel tournament at the half. He also has white against his two highest-rated competitors in the second half, Gelfand and Volokitin. He really made Pelletier look bad in a classic grind against the French in round five. Impressive stuff against a 2600.

To show how tough it is to even get into the ring at the top level, Nakamura's two games against Gelfand at this event will almost double the number of games he's played against 2700-rated opponents in his career. Unless you are a local favorite, there just aren't many chances at invitations until you break into the top 20. How about a nice category 16 here in the US? With Kamsky, Nakamura, and Onischuk, the US could have three legit participants born since 1974.

July 23, 2005

Anand Interview

Srikanth sends a link to this meaty if unremarkable "Sportstar" interview with Viswanathan Anand. He comments on San Luis, sponsorship, and life without Kasparov.

He comments that Roger Federer could practically destroy tennis if he continues to dominate so easily, which is one side of the old dynasty argument. Some say super-teams like the NY Yankees baseball team used to be (various times) are great because fans love to love or to hate them. The Yankees aren't winning so much these days but they still sell out every stadium they go to and they broke the road attendance record last year. So favorites can sell tickets, but this means image as well as winning.

As for new rivalries in Kasparov's absence, he mentions Topalov. The streaky Bulgarian was showing his dark side in Dortmund until salvaging his tournament by winning his last two games. He still looks capable of dropping 30 or 40 points if he has a few off events. He and a few others may nip at Anand's heels for the next three years, but I'd put money on the consistent Indian leading a majority of the lists during that span. He had mediocre events in Linares and Sofia this year, but his mediocre means only losing a few points and he mixes these with big scores.

Chess on TV Online

I'm still not clear on where this "Chess MasterMinds" event came from or where it's going, but it did happen and it will be shown. The "masterminds" title didn't appear in the latest press release I received, but it did include some tiny photos of the players. (Onischuk, Gulko, S. Polgar, Stripunsky vs Khalifman, Sakaev, Alekseev, Vitiugov.)

The online rapid match between teams from the USA and Russia will be shown online at www.martinbroadcasting.com at 12 noon NY time on Sunday, July 24. Inexplicably, the date wasn't given in the press release, sent to me yesterday by "Chess One," apparently Phil Innes, who is listed as a commentator. The date was given in a testy post here in an unrelated item by "J. Martin," apparently actually Paul Truong, who is also listed as an event commentator. So I'm assuming the date is correct, though the reason for the false name eludes me.

I finally tracked down some information at a hitherto unmentioned Flash site www.chessmasterminds.com. (It confirms the date and time.) They give some TV listings, although the web seems a better bet for most. (Actually, the Martin Broadcasting site seems inert, so cross your fingers or send a prayer request.) It seems an interesting project, much hampered by a decentralized PR effort. Looking forward to actually watching the thing at last. Let us know if you get the "click to view" link to work or see it on TV.

July 24, 2005

USCF Elections

Everybody keeps writing me about the recently held elections for the board of the United States Chess Federation. Fewer than 10% of eligible voters cast their ballots. The four spots were easily won by the hard-campaigning ticket composed of Goichberg, Tanner, Channing, and Greg Shahade (apparently not really part of the ticket, but endorsed by them). Several are friends, and good luck to all.

After near-bankruptcy and various brushes with chaos in the past few years (some mentioned here and found by searching for USCF), it looks like yet another house-cleaning. Or, depending on how things go, out with the old dirt, in with the new. All the good intentions, experience, and expertise don't guarantee success when it comes to running a sprawling endeavor like a chess federation.

Setting priorities and establishing strategies to achieve them is something you would think would come naturally to chess people. It's that first part that causes the most trouble. You must balance professionals and scholastics, bring in new members while pleasing current ones, and run a magazine that, for years, has fulfilled the curse satisfying no one while trying to satisfy everyone.

A few items to start the discussion: 1) Make it easy to find and organize clubs and tournaments. People playing chess is what it's all about. A club with a TD on every corner and two pawns in every pot. 2) Find more ways to involve chess professionals and others with resources that can help the organization. There are countless people who would love to help in many ways if they knew how. 3) Engage professional sponsorship directly and also indirectly with groups like the AF4C. 4) Put as much content, interactivity, and PR as possible on the web. Not just magazine stuff. The USCF site has some useful material but has become a sprawling mess.

On a more Dirt front, things to look out for when the new administration takes over in a few weeks: 1) Staying in Tennessee or not? This still isn't signed, sealed and delivered, and the USCF office could end up elsewhere. 2) The contract for the catalog and online shop has been under scrutiny for a long time.

July 26, 2005

World Youth 05

The World Youth Championships are nearing conclusion in Belfort, France. The site is nice, although I understand that it wasn't ready in time for the start of the event. As expected, there are Russian and Indian players near the top of almost every age group. Actually, the Russians are almost a surprise considering the relative drought of top talent from Russia in recent years. Poland is also well represented.

The World Junior title is still good for a few invitations, but since Fischer's day there have always been many strong eligible players who don't bother with these age-restricted events. But they are for the kids, who usually have a great time.

There have been problems this year in France, however. One national federation president wrote me to say that some parents have been in tears over "the appalling conditions, arrogance of the French, and the awful hotels and places they had been put in (for lots of money, mind you)." Of course the parents and coaches always complain more than the kids.

July 27, 2005

Pics 03 - Korchnoi Searched

More from my photo archives. (The others can be found by searching for pics 01.) Viktor Korchnoi cools his heels in front of the metal detector as the security staff goes through his bag at the 2001 FIDE KO in Moscow. That's Lev Psakhis in the background. Bonus points for you if you recognize the man on the left in the blue tie in the larger version.

Larger version here. (183kb)

July 28, 2005

FIDE Mud Wrestling

International chess politics has gotten even uglier lately. Anatoly Karpov has been considering a run for the FIDE presidency, which I tipped back in March. His occasionally scurrilous interview set the bar very low, but FIDE looks up to the challenge with replies from Azmaiparashvili and Makropoulos. Both FIDE honchos have histories of browbeating and double-dealing, while Karpov has rarely seen a back he wouldn't stick a knife into, several times switching sides so quickly it was hard to tell who he betrayed first.

Then we have Ilyumzhinov, an autocrat's autocrat, who, it must be said, seems to have finally come around to a classical cycle after eight years of trying to destroy 100 years of tradition, assuaged somewhat by plowing millions of dollars into the game himself. Quite a merry crew, although I think Ilyumzhinov means well, albeit in a kill-the-patient sort of way. I'm so happy about San Luis and the proposed cycle to follow that I could head-butt a cop or two myself.

Karpov is a chess legend and is a big enough name to make a dent in Ilyumzhinov's lock on power in FIDE, if only because he'd almost certainly have the support of the Russian federation. Karpov has been on every side of the world championship discussion over the years, changing as it suited him best. It sounds like he'd make a deal with Kramnik as FIDE prez.

The miracle would be to hear a concrete platform from anyone instead of everyone waiting for a deal to come along. On the other hand, Ilyumzhinov had ideas, just bad ones. The Daily Dirt platform: WCh cycle with long match final, a more dynamic rating formula, elimination of drug testing (national federations can do as they like; some need it for funding), classical time control for Olympiads and other FIDE events, fiscal transparency and active development of regional and global corporate sponsorship (priority to title sponsors for the WCh and the rating list), raising the rating requirement for the GM title to 2600, elimination of women's titles, trial adoption of a version of the Corsica/Sofia rules against short draws, health care and/or retirement fund for lifelong professional players, free beer and pizza for the press at all events. What did I leave out?

July 29, 2005

Cross Over Crossville

The potential knicker-twist about the US Chess Federation building a new office in Crossville, Tennessee has come to pass with no delay. A new executive board majority was just elected, but they don't come into power formally for another week or two. The four incoming board members, plus one current member, quickly (July 26) dashed off an open letter to USCF president Beatriz Marinello asking her to hold off on signing the deal to break ground. A day later, a letter was sent out saying that the resolution to do so had been passed on July 20.

All the correspondence is included below. Lame duck decisions are always debatable, but since the move was part of the old board's agenda why wouldn't they follow through on it before leaving? It's not as if the 7% of USCF members who voted did so to repudiate build vs buy in Crossville.

Continue reading "Cross Over Crossville" »

July 30, 2005

Team Spirit

A nice David Brooks piece in the NY Times on the benefits of very competitive youth baseball. We've discussed one tendency of some scholastic chess programs to follow the spirit of the Special Olympics and make "everyone a winner."

"Mostly we've seen boys experiencing the thrills of competition and the joy of being with teammates who share a common passion. We've seen boys who have matured not by being sheltered from challenges in order to protect their self-esteem, but by being able to go out and play against the best. We've seen boys who were thrilled to be sixth at nationals last year and who responded to this year's lower finish by going to the hotel pool and doing back flips."

Competition is good, especially in teams. I'd love to see more scholastic team events. How many are out there? Why not an international youth olympiad? You could have the same players, one board for each age category with a few reserves.

August 1, 2005

Shame, Thievery, and Anarchy

Not mincing words, that headline comes from one of the coaches of the US World Youth team that just finished well in Belfort, France. I'd already mentioned one report of miserable conditions at the event from the president of a different federation. But coach Aviv Friedman gets into the details on the record today. 100F (38C) degree playing conditions, poor transportation, over-charging for miserable hotels, bad pairings, the list goes on. Aviv's entire three page letter is below. The conclusion:

"Shame on you, Jean Paul Touze! [President of the organizing committee.] Shame on all of the committee members and on whoever authorized this bid! You showed no respect for people, no respect for kids, no respect for chess, and no competence. I can only hope you never have another chance at any official event."

He also notes that this isn't related to the result of the US team, which was quite good, including the first gold medal in quite a while, by Alex Lenderman in the U-16.

Others are posting links to similar reports below. Here's one from the Scottish federations site.

Continue reading "Shame, Thievery, and Anarchy" »

August 2, 2005

San Luis WCh Website

The official site is on the air. This link goes to the English version. The event beings on September 27. It's a predictably heavy website, also chock full of historical, typographical, and every other type of mistake you can think of, in both the Spanish and English versions. (Maybe "Vishwanathan" represents a Barcelona accent?) As for the "history of chess" page, that popping sound you just heard was Edward Winter's head exploding. They plan to run a live move broadcast from a slow site hosted in Argentina, which should hold up for around 19 seconds.

It's a pretty site and I do very much like the tango-themed official logo. The building where the event will take place is still under construction. The event hasn't gotten much attention in the national press, surprisingly. The local paper "Diario de la Republica" is covering it, which isn't a surprise since I believe it is still owned by the local ruling Saá family that is behind the tournament's support. There is a heavyweight political battle going on right now between President Kirchner and his rival Duhalde that is getting most of the ink in the national press these days.

There is nothing about rules or regulations, most of which were already covered by FIDE's release (.doc) about the event. The classical seven-hour time control is the most relevant. It's not too late to apply Corsican anti-short-draw rules.

August 3, 2005

Susan Polgar Simul Record

Never one to settle for just one record, US GM Susan Polgar seems to have broken quite a few during her marathon simul in Palm Beach Gardens. The main one is the most games going at the same time, which she has pushed up to 326. (If you wonder why people don't do this sort of thing often it's because it's hard to get opponents to stick around. Even at brisk five seconds per move that's still almost half an hour between visits to your board!)

The level of opposition isn't really the point of these things, so getting into wins and win percentages seems a bit silly. It's a feat of endurance and PR for the game and her foundation, and certainly a considerable one in all categories. It lasted 17 hours, 1,131 games, and required walking about a marathon's worth of distance (well, nine miles actually). (In 1984, Hort played a total of 663 games in a simul in Germany that lasted over 32 hours. Nobody sane will ever break that record. (Several people have reminded me that Gideon Stahlberg did 400 games in 40 hours in 1940. This was on the same list I checked for the Hort record but somehow my brain didn't digest it.) It has gotten good AP coverage, though the Washington Post is one of the few to run a pic so far. There is now a pictorial report up at ChessBase.com.

Susan Polgar has posted a long note in another thread.

Cheapo Alert

This is way too easy, but even Peter Leko's football matches end in draws! Cool event. I want Finegold and Yermo on my celebrity all-star bowling team.

August 4, 2005

Euro Team 05

This great event is well underway in Gothenburg, Sweden. The traditional powers have risen to the top for today's sixth round, with France now being a member of the elite with Bacrot on board one. ChessBase has handy charts, games, and photos. Russia is climbing again after a slow start and Ukraine is doing well despite not having Ponomariov. van Wely is doing great on board one for the Dutch on the heels of his strong Dortmund showing. Teammates Sokolov and Tiviakov are higher rated, so I'm assuming that they are following tradition and putting the Dutch champion on board one.

John Henderson pointed out to me that this is the 50th anniversary of the infamous Gothenburg Variation disaster, one of the all-time classic chess anecdotes. In the 14th round of the 1955 interzonal, the four Argentines were all paired with black against four of the mighty Soviets. Three games followed the exact same sacrificial variation of the Najdorf Sicilian, now known as the Gothenburg. All three Argentines (Najdorf, Panno, Pilnik) and their special preparation were wiped out in short order by Keres, Geller, and Spassky, respectively. Less remembered is that Petrosian beat the fourth Argentine, Guimard, but he played 1.d4 and Guimard didn't play the Sicilian anyway.

The British Championship is being held at the same time and most of the top players went to Gothenburg instead of the Isle of Man. So defending champ Rowson is the top seed. A Scot winning two years in a row?!

Chess Photos

A few nice photos of a cool board and pieces I just stumbled into on the blogosphere. You can also go to the main Flickr page and search everyone's photos for chess pics, with interesting results.

August 5, 2005

Author, Author

This week I'll be meeting up with Jennifer Shahade, the 2002 and 2004 US Women's champion, Black Belt and Dirt contributor, and the author of the new book "Chess Bitch: Women In The Ultimate Intellectual Sport." (Due out in September 05, book description below.) I'm finally going to start running occasional book and product reviews and this seems like a good place to start.

My requirements are simple: the item and access to the author. (Phone or email okay.) I'll tip the forthcoming item, you post some questions, then I'll post my comments with the author's answers. Various vendors keep offering me affiliation deals but I haven't decided whether or not to accept one or not. I get around 150,000 visitors and half a million page views per month (and 2,000,000 hits if you enjoy big, irrelevant numbers), and Alexa lists Ninja as getting more traffic than Chess Cafe, which is sad if true. I know from comparing Alexa's guesses (extrapolated from visits by people using the Alexa toolbar) to my own stats that theirs are weird, but relative traffic levels should be fairly accurate.

Anyway, linking to a place to purchase the items makes sense, although from some of the bizarre and offensive comments posted under the Polgar item, apparently making any money (even for charity) from chess is a sin. Please write my landlord about this chess world vow of poverty, will you?

Getting back to the topic, post your questions for Jen about her book. And suggest something/someone you'd like to see here next. (I'm going to do Susan Polgar's fine book just to spite you bastards.) If you are an author and want to see your life's work torn to shreds by anonymous strangers, let me know.

[Susan Polgar has weighed in with an insightful post on things brought up here and in the item on her simul.]

Continue reading "Author, Author" »

August 6, 2005

Doing the Continental

(Apologies to Fred and Ginger.) Gata Kamsky is the top seed at this year's Contentinal Championship, which started today in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He's clearly going out of his way to face some strong competition before he plays at Corus next January. I first met Gata in Buenos Aires, at the Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic.

Other top players in the 11-round Swiss include the Cubans Bruzon and Dominguez, Peru's Granda Zuñiga, Brazil's Vescovi and Milos, and Argentines Felgaer and Ricardi. Seven other Americans are playing ("but we're all Americans," cry the Latinos), led by Onischuk, Ibragimov, and Shabalov. Canada is in da house with Spraggett. Few upsets in the first round. The ridiculous $200 entry fee has been much criticized in Argentine chess circles.

August 8, 2005

Chess Classic Mainz 05

This suite of interesting events starts tomorrow in Germany. The headliner is the GRENKELEASING rapid match of Grischuk taking his turn to put his head into Anand's mouth. There's a legends event with Karpov, Korchnoi, Spassky, and Unzicker, held to celebrate the latter's 80th birthday. Seems like a "friendly," but there is little doubt Korchnoi would love to beat Karpov and equally little doubt that if Karpov wins he will count it on his list of tournament victories. (As others have pointed out, his record was/is so impressive because it was almost exclusively composed of very strong events. In the past ten years he's started counting all sorts of rapids, matches, and rubbish. In that case there would be at least a few players with more career wins by counting small regional events, etc. I've seen Miles suggested as one.)

Svidler will face Almasi in a shuffle-chess match sponsored by FiNet. (Fischerandom, Chess960, whatever.) These gamescores screw up most databases, but the games are often worth the effort. Then there is the mighty Ordix Open with 63 GMs at last count.

I'm using the names of the sponsors of the events because hey, they have sponsors! Mad props to the amazing organizer, Hans-Walter Schmitt. It looks like an great festival, and I can't even read German.

If we're out for something to chew on, the continued proliferation of rapid events like this one is a good topic. FIDE has gone back to classical chess for a few key WCh events, bless them, but many top players play more rapid than regular games now. I think they should be incorporated into the rating formula, although some fans worry this could make the games more boring because there would be more at stake and players could be more conservative.

August 9, 2005

The Milov Case

GM Vadim Milov posts a long open letter detailing his unsuccessful case to challenge FIDE in court over his inability to play in the Tripoli KO WCh last year. I respect his decision not to play under clearly unequal conditions, but I wish he had continued to call FIDE and Libya's bluff. The entire debacle and attendant debate was covered here in detail, just used the search for Libya and start at the bottom. Milov's plight was covered here.

The choice of Libya was dubious as best, but forgivable considering the lack of alternatives. Discarding the announced alternative venue in Malta was a travesty that led to Israelis and many Americans bowing out of what was the first FIDE championship in three years. Where to next? Does Kim Jong Il play chess as well as he plays golf?

Russian Chess Crisis

The dismal, horrible, really, really bad result of the Russian men's team in Gothenburg last week even made it into the English versions of the Russian papers. Kommersant has a long piece on the crisis facing the traditional power, only exemplified by their 14th-place finish in Sweden. Finishing with silver in the Olympiad last year was considered a shock. But 14th?

Since Russia was the top seed anyway, perhaps they are right in not taking any players to task. Grischuk and Morozevich have apparently said they'll play in the world team event in October. Aside from the "Russia - World" rapid match, Kramnik hasn't played for Russia since 1996. Kasparov has been lamenting the lack of young Russian stars for a while now. The World Youth events showed that there are still some strong kids, but they are far from the dominance of the old days, when there would be two or three Russians at the top of every boys' category.

In the article, Yuri Razuvaev has a complaint recently leveled at the US team: not using these competitions to bring up young talent. Plucking the best by the rating list is conveniently objective, but is also short-sighted when it comes to the reserve boards. Few will duplicate the sensational results Kasparov and Kramnik had in their Olympiad debuts, but they bring energy to the team and a foundation is built for the future.

August 10, 2005

All the Marbles

Just in case you thought chess sponsorship was tough, and it is, this article on the US marbles championship might cheer you up.

And how should an unemployed 20-year-old marbles champion spend all that cash?

His mother, Michelle, offered a suggestion: "Car insurance."

Nothing like a little schadenfreude when we're surrounded with poker on TV 24/7 and big prizes for who can eat the the most hot dogs.

Fischer Settles In

From an Icelandic magazine recapping the Fischer saga, the last paragraph has something of an update:

Meanwhile, Fischer seems to be adjusting well to life in Iceland. He frequently goes to an antiquarian bookstore and has been seen sipping beer at local bar. He has not played chess, but he did give a lecture on the world chess championships between Russian masters Kasparov and Karpov, which he claims were fixed. The audience did not embrace those claims, but grandmaster Jóhann Hjartarson, Iceland’s highest rated chess player said that it was interesting to meet the legend and to hear him speak about chess.

This is an ironic twist because most of the Icelanders who brought him there never really expected Fischer to stay in Iceland. They expected him to take his new passport and head somewhere where he'd be less conspicuous, perhaps back to Hungary or to Serbia.

The Kasparov-Karpov match fixing accusations have been a Fischer staple for quite a long time and seem a natural extension via paranoia of the very real arranged Soviet draws that he denounced in his playing days. In 1996 Fischer claimed that he had proof of the K-K fixing in copious notebooks that had disappeared when his storage locker was emptied.

August 13, 2005

Jen Shahade: Fritz Control

When Adams lost to Hydra 5.5-.5, one of the things that upset me the most was some of the commentary on the ICC. Hydra's brilliant combination at the end of the second game was not unveiled gradually in a dramatic way, but instantly cited by computer programs. This practice has always bothered me and my brother [IM Greg Shahade], who went as far as to instate a no-computer analysis rule on ICC coverage of the New York Masters.

If someone wants to use computers to analyze top level live games, that's fine, but why not be courteous? Some people might enjoy the drama of not knowing exactly when Kramnik is up 4.37 pawns and Leko should resign. Others might even want to train their own tactics rather than have Fritz force-feed them variations.

It's always a complex question for me when I'm analyzing a game or an opening: When to turn on Fritz? I'm tempted right away, but as soon as the engine purrs, I stop thinking and my eyes glaze over... mesmerized by the crunching of numbers on the bottom left corner of my screen. A frequent problem is that Fritz will often choose a weird move as the main variation while a normal-looking, but losing, move doesn't even show up on the screen. What this means for me is if I overuse Fritz in analyzing, I'll misunderstand the logic of a game. Much of using Fritz well is knowing when to turn it off. (or ignore it)

August 14, 2005

USCF Homepage

If you are nostalgic for the early days of the internet, back when web pages were mostly poorly formatted text with ill-fitting photos pasted in, you're in for a treat. The US Chess Federation has put up a new homepage. [I've mirrored it here for when they mercifully take it down. For the full retro experience, view the page using Netscape 2.0.] I assumed it had been put together by someone's seven-year-old niece, but the tags actually say "Authors: Mike Nolan; K.R. Sloan". (They also say "demo" so I have no idea why it's live online.) This isn't a web page, it's a cry for help.

Just because everyone CAN make a website these days doesn't mean everyone should, especially if it's for a large organization and not, say, vacation snapshots. There is something to be said for splash pages and simplicity, but good design and navigation can overcome them. I don't expect everyone at the USCF to be a professional web designer. But I would expect that a few of them have actually surfed the web. Things just don't look like this anymore, with good reason. There's no reason the USCF site can't look as good as the tennis association site or even the mostly volunteer-run Chess Scotland site.

I don't want to be mean to those who spent their precious eight minutes putting that page together, and of course this has nothing to do with the gigantic picture of Maurice Ashley (158K!). But yikes. I'll even put my money where my mouth is and offer to do a new homepage for free. (Not an entire site and navigation.)

[Update: In the comments is a Usenet post by one of the USCF people who posted the new homepage page with his explanation and my comments. It mentions there is a $25,000 budget item for the website. But they don't really need a whole new website. They need a redesign and re-org and someone with skills who can run it with design in mind. Blowing 25K on a new car doesn't mean you know how to drive it.]

August 15, 2005

Board Games

Based on my traffic patterns, many DD readers never visit the message boards. Meanwhile, some people seem to spend half their lives there. (Not naming names, but if you click the 'Directory' page you can see the list of most prolific posters.) It's a moderated community with over 1600 members from all over the world. There are usually 15-25 active discussions (threads) going on. The "today's active topics" link is a good place to start.

It's a pleasantly sane place, at least compared to the Usenet and considering the contentious topics - chess and non-chess - they get into. (The hard-working mods (cough cough), or the mere presence of the mods, can't hurt.) There are also polls you can create yourself, private messages, and tournaments among the members. I finally coughed up a few bucks to upgrade the board software, adding a few handy features. So sign up, pick an avatar, and join the fun.

August 17, 2005

Bruzón Wins Continental

Cuba's Lazaro Bruzón won clear first in the Continental Championship. Seven players tied for second a half-point back. Gata Kamsky could have tied for first with a win in the final round with white, but he was held to a draw by 15-year-old (!) Gaston Needleman, who had the tournament of his life.

Unfortunately for Needleman, seven people tied on eight points and there was a round-robin playoff (15-minute games) for the six remaining world championship qualifying spots. He came last against the six strong GMs. (He might still get in if Kamsky qualifies by rating and they take from the zonal instead of from the rating list, but this is unlikely.) The seven qualifiers were straight from the list of top seeds. Bruzón, Kamsky, Vescovi, Milos, Onischuk, Granda, Felgaer. Elo rules if we conveniently ignore the 2240-rated Needleman, the 99th seed.

August 18, 2005

Pics 04 - Central Park Chess

Every year since 2001 Chess-in-the-Schools and the New York City parks department has put together a remarkable event right in the middle of Central Park at Bethesda Fountain. Or at least they've tried. The weather hasn't always been as cooperative as it was for this first edition back in 2001. This year they have an alternative indoor venue set up just in case. It's on Saturday, September 17, check-in at 9am sharp. A six-round swiss, g/10. Bring a set and clock if you can. More general and registration info here.

Larger versions: 800x600 (166kb) and 1600x1200 (567kb)

August 19, 2005

Tiebroken

The item on the Continental Championship has already started buzzing about the tiebreak round robin held to find the six FIDE world cup qualifiers from the seven players who tied with eight points. Six strong GMs and 15-year-old Argentine Gaston Needleman played 15-minute games to find a single loser, bizarre to say the least.

The final crosstable looks somewhat predictable. Needleman was giving up 400 points in every game and got hammered while the GMs drew almost all their games with each other. There was only ONE decisive game that didn't involve Needleman. In his report at the Spanish ChessBase site, Carlos A. Ilardo paints a nastier picture, saying that there was a conspiracy from the start to draw quickly while playing hard against the underdog kid, who was obviously the crowd favorite at my dear old Club Argentino where the tiebreak took place. He says that some of the GM games were drawn in as few as five moves.

I surely sympathize, and that crosstable is undoubtedly cruel, but I can't get worked up about this. The system lent itself to such behavior because as soon as anyone lost a game, everyone else could just draw and be guaranteed qualification. If the huge rating underdog lost early it became a foregone conclusion that the GMs weren't going to bash each other up when the only point of this was to settle the qualification spots. It was midnight on the same day as the tough final round, one player was outrated by 400 points, and it wasn't necessary to conspire against him. Had Needleman won his first game things would have been different [He actually did! See comments.], but again, as soon as ANY game was decisive, you were guaranteed qualification by drawing all your games unless you were that loser. Playing to beat the 2240 player would also make sense, but it was Needleman knowing he had to win to come back that led to the four losses, not the GMs refusing his draw offers.

I constantly push for anti-draw rules and fighting chess, but this format was a train-wreck and a formality gone awry. In this case I find it hard to blame the players for just trying to get it over with and get some sleep instead of providing an extra show with nothing at all to gain. It's a sad example of "professional chess" for Needleman, but at the end of the day this was a professional situation and, let us not forget, he DID lose four games.

[Update: msc spoke with Needleman on the ICC and he doesn't think there was any conspiracy. He even won his first game, against Milos in the second round. Felgaer lost then to Granda and had to play hard in his games. Kamsky and Granda played a hard game early. Anyway, it all seems like yet another overblown example of Ilardo's "reporting" in La Nacion newspaper. More in my summary comment.]

August 21, 2005

WCh Interviewzzz

The official site of the San Luis FIDE world championship is doing its best to provide some buzz and build-up. They've posted three player Q&A items so far, each more boring than the last. Blame the questions, not the answers. As if we're all waiting for one of them to slip up and accidentally reveal all their preparation secrets. "Well, I'm training with these four players and doing a lot of work on this opening and that defense and... whoops!"

Anyway, here are Anand, Leko, and Topalov, not that you can tell them apart by the answers. I'm guessing the event will be "tough."

How about we go them one better? Post some interesting questions and we'll put together a shadow interview collection. I'm fond of "why" questions myself, harder to just give a rote answer. Understand that they won't much like gotcha stuff about Kramnik and unification at this stage because they are under contract with FIDE right now and can hardly give an answer other than, "This is the one true championship. Kramnik who? These aren't the droids we're looking for."

August 22, 2005

Onischuk on the Continental

Today I received this letter from GM Alexander Onischuk, one of the seven players in the much-discussed tiebreak at the Continental Championship. Further debunking of the original conspiracy story isn't really needed, but it's good to hear from another of the principals. (Needleman's comments are in the other thread.) If anything, I hope this teaches us all to be a little more critical when reading the news. Or, "news."

Hi everyone. First of all, I would like to thank Mig for being objective and not making conclusions based on the lies of some local Argentinean journalist as, unfortunately, the ChessBase web site did.

I could say a lot about the system of the tournament, which started at 10PM on the day of the last round and the closing ceremony and was supposed to be finished at about 5AM, but I won’t do that. I'll just give you some facts.

Some of you in your comments say something like "Felgaer fought, why didn't other GMs fight?" Well, everything was different from what the local journalist wrote. It was actually GM Felgaer who sent the young player into the dangerous minus-one zone in the fourth round. After that GM Felgaer made two short draws (and the bye) and secured his place in the World Cup.

I also would like to give you a score of my game with GM Granda Zuniga, which was a quite typical game between GMs in the first half of the tournament.

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5 9.Be2 b4 10.Na4 Ne4 11.Bxc4? Nxg3 12.hxg3 Bg7 13.Qe2 Nd7 14.O-O ½-½

Does this look to you, dear chess friends, like an arranged game? I made a mistake and offered a draw in a probably worse but complicated position. For my opponent, who had +1 at that moment and the best progressive score (tie-break), to agree meant practically to qualify for the World Cup, so he agreed.

I understand that chess fans want to see fighting, interesting games, but you cannot demand it from us at 2AM or if it is the second long game of the day. Before criticizing professional players please think about the reasons that can be behind short draws. Better conditions in chess, not rules like a "thirty moves rule," can improve the situation.

Sincerely, GM Alex Onischuk

Brazil's Gilberto Milos just sent me a note. He has much similar to say on his site. Click on the "Continental Tie Breaks" item. As one of the few ever really in danger, he makes the point that because of the tiebreaks he only had to "wait" one round, the fourth, to be ahead of Needleman again.

August 23, 2005

Needleman Anyway

I'm not sure if this is tragedy, comedy, or heroism, but FIDE has just approved a request to let 15-year-old Gaston Needleman into the World Cup. This after the much discussed Continental tiebreak tournament in which he finished last and was the one player eliminated. From FIDE:

At the Dresden FIDE Congress, the Argentine World Championship Organizing Committee gave a successful presentation showing that San Luis was ready to welcome players and guests next month. Dr. Alberto Rodriguez Sah, Gov. of San Luis, then requested H.E. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to consider the possibility to include Gaston Needleman, a promising 15-year-old player from Argentina, in the next World Cup. After deliberation with the FIDE Presidential Board, the FIDE President confirmed his nomination of the young prodigy.

At the American Continental Championship, which ended some days ago, the hero was clearly 15-year-old Gaston Needleman, who tied with seven other players for second but was eliminated only after the tie-break tournament for six tickets to the FIDE World Cup.

While this is a happy ending and a just reward for his excellent performance in the main event (outperforming his rating by 400 points), this is also a perverse twist. It means the entire tiebreak tournament was meaningless. A pity they didn't ask FIDE about this before wasting everyone's time. No one would have complained had they just announced all seven were qualified without a playoff. We can be 99% sure that had anyone other than Needleman finished last that person would be S.O.L.

Wildcards for outstanding juniors are a good thing and hardly rare, but promptly rendering the playoff worthless is a bit warped. Waiting till the other wildcards were announced would have been more polite to the six who qualified.

The Argentine papers have it now, all giving the same quote from Needleman: "Great! This is incredible. Now there's a lot of studying to do." The 2006 World Cup, the next stage of the FIDE world championship cycle, doesn't have a site yet.

August 24, 2005

Disappearing Tournaments

With the various recent cases of fictional tournaments being rated, what about rating tournaments that actually happened? American IM Stan Kriventsov is wondering why his recent US events aren't on the list of tournaments to be rated by FIDE. In fact, no US events are currently listed.

Do you know if the USCF sends tournaments to FIDE to be rated anymore? No FIDE tournaments that I played in starting in April have been rated yet, and the FIDE web page does not list any U.S. tournaments among the 294 submitted for the upcoming October rating list. If you go to the tournament archive on fide.com, there were a total of 4 tournaments (last dated 02-23, other 3 from early January) from USA rated for the July list. No tournaments after that made it so far. For the April list, there were 22 tournaments, of which 17 were submitted late and each charged a 100 (dollars? euros? something else?) fine.

http://fide.com/ratings/fees.phtml?country=USA&codt=16

If you take, say, Russia, they had plenty of tournaments in both rating lists, almost none of them late. I checked several other random countries, such as Argentina, Bulgaria, and England - the same story. Is it only USCF that doesn't care about late fees? Do they have plenty of money for that?

The reason I am personally worried is that I should get about 40 rating points from the tournaments I played in, and I don't know how late FIDE will allow these tournaments to be submitted. The submission deadline for the October list is August 31. It is, of course, possible that the information on the FIDE website about tournaments already submitted for the October list is not up-to-date and the USCF has already sent everything to them. But if not, does it mean that tournaments, including big ones such as Foxwoods, Minneapolis, Chicago, and the World Open are not going to be rated anytime soon? Maybe they don't have the money for the fees? — IM Stan Kriventsov

I suppose I could poke around the USCF site for a while or write a bunch of people at the USCF, but usually posting to the world is the fastest way to get an answer. I'm sure there's a lot about this process people will find interesting. Crazy about the late fees.

August 25, 2005

GM Finegold

Well, "GM-elect" that is. Despite narrowly missing Sergey Karjakin's record of youngest GM by 23 years, Michigan's Ben Finegold is quite pleased to be America's latest Grandmaster. He's long been one of the strongest IMs around so this is long overdue. Is there a record for years over 2500 without becoming a GM? The highest-rated IM right now according to FIDE is Paragua of the Philippines. On the other side, Christiansen and Gelfand are often mentioned as skipping the IM title entirely.

You can read all about it in this fun report by IM Greg Shahade, see below. It was up at the USCF site yesterday but is gone now, but someone sent me a copy. Greg and I are in talks about turning the USCF site into something useful. Will the new board member be writing all the content himself? Anyway, kudos to Ben. (His email address says "IMFinegold" and I've cleverly registered the "GMFinegold" version to prevent some unscrupulous person from extorting beer in exchange for the account password. Gmail is better anyway.)

Continue reading "GM Finegold" »

August 26, 2005

Disappearing Tournaments 2

Some follow-up to Stan Kriventsov's letter and related comments. Thanks to Carol Jarecki and Ernie Schlich for their help. The short version is that things are backed up, attributed by Carol to the main USCF guy on this stuff, Walter Brown (not the GM with the 'e'), falling ill and taking some time off. USCF volunteer Ernie Schlich and USCF employee Chuck Lovingood in Crossville are currently doing the work for the USCF rating department.

Mr. Schlich's reply said that they had already sent some events in on the 24th and that "I hope to be 99% caught up by Monday [the 29th]. We are placing a heck of a workload on FIDE and I hope they have time to rate them all. The US Open and the HB are going to take much time." Some notes from Carol on the process and its state.

Everything goes through the USCF. The TD sends the rating report to USCF. The computer software generally used in the USA (SwissSys and WinTD) can produce a report that the USCF software can read. FIDE uses different software and different formulae so it has to be converted. Other Federation arbiters generally use SwissMaster or other programs that can generate FIDE reports directly. In any case, TDs running tournaments in the US do not send anything directly to FIDE. ...

A great deal of time and combined effort has been spent on getting the new USCF ratings program up to the super standard where it is currently. TDs can now submit a tournament rating report online the same day the event is finished and it will be rated within hours. Perfecting this program has taken untold man hours but it has been well worth it. FIDE rates electronically now so once they get the reports, in correct format, they should be able to rate them quickly.

In other words, things do appear to be moving forward. Much of this highlights the typical weakness of the USCF and organizations like it. You can't have a professional level of accountability when you have to rely on volunteers who are doing their best. It's not like there are loads of people clamoring to do this sort of work for free or very low pay. Or are there? I've gone on here before about the importance of setting up a good volunteeer infrastructure. Many people would like to help but they don't know how. Yet another top priority for the new board...

August 27, 2005

FIDE Gives Le Smackdown

You'll remember this hot topic about the organization mess at the World Youth Games in Belfort, France a few weeks ago. FIDE has responded with surprising speed and decisiveness, banning organizer Touze from organizing FIDE events for the next five years and suggesting that the European Union does the same.

1. The Organizer of this event in Belfort, Mr. Jean-Paul Touze will not have the right to organize any FIDE event for a period of 5 years with effect from 23rd August, 2005.

2. All the complaints received by the FIDE Secretariat will be handed over to the FIDE Ethics Commission for further examination. The Organizer may present his views in the examination. The Ethics Commission can recommend additional measures to the Executive Board.

3. The Executive Board recommends to the European Chess Union to consider issuing a similar resolution regarding the organizer’s participation in European chess matters.

I don't know how much bite this really has, but it's hard to imagine them being able to do much more. Fines likely aren't applicable. It's always going to be hard to deal with this sort of thing when it's so hard to find organizers and sponsors in the first place.

August 28, 2005

Cheating Hearts

An interesting article at Wired about online cheating at poker sites using software robots. The programmer at the center of the piece has an amusing set of rationalizations about why this is okay, starting with "everyone is doing it" and ye olde "it's a service to point out the weakness of the services." Making a buck, in other words.

As the article points out, the online casino industry doesn't care so much because they make money on a percentage basis. They have to put a good face on how much they are doing about the problem, but it's really not a problem for them yet. When legions of undetectable bots make up the field, what will weak human players do? As long as there are enough new players coming in, most unaware of this issue, the industry will continue to boom anyway. That the bots aren't yet strong enough to really challenge strong players is another factor, one that won't last long.

Everybody complains about cheats using chess software online, but since money isn't an issue it's a minor annoyance for most. (Though you might be amazed by the passion this inspires among amateurs. It was by far the #1 complaint about online play at KasparovChess.) It's a more serious issue with professionals, where even GMs (among others) have been nailed for cheating in online tournaments. "Everybody is doing it" has been a popular response from those who confess after being caught. Lame, though true from looking at the games of most online tournaments.

August 29, 2005

Phoenix Risen

I just updated US Championship website with the results of the US Open. (Actually it was updated a few days ago, but now with spiffy photos.) Three cheers for Dirt regular IM Dave "fluffy" Vigorito for achieving a long-held dream. No, not the one about the cheerleaders, the one about qualifying for the US Championship. Now the Dirt faithful have to focus their positive vibes on Yermo.

Josh Friedel has the inside track on becoming the first player to qualify via the new Grand Prix system. He almost made it directly last week but lost out to Serper on tiebreaks. There will also be a "champion of champions" internet qualifying tournament among all the state champions.

August 31, 2005

Archived Morphy

Via the still-Scottish John Henderson, current resident of Seattle, I've had a glimpse of the massive online digital archives of the Scotsman newspaper, which go back to 1817. There's quite a bit of chess in there, including tidbits on Morphy's visit to Europe. There's even an announcement of a 21-game match between Morphy and Staunton. Oh well. (John also figures that Morphy's grave is currently deep underwater. So an item on New Orleans' greatest is appropriate today.)

In one item, a columnist chides a French paper for misspelling the American's name "Murphy" among with other inaccuracies. But 15 years later in their long obituary of Howard Staunton, the Scotsman multiplies this tenfold by both calling him "Murphy" and stating in passing that Staunton was his conquerer! Maybe there was a match only the Scotsman knew about?

The below snippets are from an item reviewing Loewenthal's book on Morphy's games in the January 26, 1860 paper. The item is written by the accomplished author, scholar, and publisher Henry George Bohn, who had put out some of Staunton's books, including the legendary "The Chessplayer's Handbook". (Bohn's editions of the classics were so well known at the time that his name gave rise to the expression "to bone up" on something. At least according to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins.)

There is a great deal more high praise of Morphy, and though Bohn mentions Morphy's intent to play Staunton he never discusses the aborted match(es) at all. But impressive from someone who still had a professional relationship with Staunton.

September 1, 2005

Chess Takes It Up the Sistani

Whether or not chess is permissable under Islam has gone around many times, including in the mainstream press. The Taliban said no, but then they said no to everything. Iran used to say no, but lately have said yes, even hosting the FIDE world championship final in 2000. Now that the Bush administration looks set to succeed where Bin Laden failed in turning Iraq into a Sharia state, this is again a hot topic, or at least a hot symbol of repression.

But I hadn't seen the Q&A section of Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq's website myself until now. The items on chess are quite categorical. It is "absolutely forbidden," coming in worse than anal sex on the sin chart and at the same level as abortion. Chess even gets this charming exposition:

It is not permissible, because it is a means for Lahv (debauchery) and gambling. Many traditions have been reported from the Holy Prophet and the Imams (a.s.) that prohibit playing chess. Moreover, when we do not know the reason behind the forbiddenness of an act, we are bound to obey in absolute obedience. There is a reason for it, but we do not know it and when we do not know it, it does not mean that we should not abide by it.

Well that settles that. Obviously this is all debatable, at least if you are far enough away not to be stoned to death for debating it. The Shiites in Iran and most other Muslims don't seem to agree. Some old-tyme Christian and Puritan sects also banned chess and other games. Even today Jehovah's Witnesses frown on chess because of its "military nature."

[Pointed out below that Tim Krabbé looked at Sistani's site and chess opinions (though not the one above about debauchery. Hey, I LIKE debauchery) in item 275 here. He even got a ruling that perhaps composing and solving chess puzzles might be okay, but it seems clear that such things are more like playing than not in that they are a similar "waste of time." So I wouldn't risk it.]

I first looked into chess and Islam when the US invaded Afghanistan in November, 2001. The following is part of a column I wrote at the time (Mig on Chess #155). Most of the info on Islam comes from HJR Murray's "A History of Chess."

Continue reading "Chess Takes It Up the Sistani" »

September 2, 2005

2005 Russian Ch Prelim

The mighty qualifier for the Russian Championship super-final in December is getting underway in Kazan. The sites are in Russian, news and games will trickle out to ChessBase and TWIC, and some helpful Russian-enabled readers always post here and in the message boards. (That's a link to a list of the players and discussion about the event.) This qualifier is a nine-round swiss with Bareev the top seed. The top seven finishers go to the superfinal, joined there by rating seeds (Svidler and Morozevich are the only ones mentioned on the official site, though Kramnik lists it on his schedule) and by Dreev and Grischuk, who are in the final automatically for finishing 2-3 last year. Kasparov is the defending champ but has retired and isn't factored in. That still leaves a few of the 14 final spots unfilled by my count.

I'm told on good authority that a Russian-American GM who played in last year's US championship wanted to play in Kazan, which apparently was okay with the Russians. But he was told that this would make him ineligible to play in the next US championship.

If you are having trouble with the cyrillic names at the nice ChessPro page on the event, here's a helpful key to some of the photos.

Alexander Khalifman = Russell Crowe in LA Confidential
(Bonus: Alexander Motylev as the teenage Crowe)
Sergey Rublevsky = John Candy in Stripes
Vadim Zvjaginsev = James Spader in Less Than Zero
Dmitrij Jakovenko = Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby
Konstantin Sakaev = Wayne Knight in Seinfeld

September 4, 2005

Pawns Get Jiggy

Sourcing is thin, but this report says that Will Smith - known to my generation as the Fresh Prince and not the Men In Black guy - will star in the Disney film adaptation of the Salome Thomas-EL book/story "I Choose to Stay." (Since he was speaking in the town in Oregon where the paper is based, I imagine he's the source.) It was mentioned here last year.

Smith often makes the "celebrities who play chess" lists that are regurgitated on a regular basis. Thomas-EL is on the AF4C board and his book is an interesting and important one. Here's the official site. Positive education and chess images on the screen and in the hands of one of the most popular stars in the world can hardly be anything other than a great thing.

[Update: Salome Thomas-EL comments below after a long thread I haven't been following while taking a few days off.]

September 8, 2005

2005 Computer Champ

The 13th World Computer Championship was held last month in Iceland, but you might easily have missed it. Despite a great deal of organizational effort and a fine official site, news coverage was sparse. And there was news in Reykjavik, thanks to two relatively unknown amateur programs finishing in the top two spots ahead of the usual suspects.

The American program Zappa scored an impressive 10.5/11 in the round-robin for clear first. The open source program Fruit from France was second, two points behind. Shredder, which collects these titles, was tied for third and defending champion Junior was equal 5th-6th. As with human chess, a single tournament win doesn't say anything definitive, but it's an intriguing result nonetheless. I mentioned the event and how you can use some of these programs in my latest column at ChessCafe.com. (PDF) Shredder programmer Stefan Meyer-Kahlen has a diary of the event with photos.

ChessBase, publisher of the top commercial programs Shredder, Junior, and Fritz, covered this event exactly not at all, quite a switch from previous years when the WCCC often received daily coverage. Basically they feel the publicity and scientific returns from comp-comp events have diminished to the point of negativity. The small but vociferous computer chess community spends a lot of time bashing ChessBase, much the way the computer geeks bash Microsoft. (Note that they had decided not to cover the event before it started (and didn't enter Fritz), so the lack of coverage is not about the relatively poor results of Shredder and Junior.)

I did a quickie email interview with Anthony Cozzie, the programmer of the new champion. Most of the questions are evident from the answers, so I've skipped them where possible. Here's a pic he sent of himself with the trophy.

I am a graduate student in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (I live in Urbana). This is my first year. I already have an MS in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, home to Hitech & Deep Thought. I managed to take a class in parallel computing from Nowatzyk. I found him a very interesting guy, except that his voice put me to sleep. In my spare time I play basketball and watch anime (I speak some Japanese as well).

I began the program during the spring of my Junior year at Carnegie Mellon (2000 or so) and have worked on it ever since. As a computer scientist I find the parallel search the most interesting part, but I have also worked on the chess knowledge factor. About 2 years ago, just after CCT6.

[How much has it improved since the last version, which you said was significantly weaker than the top commercial programs?] I would say that the program is quite a bit stronger, but to be honest I have no hard proof. I have never run a match of (say) 100 games vs Shredder, nor have I ever tested my parallel speedup on more than 3 positions. I tend to 'fly by the seat of my pants' so to speak :) This has gotten me in trouble from time to time, though.

[How much do you pay attention to other programs?] Quite a bit. Its simply much easier to start a Zappa-Shredder match than a Zappa-Kasparov match to see whether the program plays better chess or not. I think that Zappa and the Erdogan [opening] book are simply a beautiful fit. Erdo's book simply needs a deep searching aggressive engine, and Zappa fits the bill. I myself am probably 2000 USCF or so, so yes, I bug any strong chessplayer I can find :) It is also something of a problem living in the US where there aren't as many strong chess players.

I leave the book work to Erdo. You'd have to ask him how many hours he spent on it, but I suspect it's in the thousands. I think the book is extremely important: just look at the emphasis top GMs place now on the opening. Good programs are now of similar strength, and the opening is just as important for them. This is especially true because to win open tournaments you have to get an insane score, and that means winning a lot with Black. There simply aren't many pushovers in computer-chess these days, so you need a good Black opening book.

September 12, 2005

Bareev-ment

[Back from a short vacation, more mental than corporal. Taking a break from your computer is a vacation in itself these days.]

Top seed Evgeny Bareev won the 2005 Russian championship qualifier ahead of Alexander Khalifman on formula tiebreaks after they both finished with 6.5/9. Both winners scored very entertaining wins in the final round. A good source tells me that little is fixed about the December championship final. Most of the seeded players haven't confirmed yet. Morozevich and Svidler are prepping for San Luis.

September 13, 2005

Missive from FIDE

FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has issued the letter you'll find below. It's a mini state of the union address with more spin than content. Mentioning FIDE's work with the ACP is a good sign. Not long ago they wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the players' group.

This newfound call for suggestions from someone long prone to unilateralism is doubtless a consequence of the serious support being shown for an alternative ticket, likely led by Anatoly Karpov. Ilyumzhinov's comment about having "the full support of the Russian Government" is no doubt directed toward blunting opposition momentum, but last I checked Putin didn't have a vote, only a veto. Other items in the release sound like they've actually been listening to the many complaints regarding professionalism and corporate sponsorship and the lack thereof. But a press release doesn't mean action.

The putative opposing ticket may run into trouble if Karpov's name continues to be involved in a Russian banking scandal. Two people have sent me items from the Russian press about a fraud affair over a bank of which Karpov is/was (honorary?) chairman. More details if I get a decent translation, but it seems incredibly unlikely that Karpov could be in any way liable. Celebrities are often on dozens of boards with little or zero contact with operations.

Continue reading "Missive from FIDE" »

September 14, 2005

Short Move

1993 world championship challenger Nigel Short, formerly chess columnist at the Sunday Telegraph, has started a new column at The Guardian newspaper, also the home of Leonard Barden and Jonathan Speelman, a formidable chess section, mentioned here before.

At least at the start, the column is focusing on Short helping a Guardian journalist go from patzer to, well, something better. Together with Short, journo Stephen Moss will document his own progress as described in this intro. The first installment is here. If this seems an odd role for an internationalist like Short, currently ranked #30 in the world, it is, though it's sure to be an entertaining ride. I might be able to offer some background. A few months ago an editor at The Guardian contacted me about becoming a chess columnist for them. Although we never got to the point of specifics, it seems they were looking for something instructional, perhaps already having this dual column in mind. Definitely looking forward to it.

ChessNinja.com, the Shirt

And the sweatshirt, mousepad, tote bag, and thong.

Because some of you demanded it! I've set up a quickie online shop with my awesome new ninja logo by artist Paloma Campo-Urrutia. I stuck with just one image and the more popular items. If sales are enough to pay for the effort I'll add some Daily Dirt logo items. If you really, really want teddy bears, BBQ aprons, and baby-doll t-shirts, let me know.

September 15, 2005

Not Again

Colorado news sources are full of reports about chess author and coach Robert Snyder being held on charges of sexual assault against two "boys between the ages of 11 and 13." [Umm, 12?] Snyder wrote the very popular Chess for Juniors, among other books. He was found not guilty of similar charges in 1983. Innocent until proven guilty is critical when the alleged crimes are so heinous. Outraged and terrified parents don't always make for balanced investigations, as has been shown many times in the past.

Speaking of guilty, another junior coach and author, John Walker, may still be in prison for molestation, for which he was arrested in 2000. Be careful out there.

September 16, 2005

GK in SF

He's already leaving the Golden State, headed for a week of politicking in the far east of Russia. Kasparov spent a one-day visit in San Francisco, across the Bay from my hometown. He was there for a short address to executives and clients of consulting giant Deloitte today. The ZDNet blog [thanks to xplor] already has notes about it online and CNET should have something more substantial up tomorrow.

I talked to Garry before and after the address and he said people showed a great deal of interest in his upcoming book, which combines memoir with a sort of how-to guide to the decision-making process. We just spent a few days here in NY working on it. The focus is on strategy and decision-making, but of course I'm more into the chess stories. Apart from the inevitable classics that will be new to the intended general audience, there's a lot you haven't heard before.

September 17, 2005

Mint Juniors

The Lausanne Young Masters is underway in Switzerland. It's a KO again this year and the first games of the second round are already in the books. US champion and Black Belt contributor Hikaru Nakamura and Ukraine's Andrei Volokitin are both rolling so far, winning with white against Mamedyarov and Harikrishna, respectively. They'll meet in the final if they hold with black today.

Another junior in the news lately is Chinese 16-year-old Wang Hao, whose name is an Abbott and Costello skit waiting to happen. He scored an impressive 10/11 at the Malaysia Open a week ago. In April he won clear first in the Dubai Open ahead of some 50 GMs.

Maybe I've become jaded, but in the past few years I've started to feel like "wake me when you hit the top 40" when it comes to all the so-called prodigies coming down the pipe year after year. Sergey Karjakin set the gold standard and it should stand for a while. And if you aren't in the top 50 by the time you're 18, you're just another player trying to make it to the top. Still, Hao is not just playing well or making contrived norms, but winning tournaments.

September 18, 2005

Chess Area Rehab

An overdue and controversial redesign of legendary Washington Square Park in New York City includes news for the famous chess corner:

Under the agreement, the park will have a raised performance stage area, a 7,000-square-foot expansion of the children's park, a play area for preteens, a refurbished chess area that will house U.S. Chess Federation events, and new plantings.

I've heard of USCF events (and national events in other nations) being held in informal and/or outdoors spots before. There is a massive set of chess tents in the center of the zocalo in front of the Fine Arts museum in Mexico City where there are constant tournaments. That the USCF seems involved in these changes to the park is a welcome sign of sapience on their part.

The hustlers (who aren't likely to disappear regardless) are quite a sight, but a majority of them are more likely to scare people away than attract them. There's someone camped out at each board most of the time, challenging passers-by and refusing to get up without payment for "renting" the board from him. The chess and checkers pavilion in Central Park is usually empty.

We've covered public places to play here before. Add some more here or under that item.

September 19, 2005

Gaming a Sport?

Just the latest entry in the eternal - and eternally fruitless - debate about whether or not chess is a sport. (Of course it just depends on how you define the word "sport," which we can skip.) Actually, this one is about competitive video games, a category in which chess also fits these days. It might surprise some old hands for whom online chess is a novelty - and the only online game they play - that for many chess is just one of various online, umm, sports.

Mr Christopher Hau, 39, a former engineer, described gaming as 'just a form of leisure'. He said: 'I don't see any benefit from it or the point in encouraging and publicising such games.'

And fresh graduate Jesmine Yang, 23, didn't think it should be considered a sport. She said: 'It doesn't need physical activity. Is chess a sport? If not, then gaming shouldn't be a sport. If gaming can be called a sport, when I sit in front of my computer and surf the net, I can call that a sport too!'

But the WCG team, which received a $50,000 sponsorship package from SingTel for equipment, pointed out the team is taking its SSC-directed training very seriously. So much so that it is even doing physical training.

Team Singapore's general manager, SSC's Mr Kelvin Chua, revealed that the players will have personal training services in the gym to help their 'cardiovascular training and strength and conditioning training'.

Quite a lot in common with chess. Physical conditioning, commercialization, sponsorship. No, wait, we don't have all of that in chess... Btw, even if that's in Singapore dollars it's still $30,000. Yow. I mean, Hau.

Karpov in Argentina

Anatoly Karpov is on a tour of Argentina (Spanish) in the run-up to the FIDE world championship in San Luis. The typically error-ridden local news reports don't agree on whether or not he'll show up in San Luis. (One says he's playing in San Luis, another that he was world champ for 17 years, etc.) Barn-storming the country at the same time and not going would be odd. But it would be a bit awkward appearing alongside Ilyumzhinov, whom Karpov called a "dickhead." (Well, not exactly. But saying one would do a better job isn't much better.) If so, I hope he packed all his faces.

From the 17th to he 29th, Karpov has a full slate of activities, from handing out awards, to receiving commendations, to appearing at the Najdorf festival. Of several simuls, he's going to give one in Salta, in the far northwest of the country. Beautiful place. He may meet with president Kirchner, but bigger than that will be his blindfold game against Diego Maradona tonight on Maradona's new "La Noche del 10" television variety show, which is all the rage.

September 20, 2005

Euro Cup Overfloweth

The powerful Euro Club Cup is underway in Saint Vincent (Aosta), Italy. It seems most of the world's top hundred players are in action. The elite are represented by Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Bacrot, and Gelfand, among others. (Half are on one team...) Here's the list of teams and players. Karjakin is on 3/3 playing board 7 (!) for the defending champ NAO team lead by Kramnik, who didn't play last year. Five teams have perfect 3/3 team scores.

The Java-crazed official website almost outdoes last year's for horribleness. They are keeping their chins up, however: "We are keen on clarifying that the fault was never on the website, which works perfectly under a huge number of daily contacts and is being constantly improved by our designers, who have spent a lot of working time on it (we are very proud of them and of their results!)." I'm guessing they haven't tried to look at the pages on a standards-compliant browser. On the bright side, I've learned many error messages in Italian, even in IE. "Errore di compilazione di Microsoft VBScript error '800a03ea'" and "Errore di sintassi" are my favorites so far. Works perfectly? As Dubya might put it, "Brownini, you're doing a heckuva job!"

[Several people have posted links to the results and more at the Weiner Zeitung site.]

September 21, 2005

FIDE World Cup 05

FIDE has announced the sponsorship of its 2005 KO World Cup tournament, the first stage of the new world championship cycle. ChessBase has a handy report that includes maps and the full press release.

The World Chess Federation has reached an agreement with the leadership of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region-Yugra in respect of the organisation of the 2005 World Chess Cup. The tournament will be taking place from 3 to 24 December 2005 with the total prize fund of USD 1,572,000. [On the 28th this was changed to Nov. 26 - Dec. 17 to accomodate the Russian Championship final.]

The respective document was signed today between FIDE and the Executive Direction of "Yugra-Intersport". According to the Agreement, the first tranche of 200,000 USD has been transferred to FIDE today. The balance of the agreed prize fund should reach the FIDE Bank account by 15 October 2005.

The Organiser covers the organizing costs and USD 1,300,000 of the prize fund. The FIDE President H.E. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has also contributed with a sponsorship to the tune of USD 300,000.

My former ESL teacher self loves seeing 'dictionary words' and hokey idiomatic expressions in press releases. Next: "Sponsorship costs a pretty penny!" This is yet more good news from FIDE, what's up with that? This is taking all the irony out of the "I heart Kalmykia" button my friend Kat made me last year. Oh, a return to the halcyon days in the romantic Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region-Yugra... Just rolls right off the tongue. How about K-MARY instead?

That they already have money lined up for the first stage of the cycle makes the case for unification with Kramnik ever more marginal. Maybe it's not too late for him to Tonya Harding someone in San Luis and sneak in.

September 23, 2005

Get the Party Started!

Veselin Topalov was first to arrive in San Luis, Argentina for the 2005 FIDE world championship tournament, two days ago. (The first round is Wed., Sep. 28.) Yesterday Peter Leko and Rustam Kasimdzhanov showed up at the airport, met by governor Saa and some of his cabinet members. Adams, Polgar, and Svidler are scheduled to arrive today. There is a major airline strike in Argentina right now so they will have to take a charter to San Luis. There was an inauguration concert at the playing site starring one of the last great tango artists, Mariano Mores. I think Topalov was the only player there.

Comments were minimal, typified by Kasimdzhanov's, "the winner will be the one who deals best with the pressure." My favorite comment so far from El Diario de la Republica, the local paper providing by far the best coverage, is "[Leko] is known for his aggressive play..." They have some grainy photos, including this one of Leko learning the Uzbek soul handshake from Kasimdzhanov. [If you don't understand the site's registration page, use this login: email - migck@yahoo.com; password - 1500.]

As for the predictions about pressure, the last-place finisher will be the one who deals worst with it. But the winner is going to have to play some kick-ass chess. At least I hope so. I would hate to see an epidemic of short draws and a +2 winner. In Linares and Sofia this year we saw that doesn't have to be the case with this format. Topalov is playing the best chess these days, but his habitual loss or two could doom him here. I'm sticking with Leko as my prediction for first place. Then I want to see him ask for draw odds in a rematch with Kramnik!

September 24, 2005

Kirsan Gives a Maybe

In a Sport Express interview, FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov acknowledged that FIDE might allow the San Luis winner to play a unification match against classical champion Vladimir Kramnik. Good to hear, if not exactly a surprise to these pages. It's been translated on the FIDE site, so it's clearly meant as a signal flare.

Ilyumzhinov: The World Champion title belongs to the World Chess Federation (FIDE), the negotiations regarding such match are possible in principle only with FIDE. If Kramnik's sponsors propose something interesting, we do not eliminate the possibility of such a match of the only legal World Champion who is defined in San Luis against the so called Classical World Champion. If of course the only legal World Champion accepts it.

This is basically as expected. There is no reason for FIDE to refuse such a match categorically if there's a buck in it for them. And note that it isn't clear Kramnik would become the FIDE champion if he wins. Assuming that's the case, the problem is Kramnik showing up with the money. I've always said that if Big Vlad can knock on FIDE's door with a sack full of loot we'll have a unification match faster than you can say "no draw odds and an extra rest day." Let's hope he's still in good with Ms. NAO.

I doubt the schedule of the just-announced 2005 FIDE World Cup is set in stone, but there could be time issues. Will the San Luis winner feel like putting his/her title on the line so quickly? I guess it wouldn't matter if this unification match happened after the World Cup. None of the San Luis players are more or less likely to go for a big money unification match, except maybe Anand. He doesn't need the cash or the legitimacy and likes a low-stress lifestyle. Topalov himself isn't an issue, but his manager is the same guy who did such wonders for Ponomariov's match with Kasparov.

An item on a May Kramnik interview is here. Other stuff on FIDE and unification here and here.

September 25, 2005

Let Chucky In!

Forget having Kramnik play in San Luis and let Vassily Ivanchuk in instead. The Chuckster has his rating up to 2752 and looks set to add a pile more points. He just scored 6/7 for Polonia Plus in the Euro Cup (admittedly on board 2 behind the solid Boris Gelfand). As usual, his games were great. I annotated his win over Volkov for Black Belt a few days ago, what a game. (See below.) He gives up a knight right out of the opening for long-term pressure against Black's open king and keeps creating threats and nabbing pawns for the next 30 moves until Volkov collapses. Don't show this game to any beginner students; they'll never respect the value of the pieces again.

Continue reading "Let Chucky In!" »

September 27, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r1

First! First! Got the first round pairings right here, baby! Get'em while they're hot. Morozevich-Kasimdzhanov, Polgar-Anand, Leko-Topalov, Svidler-Adams. Games start at 2pm EST, 6pm GMT, 3pm Argentine time. Full schedule here. A great round, with winning chances for all eight players. But they're all going to be great rounds. Message board winner prediction poll results: Anand 48%, Leko 20%; Topalov 16%; Polgar 8%; Svidler 4%; Morozevich 3%; Adams 1%; Kasimdzhanov 0%. Not even a courtesy vote for Kasim, but maybe that's because the pollster misspelled his name.

The official site doesn't even have the pairings up yet, failing its first test. [Update: Now if you click the player photos you get SOME of the pairings?! Only the player's games with white. Bizarre.] They are also trying to charge $40 to register to watch the games live. This isn't a money-making scheme because anyone with a brain knows by now that no one pays. Nor do they even have the Dortmund 05 pretext of attracting more spectators to San Luis. So why? To stop the server from being totally crushed is one reason. Not that it will help too much, as they will find out. Countdown to free live games and/or none at all due to traffic 10, 9, 8...

[This is the official r1 thread, so feel free to post results as they come in.]

September 28, 2005

World Cup Dates

FIDE has hastily changed the dates for their recently announced World Cup KO tournament. Now it's Nov. 26-Dec. 17, having been moved up a week so as not to clash with the Russian championship final. It's not nice to mess with Comrade Zhukov.

September 29, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r2

Today we have Topalov - Anand, a key battle between the early leaders and pre-tournament favorites. If Topalov starts the event with wins over Leko and Anand he becomes a huge favorite. Then it's Adams-Polgar, Kasimdzhanov-Svidler, and Leko-Morozevich. Moro is often more dangerous with black than with white and Leko will need to bounce back from his painful loss. Moro looks very tired in the photos.

An exciting first day of chess, unless you are Hungarian. Polgar was completely outclassed by Anand in a Caro. Leko missed attacking chances with 17.f4 and later 20.Nb6 and finally lost the thread against Topalov in a sharp and balanced position. I wonder if he just missed 23...Rd8! and white has to exchange or lose the Nf5. Suddenly the queens were off and Black had the two bishops, which Topalov handled forcefully.

How have your live experiences been? The official site now has the complete fixture up. Nigel Short's fine stuff is appearing first at ChessBase.com. Games are there too. A rather low-tech list of high-resolution photos is at the official site here: www.wccsanluis.net/fotos/

September 30, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r3

Today's pairings: Anand-Adams 1-0, Polgar-Kasimdzhanov 1-0, Svidler-Leko 1-0, Morozevich-Topalov 0-1. Anand and Topalov lead on +2, Leko trails at -2.

Round two again stirred up the anger of the computer-addicted twits out there who wouldn't recognize a good game if it bit them in their silicon ass implants. The tablebase-endowed got all hot and bothered about all the "blunders" in the Topalov-Anand game, and they weren't even talking about the real mistakes! Both players made real human mistakes in the queen and two pawns vs queen endgame, i.e. errors that they could reasonably be expected not to make. But comparing the rest of the complicated check-fest to perfect tablebase computer play is absurd.

Back to human chess, Anand exhibited his habit of playing quickly and lazily in technical positions and allowed Topalov to create real threats with his bishop pair. (46.Bg5! was nice.) Later, the clearest win to me looks like 60.g5 Qe7 61.Qxe7 Bxe7 62.Bd4+ Kh7 63.Bxb2 Bxg5 64.Bg7. So, first Anand should have drawn, then he was clearly lost but defended with his usual tenacity and Topalov couldn't find the knockout. A thrilling game, if not a great one, and no doubt exhausting for both players.

Leko won the draw and got two whites in a row to start the event. He has used both of them to exhibit a total inability to play aggressively enough to put someone away in the Open Sicilian. Here he let his h-pawn sit around against Morozevich instead of blasting away. (31.h5 looks like a no-brainer, but surely not a forced win.) At least Leko didn't go on to lose this one, although it was close. He has reverted to Leko 1.0 at just the wrong moment.

Caught some of Seirawan's live audio commentary at Playchess.com during the round, great stuff as always from Yaz. Having done it myself I know it's tough to drone on constantly without a visible audience, but he is a stud at it. Informative and fun, he only needs to put some John Madden BANG! BOOM! into his voice so he doesn't hypnotize us all. (Unless that is his evil plan!) But he was doubtlessly as tired as the players by the third hour. He should also feel free to kick back and tell a few stories, that sort of thing, instead of worrying about giving a constant stream of variations and analysis. Maybe he did that when I wasn't listening.

[Round 3 update: White is okay! Adams lost control in complications and lost to a fine Anand attack. Polgar beat Kasimdzhanov in her style (20.Bb5!) in the same ultra-sharp, ultra-theoretical Sicilian piece sac line where she beat Anand a few years ago. But Fritz points out 22..Be5!! as saving, maybe even winning, for Black. (23.f4 Rxa2!; 24.Kb1 Kg7! amazing) So she should have taken the queen. That doesn't look good at first but White gets a rook back with an easy win: 22.Rxe8+ Kxe8 (22...Qxe8 23.Qd6+) 23.Rxe7+ Kxe7 24.Nd5+ The trick. White wins the a8 rook no matter what. 24...Kf8 (24...Kd6 25.f6!) 25.Nc7 with mate threat 25..Bf6 26.Nxa8]

Svidler beat Leko in a game that confirms Leko's horrible form. After the mindlessly passive 24..Rd8 Black is just wiped off the board. That knight on b7 is a crime against cavalry. Topalov won against Morozevich with black long after picking off a pawn with an amusing knight wheel starting with 24..Nc6. Moro is certainly not his normal aggressive self so far.

October 1, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r4

Pairings: Kasimdzhanov-Anand, Topalov-Adams, Leko-Polgar, Morozevich-Svidler. Anand and Topalov lead on +2. Results, games, pics, and Short comments on round 3 at ChessBase. Some of my quick notes and comments on yesterday's games here. Official site here. Other regular news at TWIC, Chesspro.ru (including the standard-setting annotations of my main man, Sergey Shipov), The Chess Drum (scroll down to round reports) (ick, a java scroll!), Susan Polgar, and noticias en español.

Anand and Topalov confirmed their front-runner status while Leko is out of the running for the world title. Even if he comes into form, he's not going to go +4 or +5 the rest of the way in this field. I really thought he'd be tough here, but either he was in terrible form to start or the missed opportunity in round one crippled his confidence. Perhaps he didn't follow his old training regimen.

Round 4 might see some GM draws as leaders consolidate and losers burn a white to lick wounds. Topalov is, as usual, the exception, and he also has white (though both his wins have come with black). Kasimdzhanov's opening prep gets a test as he faces Anand.

October 2, 2005

Locura en San Luis!

So, did I miss anything? I took a much-needed break to see some music yesterday. (Interpol sucked, New York Dolls were amazing for being ancient, and The Killers were good but need to fire their sound guys. Covering a Bowie tune always earns bonus points.) Going to see Beck tonight and, more importantly, the Raveonettes.

Yow, this tournament is wild and crazy. No short draws yesterday; no draws at all! Fighting spirit combined with some uneven play has resulted in an entertaining high-tension bloodbath. Only an unheard of 37% of the games have been drawn after four rounds and there hasn't been a draw in the past two rounds. In the last world championship tournament comparable to this one, in 1948, after 16 games 44% had been drawn. This pace won't be maintained, but it's indicative of how all the players are taking each game seriously.

Topalov won yet again, playing an impressive game against Adams. The Bulgarian's handling of initiative is truly fearsome these days, absolutely relentless. His h5-Bf5-Bc2-Qe4 maneuver will bring cheer to the hearts of weekend hackers everywhere. Play for mate!

Leko finally put someone away with white in the Sicilian, combining a strong opening initiative with a little taste of Polgar's own medicine, a piece sac on b5. 18..Nh5 looks very un-Judit-like; the f4 pawn isn't consequent. This may have been a case of the old saying, the hardest moves to visualize are diagonal retreats. If White doesn't have 25.Bg1! Black holds on with pressure against c2, although the position is still terrible. The hole on d6 is fatal in the final position, quite instructive to have it last that long.

Kasimdzhanov passed his opening test and then some. He innovated against Anand in the Najdorf and went on to win a very nice attacking game. Anand played riskily, giving the white queen a dominating presence in the center with 20..Nc4?! and relied on tactical tricks (26..Rxf2). Kasim remained cool and held Black off until he could counterattack against Black's wide-open king. The white queen on e5 and the black queen on b4 tell the story. Kasimdzhanov played Bh5 twice. The first time it was a novelty that prevented the maneuver ..Ng6-..Nf4. The second time it was a pretty winning blow, offering the g2 pawn with check.

Morozevich held a strong initiative against Svidler for most of the game but was outplayed in the heavy-piece ending. Moro employed one of his favorite tricks with 30.Rhc2, a quick switch to the other side. It might have been worth staying on the kingside with 30.h5 g5 31.Qg4, although that f4 knight is a monster. Nice technical finish by Svidler and Moro's play continues to look tired. This unusual line of the Saemisch KID has a WCh pedigree. Both Smyslov (58) and Tal (61) tried 6..a6 against Botvinnik.

See round 4 preview for links to other coverage.

8 Points for A-R-G-H

The 2005 US Scrabble championship is on ESPN right now. Caissa wept. This isn't even the world championship, which will be in November. That Scrabble is a trademarked game with the vested interest of a manufacturer/sponsor certainly helps it. And it probably has greater penetration in the US than chess and is of course much more accessible for spectators. Chess's greatest weakness in the mass media has always been that if you don't know how to play competently you may as well be watching Queer Eye in Cambodian.

October 3, 2005

San Luis por Adentro

Argentina's largest newspaper, Clarín, has been running daily reports of moderate depth on the San Luis world championship. But just about every day they have also run an accompanying color piece. One was on "the strange Mr. Ilyumzhinov," another on doping control in chess, and today they tackle the very low number of spectators, which was made painfully obvious from some of the photos. Fewer than 200 people have come each day to the $3.3 million dollar, specially built venue that can seat 860. (It looks like a lot fewer than 200.)

They blame this on the internet (as usual, as if the desire to watch games live instead of replaying them a few minutes later is so strong people would otherwise leave their homes), the games taking place during work hours, and on the fact that the games are being locally televised live with commentary by Argentine WGM Claudia Amura and her husband, Mexican GM Gilberto Hernández. The playing site is sixteen kilometers (10 miles) from town. Almost nobody has come from outside the area, they say. Entry is five pesos (less than two dollars) per day and there is a daily raffle for a home appliance. This page has a good picture of the new building, click it to enlarge.

Clarín chess columnist GM Pablo Zarnicki tried to explain whether or not this is a "real" world championship ("it depends") and chastised the organizers for charging $40 to watch the games live on the official site. Other tidbits from various local reports: Topalov and Kasimdzhanov were both accepting when asked about the drug testing, saying they were okay with it if it was necessary. Kasim said he'd been tested twice in the past with no trouble. The top three finishers in San Luis will be tested, along with someone randomly selected.

Kasimdzhanov said he was delighted to finally beat Anand for the first time. The day before, after losing to Polgar, Kasimdzhanov had stormed out of the hall. Explaining himself after round four, the Uzbekistani said "it never happened to me before in my career. I was losing, then I had a chance to win, then I blundered horribly. That's why I left like that." Despite his loss to Kasimdzhanov, Anand posed for photos and signed autographs.

After his win over Morozevich, Svidler made typically self-critical comments, saying he had "played the middlegame poorly. I didn't know what to do and got off track." Leko, after beating Polgar in a miniature, on his poor start: "I put pressure on myself at the start and distanced myself from the title. Now I just want to play some good games." As mentioned elsewhere, Anand had prepared his 23.Qd2! against Adams when getting ready for Kamsky in 1995 and later when preparing to meet Karpov in Lausanne in 1998.

2005 FIDE WCh r5

Pairings: Svidler-Topalov 0-1, Polgar-Morozevich 1/2, Adams-Kasimdzhanov 1/2, Anand-Leko 1/2. Topalov leads with an amazing 3.5/4, Svidler is a half-point behind. That makes today's game between them a biggie. They've played three classical games in the past two years, two draws and a win for Svidler at Corus in 2004, though Topalov has a +1 score if you go back to 1998-99. They drew an exciting game in Dortmund this year. Adams-Kasimdzhanov is a rematch of the 2004 FIDE WCh final. Anand should try to get back on track against Leko so we'll soon find out if the Hungarian's form is back or not.

Off-day trivia: Topalov stayed with his routine of breakfast in the hotel, a walk, and preparation. He also bought a chaturanga-themed chess set. Svidler and Adams ate in the center of town and did some shopping. Anand and Morozevich walked around the lake - not together. Leko and Polgar ate in the hotel with their analysis teams.

Karabakh 2005

You don't have to pronounce it, just check it out. Black Belt contributor (and US Champion) Hikaru Nakamura is playing in a powerful invitational in Armenia Oct 1-11. (Official site) The rest of the field: Ivanchuk, Aronian, Sokolov, Dreev, Bologan, Asrian, Bu Xiangzhi, Anastasian, Macieja. That's a big category 17 (2667 avg.) at the same time as the FIDE WCh!?

Hikaru drew in the first round with Asrian, who escaped with a miracle draw. Ivanchuk apparently spaced out and lost on time in a bishop endgame despite a 30-second increment. Thinking about ways to win such things will earn you losses, but this was extreme.

October 4, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r6

r6 pairings/results: Polgar-Topalov 0-1, Anand-Svidler 1/2, Adams-Morozevich 1/2, Kasimdzhanov-Leko 1/2. Links to other coverage. After beating his closest rival in round five Topalov is now a preposterous 1.5 points ahead of the field. The other standings are irrelevant and will be until Topalov loses a game. +4 wins this tournament. Only Anand has what it takes to catch up, and that will require some help. Clarin called him the topadora, which means steamroller. Yup.

The same report (with pic of Topy) also makes mention of Topalov signing autographs for three girls near the lake. Maybe they heard about the $300K prize fund? Or maybe it's the goatee. (One of my favorite Spanish expressions is the name for Topalov's type of facial hair: candado, or "padlock." Describes it perfectly.)

What more can be said about Veselin Topalov? As with a few greats of the past, the Bulgarian's powerful chess is amplified in strength as his opponents crumble under his relentless pressure. Against Svidler he unleashed a piece sacrifice novelty of the sort we are becoming used to with him (see his games at the Mtel Masters). Svidler managed to survive into an endgame with two bad pieces for a rook and two pawns. Black was pressing hard when Svidler stepped into a fatal pin in time trouble, lost a key pawn for nothing, and soon resigned. Hardly hari-kiri after such expert swordsmanship by Topalov.

Morozevich worked some of his voodoo to recover from a terrible position and equalize against Polgar. (31.Ng5 looks very annoying, controlling e4 to stop Black from blocking the file with his bishop.) Is there anything a bishop pair can't do? Anand dented Leko's Sveshnikov shield and ran his b-pawn for a solid plus, but had no chance of winning the exchange-up endgame with all the pawns on one side.

Adams-Kasimdzhanov was a meandering line of the Sveshnikov. It shows what happens with both sides get everything they want and then can't do anything with it. Nice knight on d5. So? Nice ..f5 break. And? White's Bb3 and Nc3 just sit there waiting for exchanges that never come. If Adams plays on with 27.Qh3, Black shouldn't be worse with the open g-file and central phalanx.

October 5, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r7

r7 pairings: Topalov-Kasimdzhanov 1-0, Leko-Adams 1-0, Svidler-Polgar 1-0, Morozevich-Anand 1-0. Links to other coverage. Topalov leads by two full points after winning yet again in round six. He is amazing. The organizers should give him the trophy now. Of the eight games remaining he has white in five. It's over. Round nine, Anand-Topalov, will be the last possible chance of changing fate.

I've been up all night writing and fighting with a busted hard drive and smashing my finger in a window, so this will be brief. Polgar had a horrible lapse of judgment against Topalov's surprise Berlin with 20.g4?, allowing Black to open things up on the kingside and rapidly gain a winning advantage. Other games were drawn, but all were interesting. A tremendous tournament, almost a pity that first place has already been decided!

The comments are full of talk about Kramnik-Topalov (and Kasparov-Topalov?!). Certainly a crushing win like this one contributes to the FIDE champion's legitimacy. I.e., if it finished in a three-way tie for first at +2 and went to tiebreaks it would be much cloudier in public opinion. As I mentioned before, Topalov has the same manager, Silvio Danailov, as Ruslan Ponomariov had during the bizarre and catastrophic negotiations around Pono's various aborted matches with Kasparov in 2003. I want to think positive, however, so we'll have to wait and see what is said at the closing press conference, where Kramnik should be a topic. Of course nothing conclusive will be said or done unless a sack of money shows up.

Kirsan Resigns Presidency (sort of)

But not of FIDE. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has resigned as president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia. He wasn't scheduled to leave office until November, 2006 and first came to power in 1993 at the age of 30. His goofy official site.

[Update: As several people explained by email and as is described by Valchess below, this is most likely just a charade. Ilyumzhinov will probably be duly reappointed as president of Kalmykia after kissing some Kremlin tush. So, probably no story at all. So my trick about getting you all excited about him resigning was a double-whammy.]

Some prescience by Sadulayev, the political Chechen rebel leader, in June, 2005: "Next in line will be Kalmykia, where Putin, using the new law on the appointment of governors and heads of republics, intends to aggravate the situation and, using this as a pretext, to oust Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and replace him with his protegé."

Politics and chess politics have been tightly linked in the former Soviet countries and rumors of Ilyumzhinov being on the outs with Putin's administration had been going for a while. It seems unlikely that Ilyumzhinov will have to get a real job now, but we'll see whether he now puts more time into chess or less. FIDE has made a series of good moves lately and Ilyumzhinov has been sounding uncharacteristically conciliatory thanks to facing his first real challenge for the FIDE presidency in Karpov. It will be interesting to see what not having access to the Kalmykian treasury does to his level of influence.

October 6, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r8

r8 pairings: Topalov-Leko 1/2, Adams-Svidler 1/2, Anand-Polgar 1-0, Kasimdzhanov-Morozevich 0-1. After round seven, the halfway point, Topalov still leads by two full points, an unassailable lead unless A) Peter Svidler starts playing like Topalov has been playing and B) Topalov is hit by a train. I added some light notes at the top of the r7 ChessBase report.

After this third loss, when asked if his disastrous match against Hydra had perhaps affected his form, Mickey Adams quipped, "I'm having more trouble with humans than with computers." Btw, after so many people posted kind comments lamenting Mickey's poor run of form, I sent him a note passing them on (along with some recommendations on Argentine Malbec). I'm sure he'll appreciate the thoughts.

Anyone for seconds? It took half the tournament, but I finally got some Dirt on who the players' seconds are. Not definitive, but a start. Only real surprise is Beliavsky with Moro.

-Topalov is with IM Silvio Danailov (manager) and young GM Ivan Cheparinov, both also Bulgarian.
-Anand is with Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen and his wife Aruna. (Anand's wife, not occasional Dirt poster PHN's.)
-Leko is with trainer/father-in-law GM Arshak Petrosian of Armenia and his wife Sofie. (Again, PETER's wife, Arshak's daughter. Are you getting this down?)
-Svidler is with former Russian champion Alexander Motylev. No wife.
-Morozevich has GM Alexander Beliavsky and appears to be hanging out with IM Vladimir Barsky, who is filing reports with the Russian mag 64.
-Adams is with long-time girlfriend Tara. (Not wife, also no second.)
-Polgar is with Romanian GM Mihai Marin. Her husband Gustav arrived today.
-Kasimdzhanov is there with his "mesmerizing" (quoth my spy) wife Firuza. I just saw a captioned pic of her recently and don't remember where. She's on the left in this one. Ah, one old one here. Also no visible second.

October 7, 2005

Topalov: "No Fischer"

With some overheated fans comparing Veselin Topalov to Kasparov, Fischer, and Thor, the new FIDE champion downplayed such talk himself after his draw with Leko in round eight. "Please don't compare me to Fischer. I wouldn't even dare to say I'm superior to my rivals here. I'm just in good form right now, that's all." This in Spanish, as Topalov lives in Salamanca, which delights the Argentine journalists. (Anand also lives in Spain.)

Anand said that he's in a better mood now, after scoring his second win over Polgar, but that "oceans" still separate him and Topalov, and that even if he beats him in their individual game he would still probably have to win his five other games to reach the title. Yup. No reason to believe Topalov won't win another game.

If Topalov finishes with +6 or +7 it will definitely be one of the great tournament performances, although it's a bit early to chisel him into Rushmore with the likes of Fischer and Kasparov. At Linares, 1999 Kasparov scored +7 in a tournament a little stronger than this one (swap Polgar and Kasimdzhanov for Kramnik and Ivanchuk), with an oddly similar dominance with black. Adams finished -3 there too... Some are making hay out of the way some sort of torch seems to have been passed when Topalov beat Kasparov in the latter's last game before retirement. Don't know about that, but as I mentioned in the comments, I don't think it's a coincidence either. Kasparov himself said that some of the other players might have seen him as a "boulder in the road" that is now gone. I.e. it's hard to work 24/7 when you can only hope to be #2. The irony is that now Topalov is playing well enough to be a real match for Kasparov. Sac of the Magi.

At first I was thinking that Topalov's San Luis is even more impressive considering the circumstances, that it's a world championship and not just another tournament. Probably, although the situation seems to have negatively affected some of the other players.

Chusmeando en San Luis

Martín writes in to point out that the local San Luis newspaper I linked to earlier is occasionally printing many of the players' comments from the press conferences. (There's a browser resize, then a pop-up with a login required to enter. Triple score! You can login with migck@yahoo.com, password 1500. In Spanish.) I'll cut them some slack since they are providing good coverage, including giant front page photos in the print edition.

These comments are from after round eight. One item is about the player complaint after round five, mentioned in Nigel Short's reports, about how Topalov always gets to sit in the same place. Leko, after round eight: "It's true that I presented a complaint, but not because of Topalov. It's just that at every tournament we change tables, but this doesn't have anything to do with him. He always has the same spot and the rest of us have to walk around looking for where to sit. I asked the arbiters if they would consider it. They didn't do anything, but I don't care anymore."

Leko did not go on to add, "and how about Kasimdzhanov's shoes? I mean, the same pair every single day, what's up with that?"

Topalov: "I'm not superstitious. I don't think a piece of furniture makes me win games. I also pressure them a little on the board." Heh. He also signed a lot of autographs, and stopped for a lot of photos, smiling.

Kasim, annoyed after his loss to Moro: "What happened to me was a well-deserved punishment for an unrealistic competitive attitude. But if I wanted to sleep I would have stayed at home."

Morozevich: "The best day of the tournament is the rest day. But I'm not going to use it all to rest because I have to continue preparing for what's to come."

Svidler: "I played a line I thought was interesting, regardless of what happened in Topalov's game. If anyone had chances it was Michael, I don't know why you're asking me. On move 16 I realized my position was very dangerous. Mickey rejected a repetition on move 20 because he was the one who was playing for a win.

Adams: "It was a very sharp game with a lot of calculating to do. I think I could reach a good position but it's hard to prove it. By our thinking, by our way of playing, it looked like Black was playing to win, but that's not the way it was."

Topalov: "I just came out to play, but we came to a complicated position and it worked out even, if a little boring. I prefer to win every time, but to score a half point when my opponent doesn't make a mistake is normal and it would be foolish to risk too much. Peter [Leko] played in a way I hadn't expected. I had prepared an idea but it didn't work because he surprised me first."

There is a rapid tournament today in San Luis. Along with local GMs Miguel Quinteros (one of the organizers) and Hugo Spangenberg (Huguito!), Nigel Short is expected to take part. If Nige doesn't win we are going to shame his sesquipedalian arse.

Corus 2006 Field

January 13-29, Wijk aan Zee. Official site. A powerhouse group as always. Only current top tenners not there are Svidler and Polgar. Aronian and Bacrot get their elite credentials checked. Karjakin gets to show if he's ready for prime time. Top-rated American Gata Kamsky will play in his first supertournament in ten years. He was rock-solid in the Continental Championship a few months ago and will have to kick it up another notch here. An even score in this crowd would be a major achievement.

A Group: Topalov, Anand, Leko, Ivanchuk, Kramnik, Bacrot, Aronian, Adams, Gelfand, Tiviakov, Sokolov, Kamsky, Karjakin, van Wely. Nothing about the B and C groups yet. The B group has steadily become a very strong and interesting tournament in its own right. After his amazing play in San Luis (yes, I know the tournament is still going), will anyone pick against Topalov until he shows he's human?

Heh, the item by Gert Ligterink currently on the homepage of the Corus site (in Dutch) shows he's on the ball. He mentions the "Kasparov passing the torch to Topalov in Linares" meme as heard from "an American chess-lover." I believe Jeremy first mentioned it in these terms in the comments to our round 5 item before I mentioned it two days ago.

October 8, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r9

r9 pairings: Anand-Topalov 1/2, Polgar-Adams 1/2, Svidler-Kasimdzhanov 1/2, Morozevich-Leko 1-0. Going into the ninth round Topalov leads by two points over Svidler with 7/8.

If Topalov the topadora is going to be slowed down with enough time left for it to matter, today is the day. Anand is coming off a win and a free day and has white; can't get more momentum than that and he has nothing to lose. Svidler will be looking to pick up ground against the fading Kasimdzhanov, whose wheels came off in the second half of Linares this year. Moro has won two in a row and is capable of anything. Tail-enders Polgar and Adams may just split a short Petroff point or fight for the cellar in a Marshall.

October 9, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r10

r10 pairings: Topalov-Morozevich 1/2, Kasimdzhanov-Polgar 1-0, Leko-Svidler 1/2, Adams-Anand 1/2. Topalov still leads by two full points after nine rounds. Morozevich has won three in a row and could make things interesting. We all knew Moro would rock the house at some point. If only he could do this for an entire tournament instead of a few games at a time. We're still focusing our positive energy to get Mickey his first win of the event after all the fighting chess he has played. Plus, Anand deserves a spanking after yesterday's lame punt against Topalov.

October 10, 2005

2005 FIDE WCh r11

r11 pairings: Adams-Topalov 1/2, Anand-Kasimdzhanov 1-0, Svidler-Morozevich 1-0, Polgar-Leko 1/2. Been too busy to keep up around here. Topalov still cruising far about the atmosphere. He even eschewed a draw against Morozevich yesterday before missing a win. This is the second time he's drawn two pawns up. When talking to Kasparov about the games I suggested that perhaps Topalov was preparing for a Terry Chapman match. Polgar has flamed out entirely, failing even in the sharp positions she usually excels in.

October 11, 2005

That Other Tournament

Hey, remember Karabakh? Of course you do. It's the category 17 with Ivanchuk, Aronian, and Nakamura taking place in Armenia right now. The final round has shaped up to be an exciting one, albeit with some complicating factors. Before the 7th round China's Bu Xiangzhi had to leave the tournament due to his father's health crisis and his last three games are forfeit. I met Bu in NY in 2000 and wish him and his family well.

This gives free points to Nakamura, Bologan, and Sokolov. The latter two are already out of the running, but the US champion won his next game against Alexei Dreev to move within a half point of the leader, Aronian. (Top seed Ivanchuk has been stuck in first gear and is on -1.) Today's final round sees Aronian-Nakamura, so a win with black would make our own Black Belt newsletter contributor the winner of the tournament, an equal first if Anastasian also wins. Beating an in-form 2700 with black isn't exactly a walk in the park, but it's been an excellent international result for Hikaru no matter what happens in the final round. A 2700+ result against this powerful veteran field shows that the next level is already here.

October 13, 2005

Topalov FIDE Champion!

I awarded him the title a week ago, but now it's official. The 30-year-old Bulgarian GM is guaranteed clear first place with a round to spare. Fittingly enough, he locked it up with a draw against defending champion Kasimdzhanov, who eliminated Topalov in Libya last year. There is still something to play for in San Luis between Svidler and Anand, who meet in tomorrow's final round. The top finishers automatically qualify for the candidates matches. #2 goes to the quarters, #3 and #4 into the first round of 10. Not sure of the tiebreaks in play. 'Most wins' would make Anand #2 if he draws Svidler in the final round. Then there's a little matter of $50K between #2 and #3, which might cover the Svidler family diaper bills for a year.

Congratulations to Veselin, the very deserving winner. There is little doubt he has been both the best and most successful player in 2005. He will also be the top-rated active player on the list come January. His dominating victory in San Luis is a stroke of good fortune for FIDE and the chess world. If Kramnik can put money together and FIDE and Topalov want to play him, great. It's a loose end that should be tied up. But the chess world doesn't need Kramnik to have a legitimate champion, especially heading into a traditional classical cycle organized by FIDE.

I don't want this to sound anti-unification. Neither Topalov nor Kramnik have anything to lose by playing such a match if they can get money for it, perhaps in Bulgaria. As long as the winner is obligated to defend the title in the FIDE cycle, etc. That's the tricky part, can FIDE be trusted to honor the classical tradition and can the winner be trusted to honor FIDE and the cycle? Topalov will have to defend his FIDE title in the semifinals soon enough anyway, so why not go for all the marbles and try to become the 15th World Champion? I bet "Capablanca.. Botvinnik.. Kasparov.. Topalov" sounds a lot better than "Khalifman.. Ponomariov.. Kasimdzhanov.. Topalov". Nothing personal to those esteemed players, but it's got to be true. Even if he loses to Kramnik Topalov should be seeded into the semis, seems a reasonable deal.

[Apologies for the slowdown around here. Been terribly busy with writing that actually pays me. Hope to get caught up by the end of the weekend, but things are going to be sporadic until mid-November.]

October 14, 2005

Topalov Open to Unification

This interview in Russian at 64 with Topalov's longtime manager Silvio Danailov makes many positive noises about a potential Topalov-Kramnik match. (A match with Kasparov is mentioned in the same breath as also being "interesting" to Topalov.) Kramnik is mentioned as being in the historical line of champions and Danailov says "we reject privileges." Danailov adds that Kramnik likely wouldn't have scored more than +2 in San Luis, which is beside the point even if it is hard to disagree with.

November (06 I assume) is given as the earliest possible date for such a match, although what that could mean for the FIDE cycle that starts this December is far from clear. Topalov comments that it depends on FIDE and finding sponsorship, and that it's up to Danailov and Kramnik's manager Carsten Hensel, who "have a good relationship." All in all, good news, although I wouldn't hold anyone to casual early comments like these. If your Russian is lacking you can translate online here or here.

Topalov, who was rarely heard from in interviews, continues to impress with his openness and humility. When asked about his chances in a potential match with Kasparov, he said he couldn't say what Kasparov's form would be like right now. But that "against Kasparov in top form, no one would have a chance." He continued by saying that Karpov and Kasparov were far above their contemporaries, something not true in his case. Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, both FIDE champions are Bulgarian.

October 15, 2005

Pics 05 - Still Life with GMs

More from my dozens of gigabytes of 99%-unpublished chess photos. (You can find the others by using the search with 'pics'.) You should be able to recognize all of the players in this horribly backlit photo from the 2002 Prague Eurotel rapid tournament VIP room. [GM Lubomir Kavalek, who was commenting on the games on a demo board behind me, says the woman in the picture is the Mrs. Sokolov.]

You can view larger versions of the same photo here: 800x600 / 1200x900.

My reports, interviews, and many more photos from that event, which was followed by the famous-if-fruitless Prague unification meeting, are at ChessBase in my columns #165, photos, #166, #167. #167 has a "blind" section (common in gossip columns) that you might have a guess at since it's long passed.

October 17, 2005

Downgrade

Sorry to all who have been receiving errors, especially with the comments. I upgraded the blog to Movable Type 3.2. That should be "upgrade" since it's been a nightmare, compounded by changing the databases over to MySQL, which caused a passel of errors on its own. And then there are all the much-touted anti-comment-spam features of 3.2, which, all three of them combined, have allowed more spam through in two days than we saw in a year with 3.1 using the Blacklist plugin (which, of course, doesn't work with 3.2). Working on that, too. So bear with, please. I think the comments are working again now, at last. Mail me with any problems.

October 18, 2005

Cutest. Ninja. Ever.

If you're interested in being rich and famous, send in your photo wearing/holding some of our spiffy ChessNinja.com swag. That way you'll have some cool stuff and I'll have a list of people who may someday be rich and famous.

But seriously folks, the shop has had orders from the USA, Brazil, Portugal, and Germany, so we're taking over the world at last, bwah hah hah! I'll set up a gallery of all the handsome and beautiful people proud to say to the world that losing sucks.

(I get laughs whenever I wear my logo sweatshirt here in NY. But that may be because I also wear a floppy jester hat.)

Just so you know there isn't a mind-control substance embedded in the logo that I will activate from afar like the Manchurian webmaster, here's a photo of my very own nephew, Roman, previously hyped here when he was far tinier. Now he's an adorable, massive, and brilliant eight-month-old, and by far the most fashionably attired tot around.

As for his chess training, he's already through the Seirawan series for beginners and is well on his way to chewing, sucking, and gumming his way through Dvoretsky. He's just getting his first tooth in now, so his training is really set to take off.

Odds and Ends

Or bits and bobs if you prefer. A brace of little items to play catch-up on that wacky chess thing this blog is supposed to be about.

GM missing, sort of. Peruvian Grandmaster Julio Granda Zuñiga was reported missing a week ago. The Peruvian newpapers managed to work themselves into quite a tizzy until family said he was okay eight days later. There had been reports of mental problems (not the first time) but now they say he's just stressed and needed to get away for a while. He should move to Beverly Hills. This isn't the first time the GM/farmer has vanished mysteriously. In 1998 he was kidnapped and beaten after publicly quitting a political group and later retired from chess to farm. He returned in 2002 to play regularly and maintain a 2600 level.. The 38-year-old recently qualified for the FIDE World Cup.

US champion Hikaru Nakamura finished equal 2-3 in the category 17 Karabakh tournament, finishing ahead of big names like Ivanchuk, Dreev, and Bologan, beating the latter two. There's an interview with Hikaru at the official site, part one and part two. I'm sure he'll have some comments in his annotated game for Black Belt next month.

We expect to have a full on-site report up soon at ChessBase.com, but I'll mention Magnus Carlsen's best result since he made a splash at Corus last year. The Norwegian wunderkind has been lagging a bit, but scored 8/9 at the Gausdal tournament last week for a performance rating of nearly 2800. Fairly weak opposition by Karjakin / Nakamura standards, but Carlsen, just 14, is a few years younger yet.

New FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov won't be playing in the Nov. 26-Dec. 17 World Cup. "'I don't think I will join the World cup championship. In the near future I plan to take a rest and write a book,' Topalov told Russian daily Sport Express."

Topalov and Kasparov Agree

...that Kramnik doesn't deserve to play a world championship match. Topalov seems to be whistling a tune quite different from the one sung by his manager Danailov last week. In this Sport Express interview (in Russian) Topalov says he doesn't see why he should give a title shot to someone ranked only #7 on the rating list and rated 60 points below him, especially since Kramnik had the opportunity to play in San Luis and declined. No mention of the classical title. He goes on to say that if they do play it will probably only be a money match with no title on the line. (The two million Kirsan mentioned.) That would be a waste of time, of course.

Garry Kasparov has some thoughts on the matter too. No, he's not going to play Topalov, and he doesn't think the Bulgarian should bother with Kramnik. He'll explain his views in depth in his next column in New In Chess magazine. In sum: "the schism is over." The official title has melded with the strongest player for the first time since 1993, so the theory goes, so it's time to embrace him and move on.

I would still prefer a unification match if Kramnik can come up with the money. If he can't, and FIDE continues to find funding for its new classical cycle, the Kar-Kas-Kram line will die with the third K. Three strikes, you're out.

October 19, 2005

Kalmnesia

Lots of interesting stuff in the comments to yesterday's item on Topalov's comments. Included was a link to this tidbit from the Russian news service Interfax. These little things are often out of context and spurious, but as it reads, it's confusing and/or bad.

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) presidential board has decided to hold the men's chess world championships every two years, and the next world championship will be held in September-October 2007, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov told Interfax on Tuesday. The top four chess players from the world championship that has just been completed, and four other chess players according to the results of the World Cup and qualifying matches, will take part in the championship, he said.

Huh? This is the first mention of such a tournament I've seen. FIDE's original announcement, reinforced with other details later, was simply that World Cup players would enter candidates matches against the top San Luis finishers, with Topalov entering in the semifinals. Now it's to qualify for a "world championship" in Moscow? This doesn't explicitly say tournament or anything else about the format, however. Perhaps the success of San Luis has made Ilyumzhinov lose his memory, or his grip on reality. This is just the sort of thing we've been worried about, that FIDE would talk classical to concrete the title and then start up the circus music again. (Kirsan was just essentially reappointed dictator of Kalmykia by Putin, so his grip on FIDE won't be loosened in that way.)

October 22, 2005

Kramnik Responds

Nothing surprising, just thought we should have a new thread now that I've posted these brief comments by Kramnik at ChessBase responding to Topalov putting the smackdown on a unification match. I agree with those who say that Topalov's suddenly strident turn against a Kramnik match is as much a ploy as anything and that if the right offer comes along he'll come to the table. Topalov's bizarre comments about a 60-point rating gap are hard to see as anything but smoke. "You need me more than I need you" is the way these things have gone in recent years.

G-Kas on H-Bomb

Garry Kasparov's latest New In Chess column (#7/2005) is themed on young players. He touches on the Needleman affair, Nakamura's Qh5 repertoire, and the dearth of young Russian talent.

Kasparov: "The dubious openings and late resignations of the American champion, Hikaru Nakamura, have drawn attention, mostly unwarranted. A generation of Soviet players had Botvinnik as a model, but chess itself is a strict teacher. You can be stubborn only so long against harsh corrections such as that administered in the final round by Volokitin against Nakamura's 1.e4 c5 2.Qh5. Perhaps this is what should be expected from someone who spends hours playing bullet chess online against computers? I hope Nakamura is not too eager to have his name appended to such a move. I faced 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 myself against a world-class adversary in a game televised on CNN in 2000. Perhaps it would be appropriate to give my opponent's name to this variation and call it the Boris Becker Attack?"

The "mostly unwarranted" at the top refers to the attention being paid to the openings and the resignations, not Nakamura. As in, "who cares, let him play chess." Just to clarify. Meanwhile, in a recent issue of Black Belt, long before Kasparov's remarks, Hikaru took his punishment like a man before annotating his win over Mamedyarov.

Nakamura: Hello everyone! I am finally back from Lausanne, and what can I say- I did ok. Overall the tournament did not end the way I wanted it to, as I managed to play very badly in the final match against Volokitin. In that final match I played a slightly dubious variation in the French and got a worse position. Unfortunately, I proceeded to miss the tactic 19.Bxh7 after which I am much worse. However, I fought back and came very close to drawing before making a bad blunder deep into the second time control.

After losing this game I had to recoup very quickly as the next game began at 10 A.M. the next day (not the normal 2 P.M. start). As such I got the idiotic idea to just play 2.Qh5 against the Sicilian! To Volokitin's credit he was ready for it and proceeded to whoop me in very convincing fashion. So although I lost in the final I still played reasonably well.

Lausanne: What to say about it? Lausanne has quite a different beauty about it than either Biel or Geneva. Biel tends to be a quiet city with a very small night life. Lausanne on the other hand...it seems to have a lot of night life. Unfortunately, I was not able to experience this as the hotel that the players were staying at was about thirty minutes from the center of town.

The game which I will provide for this month's edition of ChessNinja is my first round game from the semi-final matchup with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, a GM from Azerbaijan. Of all the possible matchups which could have occurred this one was definitely amongst the most anticipated. Shakhriyar and I have played many games against each other on ICC; (Smallville and Azerichess) with the score being a whopping 10.5-.5 in my favor (blitz only). [They are also two of the highest-rated players at Playchess.com.]

After playing this very good game I proceeded to play one of my worst games in recent memory in round two. I, for some reason, decided to trust the comp engine which said "Bg4" was equal! Of course after a few more moves the whole position turned very sour and I lost badly. Thus we had to play a tiebreak. I won the first game, and barely held on to draw the second game."

Well, at least it sounds like we won't see Qh5 against the Sicilian again anytime soon. Hikaru just got back from Armenia where he finished equal second in the category 17 Karabakh tournament. Yesterday he played a six-board blindfold match (6-0) at an prestigious art gallery here in NY that is opening a cool exibition of famous chess sets. I saw most of them in Philly at a special exhibit a few years ago.

October 23, 2005

Seeds of Content

Resisting the urge to scoop myself (why does that sound dirty?), I waited until I finished updating the US Championship website before breaking the news here. First off, the dates have pushed back a week so the opening ceremony is on February 28 and the first round is on March 1. They wanted the time to make sure construction on the venue is completed with plenty of time to avoid the Elista Olympiad syndrome. It's early enough that this shouldn't bother anyone but me. Changing the images and other things on the site is a pain.

[On the other hand... IM Irina Krush points out below that "the new US Championship dates clash with the dates for the Women's World Championship that have been on the FIDE website for months (March 10-27, 2006)." Those dates are listed as tentative, but it would be a real shame to have America's best women be forced to miss one of these events. I don't yet know who would be playing in Ekaterinburg.]

The seeds have been announced, the 14 players who qualify directly by rating. The eight overall spots include four who have already qualified in tournaments, which means three spots go back to the tournaments. After some figgering, this puts John Fedorowicz, Josh Friedel, and Blas Lugo into San Diego through the back door. See you in San Diego, gentlemen!

The official write-up is still forthcoming, but the more interesting news is a twist in the format. The field will be broken up into two groups of 32, both nine-round swisses. The top finisher in each group will go to a final rapid match to decide the title. This is a "made for TV" final day idea; there will also be a women's final match. Details will be posted soon.

October 25, 2005

FIDE Drops Matches

I've long suspected that FIDE has weapons of match destruction and now we have more evidence. At the start of May this year FIDE shocked us all by announcing a classical world championship cycle. December's world cup would lead to candidates matches and eventually to a world championship match against the San Luis winner. It was a welcome turnaround after years of KO events that received uneven and occasionally unethical sponsorship. The long-match tradition led to great events that attracted global attention and made chess and its champion something special.

After the putative success of the San Luis world championship event, however, FIDE has lost interest in world championship matches. They just released new guidelines for the 2005-07 cycle and the main change is that the semifinal and final matches have disappeared, replaced by a final eight tournament like San Luis. FIDE claims this was done after talking to the ACP and the San Luis players, which would be even more shocking than the changes. (They have put the new version of the regulations at the old link, but I saved the original Word file if you want to compare.) This illustrates one of the often discussed fears of title unification under FIDE. They have no respect whatsoever for classical chess or the championship lineage. Even worse, they lie about it, as we can see from this spontaneous rule change.

Losing the world championship match is the worst part. We have tournaments like San Luis regularly already and the championship should be unique. We got lucky in San Luis with Topalov's domination. Next time it could be a three-way tie at +2 with rapid and blitz playoffs, a revolting way to pick a world champion if it's supposed to be the classical world championship. It's true, however, that the recent history of long matches is one of tight sponsorship, short draws, and less-than-scintillating chess. In the modern era of ultra-deep preparation, SEC, and ever-stronger players, long matches aren't going to be that thrilling unless we get very lucky as to the players.

A truly foolish thing is that the entire cycle will only add four players to the next world championship tournament. The other four come from San Luis. (Topalov, Anand, Svidler, Morozevich) This is exactly contrary to the point. It should be seven, not four. The other three should be put into the qualifying matches as originally planned. A mere 50% tournover is horribly anti-democratic and also anti-fighting chess. Shirov says similar on the ACP site but I haven't seen any official ACP response or comments from qualified players. Generally they prefer tournaments because it increases their chances. Match play is incredibly exclusive, which is a blessing and a curse.

A final bizarre twist is at the end of the guidelines, where FIDE says it is considering "interim World Championship matches." Basically anyone over 2700 can buy a match with the champion. FIDE has a veto, the champion apparently does not. Long live the Elista Rules, building a bridge to the 19th century.

October 26, 2005

Bulgaria Calling

Topalov has been well received and heartily hailed in his homeland. This article from the Bulgarian news service - always with charming translations - says Ilyumzhinov has posited Bulgaria as a possible host to the 2007 world championship tournament. This is just happy talk of course; money talks and FIDE walks. The article has links at the bottom to two other items about Topalov's homecoming. They mention that he is only visiting Bulgaria but not that he has lived in Spain for many years (as has Anand). It's nice that neither Bulgaria nor India begrudge their heroes' choice of residence. No doubt this is helped by how both Topalov and Anand have actively promoted chess in their home nations. Maybe Spain has something to complain about instead. Nah.

[The current surge in traffic and comments has coincided with a dodgy upgrade of this blog system. I haven't seen many errors myself lately, but I understand some people are still getting "internal server error" every once in a while when they post a comment. (No need to repost usually, it just delays appearance.) I don't have time to deal with a full reinstall right now, so thanks for your patience. If you are getting any consistent errors (i.e., you can reproduce them), let me know. I'm waiting till the weekend for the reinstall.]

October 27, 2005

Kamsky Speaks

Well, somebody should. US #1 Gata Kamsky has written an open letter about FIDE's recent last-minute changes to the 2005-07 championship cycle. Many of his comments have been addressed here, including the travesty of seeding half the players into the matches and another group into the final instead of qualifying. He also points out the typically unrealistic October 31 FIDE deadline for players to send in their contracts. That leaves no room for debate at all, despite FIDE's claims that these changes were influenced by discussions with the San Luis players and the ACP. None of the players I've talked to so far could confirm this, but of course it makes sense for the super-elite in San Luis to be in favor of rating seeds.

What is alarming, and highlighted by Kamsky's comments, is how few players say anything about such irresponsible and disrespectful behavior from FIDE. The ACP is supposed to be a player voice but has said nothing officially about whether or not they approve of FIDE's sudden change to make the cycle much less democratic. They've posted brief comments by Khalifman, who is sage as always. Was the ACP co-opted into this? The ACP is at least acting as though they - and most of their members - did not know about the changes in advance. This is just the sort of thing they should jump on, and at least they need to clarify how much they were involved in this process. Bizarrely, the ACP website reproduces the FIDE release verbatim, including the part that says the changes considered discussions with the ACP! No comment?!

Update: FIDE has added a baffling reply at the bottom of the same article. I don't see how it can be called transparency if nobody talked about the changes before they were announced. We don't expect transparency from FIDE, sadly, but if there were talks the ACP should have kept us up to date. As for 10 players versus 5, that's good news money-wise to an extra five players, but it's a misleading statistic when it comes to having a fair shot at the title. You could put 100 players into candidate matches and the bottom line is it's still for only four spots in the final while four others are dropped in free of charge from San Luis. Why should the San Luis players get such a huge jump up the ladder, especially since almost all of them were invited there without qualifying to begin with? If we are stuck with a tournament instead of matches, there must be seven qualifiers plus Topalov and the ACP should fight for this. And Topalov gets to keep his lucky chair, but that's as far as I'll go.

Update 2: ChessBase has moved things around and added a separate item with FIDE's response with a reply to that by Kamsky. As mentioned below, FIDE's idea of transparency doesn't include telling the players actually IN the World Cup about all these changes made before giving them one week to sign on.

There a nice official website for the World Cup. Round 1 is on November 27. With Topalov's withdrawal from the field, first reserve Nigel Short is in.

October 28, 2005

World Teams 05

The first round of the 2005 World Team Championship is on Tuesday, November 1 in Beer Sheva, Israel. It's a powerful field and Russia and Ukraine have sent top-level teams including Svidler, Morozevich, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, and Karjakin. Russia, with largely the same team, will feel pressure to make up for their disastrous 14th place at the Euro Teams a few months ago. Gelfand and Sutovsky lead the home team. Cuba is there for the Americas and the USA got a special invitation after not sending a team to the Americas team championship.

Many were alarmed upon seeing that, as at the Olympiad, the top two American players aren't on the team. No outdated protocols were involved this time, however. Gata Kamsky and Hikaru Nakamura were both approached and declined to go. Kamsky led the US team to a mighty gold medal upset in this event at Lucerne in 1993. (Benjamin's +4 was vital.) Kaidanov and Gulko played then and are back this time on a team led by Onischuk.

October 29, 2005

US Champ State of the Union

[With his title defense four months away we offer these remarks from 2005 US Champion Hikaru Nakamura. Did we mention that he's also a contributor to the ChessNinja Black Belt newsletter? Yeah, we probably did.]

Hello everyone! It is rather discouraging to see the current state of chess in the United States. It is sad how ever since the golden days of Fischer the US has failed to produce any "superstar" chess players. By far and away the best US-produced players are probably Seirawan, Benjamin, Christiansen, and myself. What is the reason for this?

I remember when I first started playing chess that it was all about winning games and trophies. Eventually it was about winning and making money, but even though I've made my fair share of money over my ten years of playing chess, it is nowhere near enough to live comfortably. Because everyone must fight to make a living, this leads to a lot of discord amongst players. With the chess pool in the US as small as it already is, almost no one can succeed unless there is support. Unfortunately, our dog-eat-dog chess society does not pride itself on supporting up-and-coming chess talents. Why would anyone want to play chess forever if they have to deal with such issues? I know I wouldn't.

The blame should fall squarely on the USCF for their lack of professionalism towards promoting the great game of chess. Chess Life is reporting about tournaments from a few months earlier; the website is outdated except for the MSA (Member Services Area), and they don't promote chess. What more can you ask for?

AF4C, on the other hand, has solid sponsorship behind the US Championship and is run very professionally. Is it coincidental that AF4C has managed to secure the US Championship for the next 8 or 9 years? AF4C has shown that if promoted correctly it is quite possible to have many benefactors who will willingly donate to the game. In my opinion, US chess interests would be better served if AF4C were in control of American chess. Unfortunately, it seems that the big-wig bureaucrats at the USCF aren't attempting to further chess, but to protect their own interests.

Now, a last little note on the US Championship. I think that this idea of breaking the championship into two separate groups is a horrible idea. If two players win their respective groups, they will not have to play the same competitors or a level field. This will undoubtedly lead to a questionable winner no matter who wins the playoff. I hope that AF4C is not sacrificing quality for quantity just to try and make chess more "marketable."

US Champion
Hikaru Nakamura


AF4C President Erik Anderson and US Champion Hikaru Nakamura

October 30, 2005

ACP Responds, Finally

As I mentioned in the comments the other day, the ACP has finally made a statement about FIDE's rule changes, published as a reply to Gata Kamsky's open letter. The changes in format from semifinal and final matches to a San Luis-style tournament came as a surprise to them too, which is no surprise. There was a notable absence of suggestions and no mention of action. Nice to see they got an extra day for tiebreaks in Siberia.

FIDE is still enamored of anything that can get sporadic sponsorship from regional government instead of trying to develop something commercially viable. This is to be expected with a politician in charge; Ilyumzhinov knows politicians. It would be interesting, if not essential, to see someone with corporate and commercial sponsorship experience on the job, either as president or in a role inside FIDE with actual authority.

Dutch champ Loek van Wely speaks out in the same article. I'm always happy to see anyone involved in the process and I too was curious as to why the Dutch team isn't in the World Team event this week. I'm stunned by his suggestion that only the World Cup winner should go to the final championship tournament, and that other qualifiers could come from annual supertournaments like Corus and Linares. Those events are hardly less exclusive than the rating list itself. It's one thing for pro organizers to invite only the biggest names, but FIDE needs to make sure everyone gets a shot in a way that rating doesn't matter. But I'm glad van Wely repeats the most essential thing of all, the need for clear rules and transparency.

October 31, 2005

Ivanchuk a Go-Go

Ukrainian genius/lunatic Vassily Ivanchuk sets what must be some sort of record by being listed as a participant in four tournaments on the TWIC homepage at the same time. (Karabakh, Samba Cup, Casino de Barcelona, World Team Ch) Chukky could hit over 30 games in 40 days depending how many games he plays in the Team Championship starting tomorrow. He started with two lacksidaisical performances before winning in Barcelona with 4/5. Unless he racks up some big scores he'll end up dropping most of the points that shot him up to his current #5 position. In this he's like another cardiogram rating chart star, Morozevich. It will be nice to see Ivanchuk back at Corus in January, let's hope he brings his A game.

Oil-for-Kirsan

During my normal daily perusal of random university student papers online, I came across this one that might be of interest. (Actually, thanks to a tall, dark correspondent who prefers to remain blameless.) The Oil-for-Food scandal is rocking the world right now, so why not the chess world? We knew that FIDE Prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (freshly re-"elected" in Kalmykia) was in tight with Saddam Hussein back in the good old days. I don't know if he still keeps the famous photo of him up in his office though. There were various stories on Kirsan's involvement in Iraq, but the release of the full report has cleared up a few things. The following is from a chart of "Selected Individual Recipients of Oil Allocations" from the report Oil for What? – Illicit Iraqi Oil Contracts and the U.N. Security Council by Paul Heaton, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics, University of Chicago. (Page 20, pdf format.)

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - Russia - President of Kalmykia - 3 million barrels - As FIDE president attempted to organize international chess matches in Baghdad in violation of sanctions, visited Uday Hussein one day before U.S. invasion.

The visit to Uday was mentioned here. I wonder if Hallmark makes a "sorry about your torture-fiend maniac buddy getting blown away by the Marines" card. Three million barrels, not too shabby. At fifty bucks a barrel and rising you can fund a few knock-outs with change left over to buy Lenin's body and invite the Dalai Lama over for tea. I'm sure it had nothing at all to do with all the nice things Ilyumzhinov had to say about Hussein. Maybe he'll be a character witness at his trial.

November 1, 2005

France Surrenders. Not!

I was hoping that if waited long enough ChessBase would post this press release so I wouldn't have to. French organizer Leo Battesti has been endorsed by the French chess federation in his run for FIDE president in the May 2006 elections. The rest of the release is pure happytalk, nothing concrete at all. Let's hope we see a platform of what he would do differently. As chessplayers know, change for the sake of change is playing without a strategy. Bad positions can always get worse, even if it's hard to imagine in this case.

This is the first formal hat toss I've seen. Has Karpov said anything committal? Don't think so. There are rumors that a certain Euro business-type with long-standing chess connections is considering a run, but you didn't read that here.

Underhanded

For no reason other than that useful underpromotions in serious play make me happy. (See game below.) And to chastise the World Team Championship for dropping a team of 2300-2400 players into the event. Many of the world's best are playing Beer Sheva. A Chinese women's team has been put in with them. Even more bizarrely, the Chinese didn't even send their top female players. Of their top six on the rating list they sent one?! This instead of the Euro Team champion Netherlands? Wacky, even if they upset someone for a 1-3 loss.

Continue reading "Underhanded" »

FIDE Sez

The latest volley in the world championship cycle rule change is a comprehensive summary from FIDE's Makro. It sounds like we're stuck with tournaments instead of matches, at least until they change their mind again. So we are once again without prospects for a traditional classical cycle. It's sad to see them give up on a long match without even trying. Their inability to put together a Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match no doubt influenced the move, combined with the success (still not defined, though I'd like to agree) of San Luis. I still believe that a clear champ and a qualified challenger could find sponsorship for a long match, which would get more attention than any tournament. Trivializing the title wasn't successful with the knockouts and fans will turn on the round-robin the first time we see it decided by rapid tiebreaks.

I wasn't blaming the ACP for the rule changes, only for not keeping its membership informed of its talks with FIDE. Perhaps most alarming is this Makro comment: "when the previous version of the regulations for the 2005-2007 cycle were announced, FIDE requested the opinion of the top players in order to implement any applicable suggestions during the congress in Dresden. FIDE received no reply or suggestion at all, except for the proposals of the ACP."

If true it reflects player apathy, last clearly seen when almost no one showed up for the attempts to set up a GM steering committee in Bled in 2002 under the Prague Agreement. If half-true, as I suspect, we're left wondering how they chose the players to ask and why these procedures can't be open and organized. I take their point that placing second or third in the final tournament should mean something, but it shouldn't mean automatic entry into the same level next time around.

Also, see below for Gata Kamsky's reply to FIDE's earlier statement, which I thought was going to be put up at ChessBase but can't find there. It looks like Kamsky may become FIDE's worst nightmare: a 2700 lawyer! Was FIDE within its rights to change the rules of an event after players qualified for it?

Continue reading "FIDE Sez" »

November 2, 2005

Kamsky Sent to Siberia

I love writing headlines, really I do. Anyway, US GM Gata Kamsky has confirmed that he will play in the 2005 World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk starting on November 27. This is good news and it's a shame FIDE saw fit to complicate things by radically changing the rules at the last minute. Kamsky has said he will file a formal protest.

The pairings won't be released until November 24. That's late considering that of the 128 spots the only ones yet to be filled are the two from the Chilean zonal (Nov. 13), five from the African zone (Nov. 15) and four more Ilyumzhinov wildcards. Since player contracts were due the other day they should be able to fill in from the reserve list now. Kasparov and Topalov aren't playing, Kramnik is almost certainly not, though for no good reason. I don't see why the classical champ can't try to poach in FIDE fields without abdicating. Anand, Morozevich, and Svidler have a free ride to the 2007 final but are free to play hors concours for cash and frostbite.

November 4, 2005

Nooooorrrrm

Apologies to Cheers fans. We can welcome the US's newest International Master. Welcome him back, that is. FIDE has rejected Ben Finegold's title application and his name does not appear on the list of titles approved by the latest board. There were several irregularities beyond his control with his norm from the Martinovsky Memorial. He says the norm will likely be tossed, so it's back to square two. Boo, hiss, weep.

The US Championship in February will be another chance. National championships get special consideration for norms since of course you don't expect to be facing people from other federations, usually a requirement. Making sure norms are possible is one of the format constrictions on the AF4C when organizing the championship. Last year six players got FIDE norms, including four IM norms.

[Yes, I know there are still errors in the commenting system. Going to take another shot at it tonight.]

November 5, 2005

Origin of Modern Chess

A new 500-page book by researcher José Antonio Garzón names Valencia, Spain, as the cradle of the modern game. The book is titled ""El regreso de Francesch Vicent. La Historia del nacimiento y la expansión del ajedrez moderno". ("The return of Francesch Vicent. The history of the birth and expansion of modern chess.") The author's premise is that Valencia is where the queen's powers expanded at the end of the 15th century, changing the game forever. Vicent published his treatise on the game in 1495.

This comes on the heels of Yalom's "Birth of the Chess Queen" though I can't say how much their conclusions jibe, having only thumbed through the Yalom book. Karpov writes an intro to the Garzón book - saying that the new evidence is overwhelming, putting an end to 500 years of waiting and conjecture - and will appear at the launch with the author next Monday in Valencia.

November 7, 2005

Corsican Swiss

A knock-out, actually. Swiss #1 Vadim Milov scored a big upset in the Corsica event when Vishy Anand melted down against him in the blitz playoff final. Before that they swapped wins with black. It's not to be chalked up to luck as Milov took out Polgar, Naiditsch, and Almasi on the way, not to mention qualifying from the Open in the first place. This broke Anand's streak of winning the event every year since the island of Corsica was formed from lava.

But Anand played one of the most remarkable games of the event when he knocked out Mickey Adams with a tremendous sacrifice. In the diagram, seven moves after a knight sac on move 28, Anand played 35...Bf5!, leading to two rooks versus a queen endgame he won. Brilliant stuff.

It says much of Anand's hierarchy that his losing in the final of a KO looks like a setback. Same goes for his equal 2-3 in San Luis. His high-quality play is so effortless that it looks like we should expect +2 as a baseline, which isn't really fair. It will be interesting to see if he can keep pace with Topalov, who has yet to prove such consistency. Corus will be quite a show.

Knight to f4

Low-budget film about a small-time faux Fischer making a comeback. Looks dumb and it will probably never be at a theater near you, or anyone, but hey. At least they could have avoided capitalizing F4. [Tip from Kat.]

November 8, 2005

Kasparov in The Atlantic

The important culture and news magazine The Atlantic has a nice piece on Garry Kasparov's political life in Russia this month. He's been out stumping in the hinterlands off and on all year, no small task in a country with 11 time zones.

November 9, 2005

20 Years to the Minute

It has gone unremarked as far as I can tell, even at ChessBase (which I'll fix in a bit if they are snoozing on the job). 20 years ago to the minute, at 21:55 Moscow time on November 9, 1985, Garry Kasparov became World Chess Champion. That officially began a new era that his exciting chess had already began to usher in. I remember not finding out until seeing a small note in the paper the next day. I'll put up some pics and games in an item on ChessBase in time for 9:55pm NY time at least...

Just talked to Garry for a while. He sounds both proud and melancholy remembering those days. Amazing he was only 22. He doesn't seem much older than me now, just six years, so it's strange to remember when he was the new champion chess god and I was still in high school. I'll include his comments in the ChessBase.com item I'll put up if Frederic doesn't do something. Freddy has all sorts of great materials to use so I hope he's doing something.

Links to coverage including video and game notes in the comments. Thanks everyone.

November 10, 2005

Russia Returns

Better late than never is the Russian team's new motto. The star-studded, if often underperforming, squad turned things around on the final day of the World Team Championship in Beer Sheva, Israel with a 3.5-0.5 win over the Chinese team that had led the entire way. This gave Russia a half-point victory in the event. The coincidence of scheduling made it more exciting and made China look better than its performance. Russia didn't lose a match; China also lost to Armenia. They use board points instead of match points in this event and China padded its total with a 4-0 win over the Chinese women's team and a 3.5-0.5 win over the US senior team. (Also 3.5-0.5 over Cuba and Georgia.)

For those who were ready to bow down to our new Chinese overlords, the Chinese team scored a combined -3 against traditional powers Russia, Armenia, and Ukraine. If you make a crosstable of just the top four finishers, it's Russia +5, Armenia +1, Ukraine and China -3. Individually the Chinese went +0 -3 against the 2700 club. It was still a great result for the Chinese team, but I'm not ready to give up Chigorin for Sun Tzu just yet. Great results for Bareev (5.5/6) and Morozevich (5.5/7).

As with most team events, this one was marred by several sets of agreed draws. It's tough enough to regulate short draws in individual play, but when team score is more important (not strictly the case here since they used board points, one thing in their favor) than individual scores another layer is added. Another good reason to legislate minimum move rules. Either that or officially allow arranged draws in team events so they don't have to play these 12-move farces.

November 11, 2005

Topalov Accused of Cheating?!

Several people sent this in, and I'd probably have mentioned it even if it were the first time I'd heard it. But this rumor was going around GM chess circles less than a week after San Luis finished, according to a review of my inbox. A GM wrote in then to say that several friends had listened to a San Luis participant suggest that Topalov had received assistance during the games. I discarded this rumor of a rumor for what I should hope are obvious reasons. Now it's back in a form only slightly less scurrilous, in a Bulgarian report of a Hungarian report. The worst of it is the pathetic anonymity of the accuser, if indeed there is one.

World Chess Champ Topalov "Fraudster" - 2005-11-11

An unnamed participant in the World Chess Championship in San Luis, Argentina, has accused Chess King Bulgarian Vesselin Topalov of using unallowed measures to win the title, index.hu reported.

According to the article published on the site the allegations remained secret because of "games behind the curtain." Such allegations, however, are common for the chess world. It is not clear who has raised the allegations against the Chess King, but this man claims that during several games aide Ivan Cheparinov and manager Silvio Danailov have helped Topalov.

The site reports that after each move of Topalov, Cheparinov has used computer analysis of the game and has then secretly signaled the chess king for the next move. Peter Leko has also voiced his suspicions that Topalov has used unfair advantage by sitting on the same place during the entire championship. FIDE however, has not undertaken any measures due to lack of evidence.

Bizarre. I haven't been able to track down the original Hungarian report, perhaps because I can't read Hungarian. I doubt it offers any more information. [Below József provides a link and summary of the original. Predictably opaque.] Topalov's other excellent 2005 results make this rumor blatantly ridiculous. (Or he's the greatest cheater of all time, pulling it off in Linares and Sofia too. No.) As the SNA articles says, wacky allegations are hardly rare in world championship chess. That doesn't mean computer cheating shouldn't be worried about in general, however. As others, including Kasparov, have said, it's worth much more attention than drug testing, if only to cut down on such foolish stories.

November 13, 2005

Go Karpov!

And take Ilyumzhinov with you! This Spanish article in Marca talks with Anatoly Karpov about chess politics and the world championship. Some excerpts edited for brevity:

Chess needs to return to the past, to go back 40 years to be reborn today. We need to recover the image of chess, which has been ruined by the terrible management of FIDE, the organization presided over by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has driven away sponsors and devalued the importance of the world championship title.

I'm seriously considering a run for the FIDE presidency. There are two other possible candidates apart from the current president, one of whom is Dutch millionaire Bessel Kok (former president of the Grandmaster Association (GMA)), with whom I share the idea that we must radically change both professional and amateur chess.

The first change that needs to be made is to create a system of competition in which all the best players always participate. Sponsors want big names like Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov... Do you think anyone outside of the chess world knows the names of the players who have won the last few world championships? I think not. The latest systems used to determine the title have been catastrophic and the professional players are paying the consequences: fewer tournaments, worse prizes, etc.

Regarding Topalov: It's hard to know what the best system is to find the champion. The double round-robin with eight players is better than what we had before. Topalov was a deserving winner in San Luis because he had the ambition that the others lacked, he played to win from the start, and he also had a bit of luck in his first game against Peter Leko.

All sounds good, but what about action? I suppose it's too much to ask for concrete proposals when he hasn't formally tossed his hat into the ring yet. But I spend too much time on non-chess politics to have much patience for people who just talk about how the other guy ruined things and how he'd make it all better.

November 15, 2005

Just the Ticket

Dutch businessman Bessel Kok and Turkish chess federation president Ali Nihat Yazici have formed a ticket for the May, 2006, FIDE presidential elections. (More info on them at ChessBase here.) It's certainly a well-qualified team, and they provide a list of initiatives instead of just saying (note to A. Karpov) "Ilyumzhinov sucks," which, while true enough, is not the best platform.

I'm not in the "anyone but Ilyumzhinov" camp, especially since FIDE has done a few decent things in 2005. Unfortunately, those things were mostly made up of undoing harmful policies started by Ilyumzhinov in the first place. (Disposable champions, semi-rapid time controls) And FIDE has lost interest in commercial sponsorship since the horribly mismanaged FIDE Commerce debacle. To aid your memory, that's when they put a buddy thug in charge of rustling up money and he promptly attacked traditional tournaments.

That I would vote for Bessel and Ali isn't relevant since I don't have a vote; only federations do. If I could vote perhaps I could score some of the boodle the current administration is supposedly laying out around the globe. Sources in Argentina say deals were made all over Latin America in exchange for delegate votes around and during the San Luis championship. Vote buying in FIDE elections is hardly new and wasn't invented in Kalmykia. Nor is it limited to the poorer federations or done purely in cash. Caviar and vodka have proven effective in the past. So can Bessel Kok rally up enough votes to end the Ilyumzhinov era? If yes, you can bet the next world championship won't be held next to a toilet-paper expo in Vegas.

Serve, No Volley

A long press release from Vladimir Kramnik's management in Germany blames Veselin Topalov and FIDE for the breakdown of a proposed match between Kramnik and Topalov. It's a predictably partisan document and there is no way to be sure how closely it resembles reality until we hear from the other side (if then, considering the other side is FIDE). The tone of the credited author, Dortmund organizer Stefan Koth, is to diplomacy what George W Bush is to, umm, diplomacy. I'm expecting replies from FIDE and Topalov's manager Danailov, although I don't expect them to be any less harsh.

Unless there is actual cash on the table (as there apparently was, see below) it would be silly to agree to anything if you are negotiating from a position of strength, as Topalov/FIDE are. (i.e. Kramnik's guys are chasing Topalov, not vice-versa.) The undersigned organization "Universal Event Promotion GmbH" doesn't seem to have any prior existence and uses Koth's address. It's always nice to invent a company or organization so things sound official and respectable. (Kasparov's "World Chess Council" comes to mind.)

Update: Stefan Koth replied quickly below with the following:

I assure you that the mentioned guaranteed fees plus taxes plus the organisation budgets were on the table. The drafts of the contracts contained all necessary standards. There was no disagreement in this point, not with Mr. Topalov's and not with Mr. Kramnik's manager. The reasons for finally declining the offer are correctly stated in the UEP press release.

My thanks to Stefan. This is going to get more interesting than I thought. The first (brief, off the record) response to me from a FIDE exec said the money mentioned in the UEP press release was "not available" and they would make things clear in a statement. Being FIDE, this is suspect. But after Mr. Koth's confirmation that the funds were available I will retract my statements until hearing details from FIDE and Topalov. I still don't understand why they didn't name the sponsor.

I would like to see a Topalov-Kramnik match just to tie up the loose ends. It would be nice if Topalov and/or FIDE responded with a release that spelled out exactly what would be required for them to accept a match. If not precise dollar amounts (why box yourself in if there might be bids?), at least the guarantee requirements and other details.

Kasparov Press

Garry Kasparov just left New York for parts west. When the news came out the negotiations for a Kramnik-Topalov match had broken down I mentioned that many have suggested that Kramnik might now come after him. I can see it now: "Garry, I found my to-do list from 2002, it had fallen behind the refrigerator. Right there after "get milk and cigarettes" is "offer Garry Kimovich a rematch". Sorry about that. What are you doing next November?"

Topalov has also expressed interest in a match with Kasparov. Garry's only reply was to joke that there would be no trouble finding sponsorship for either match because someone in Putin's entourage would be glad to put up the money to get Kasparov out of politics and back into chess! He's making a lot of noise lately and in the next week or two will have articles in the Wall St. Journal and Newsweek.

Kasparov also has his column in New In Chess coming up and of course it's about San Luis and the state of the chess world. (I help polish the English of these articles so I get a free preview.) This one tackles world championship history and why Kramnik is no Petrosian. He also goes after FIDE for abandoning the long match, which is perhaps the first thing Kasparov and the ACP have agreed on.

That might not be enough for you to subscribe to NIC, but Kasparov also annotates the wild Leko-Topalov game, the first time he has annotated one of his old rivals' efforts since he retired. Some truly great stuff. I annotated that game for Black Belt and while I didn't do a horrible job, seeing these hundreds of lines and hearing Garry discuss the Najdorf was humbling to say the least. At least I got him to pose in a ChessNinja.com t-shirt, but it was late at night and the poser had eleven o'clock shadow and doesn't want the picture published. Prima donna!

The Future of Chess

A quick look at the list of participants at the Istanbul World Junior Championship confirms that those rich in chess talent get richer. India sent 12 players, two coaches, and four other escorts. Russia has 12 players and four coaches. China, 11 players; Georgia 9; Azerbaijan 7. The Ukraine only sent two, oddly. But that's two more than the United States sent. I've sent out a few emails to find out why; any information out there? (There are six Poles, a girl from England, and an Aussie, so we can't speak of a coalition of the willing to ignore junior chess.)

After six rounds the event is led by Mamedyarov, who won in 2003 and who must be the highest-rated player ever to participate in this event at 2674. I guess he has a lot of free time, or wants to pick up some of the chicks ChessBase keeps running photos of.

November 16, 2005

Topalov Responds

Hoo-boy. Rather remarkably, considering the leak I got two days ago about money from FIDE, this press release (below) from Topalov's manager Silvio Danailov doesn't mention filthy lucre at all. (This backs up Koth's point about the money being FIDE's issue, not Topalov's.) But this is not good news because it turns out they are arguing over something sillier. Unless I'm mistaken, they are saying the match isn't being played because Kramnik wouldn't agree to have the match under the auspices of FIDE.

I don't even understand what that means. Why would Kramnik care? What would he have to give up, a classical title that FIDE hasn't recognized for ten years -- excepting the blip of Prague? What does he care if FIDE doesn't recognize it now? Point #1 of the release doesn't have any content unless they are saying the match didn't happen because Kramnik wants to have a "world champion" sign on the table next to Topalov's and FIDE won't allow it. If he wants a sign that says "Mack Daddy Vlady" on the table, give it to him. Who cares?

#2 says Kramnik's side rejected making the match "an official one under the auspices of FIDE." This requires some explanation. If they play such a title match and Kramnik wins, the lines are unified under FIDE with Kramnik as champ. If he loses, Topalov and FIDE have the whole enchilada. So is this posture because Kramnik wants to keep the classical title out of FIDE's hands at all costs and not put it on the line? That is, no unification? I thought that was the point. My head hurts.

As VladKo mentioned in the comments to the item on the UEP release, Topalov said he would be willing to play a non-title match against Kramnik (why or why not, why would that be a big deal?). "I do not believe we can play for the title because I’ve already won it here in San Luis. A Topalov-Kramnik match for the title is out of question, because FIDE has organised a two-year cycle for the world championship..." But now it's the opposite? Kramnik won't put up his title and Topalov won't play otherwise? I need aspirin.

There's no point in their playing outside FIDE unless Topalov just wants to write a new chapter in the book of schism. He could jump ship for a pile of cash and few would blame him, but it wouldn't be unification. Meanwhile, what is Kramnik's definition of unification if it doesn't include playing under FIDE? Or was he just looking for a money match? (Something fans don't care about, naturally.) It would be a nice show and all, but if it's not for unification, pffft. This brings into relief the paragraph in the UEP doc that reads: "With regard to a possible reunion of both titles the draft contract contained a clause that would have made the unification under the umbrella of the FIDE after conclusion of the contract possible." What, after the match was over? As my Grandma Nita says, that's bassackwards.

Continue reading "Topalov Responds" »

UEP + KCM + FIDE

The last of the three parties involved is heard from. First we had Kramnik's group the UEP (Universal Event Promotion) saying Kramnik was ready to play Topalov and the money was in place, but FIDE had interfered and screwed things up. Then Topalov's manager, aka KCM (Kaissa Chess Management), said that the match had fallen through because Kramnik had refused to play for unification under FIDE.

Now Makropoulos, Deputy President of FIDE writes in with "match, what match?" (see below) They never saw an official proposal, proposed that the match should be under FIDE (and reminded them about the usual FIDE 20% cut), suggested a ménage à trois meeting and didn't get one, and two days later were informed that Kramnik's side had rejected both the meeting and the idea of holding the match under FIDE. It's not for nothing that the anagram of these three organizations is "Impede, Fuck!" (Or you may prefer "me pick feud" or "if deep muck.")

So Kramnik/UEP want a London/Brissago-style match – outside of FIDE – using the FIDE world championship in San Luis as a qualifier but not played for unification. I guess this really shouldn't surprise, but somehow it does. Unification has always been more of a fan obsession than anything the players or FIDE care about and we forget that sometimes. But Kramnik did say, after San Luis, "Is the long awaited reunification of the chess world finally going to happen? My position is absolutely clear on this: in accordance with the Prague Agreement of 2002 I am prepared to play in a reunification match. I am looking forward to some clarification from Topalov and I hope everything becomes clear in the coming weeks." (This provides a nice doppelganger of Topalov first saying he would only play Kramnik if it wasn't for the title and now saying the exact opposite.)

I'm sure there are some holdouts who would be happy to tell FIDE to take a flying leap and have Topalov – the world (active) #1 and dominant winner of San Luis – play Kramnik in a long match outside of FIDE. This would give the winner decent credibility, but would only widen the schism and do nothing toward building a true classical cycle, one that lets everyone in the world have a shot and that virtually guarantees that the winner has a strong claim to being the world #1.

But I don't think that's what most people want to see. FIDE has announced a classical cycle, although they later screwed it up by swapping the final matches for another San Luis tournament. If Kramnik moves in with FIDE, the long-match tradition goes into a coma. Remember that FIDE has said they will accept challenge matches from 2700+ players, adding a London Rules flavor to the whole mess. This allows the long match (assuming it's long; no formal rules have been issued yet) to survive if a challenger comes up with enough money. It's weird, but what I'm thinking is that if one or two of these matches happen and are big enough, FIDE may ditch the final round-robin, which is doomed to irrelevance.

Or does Topalov think that as things stand now people will remember him any better than Khalifman and Kasimdzhanov? Unless he stays #1 for a while, his FIDE title will prove as flimsy as theirs. We can say similar things about Kramnik. His drawn match with Leko can't be considered more impressive than Topalov's win in San Luis, even if this is apples and oranges. Kramnik hasn't been able to put a cycle together in five years and there is no reason to think that will change now, when FIDE's title is the most credible it's been since 1993. I'd say it's time to come in from the cold, cash in his remaining cred and play this match under FIDE for the unified title. Who cares whether FIDE wants to admit that on paper or not?

[FBF translates a quickie 64 interview with Kramnik here in the comments. But isn't Kramnik the one who has been giving lip service to unification and now refuses to play under FIDE? This is what happens when both sides believe they are champion and that the other must bow down. Nothing we haven't seen before.

Continue reading "UEP + KCM + FIDE" »

November 17, 2005

Brain Functions

An article on an interesting study about a possible cognitive relationship between music and reading skills.

Stanford University research has found for the first time that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word, a finding that researchers say could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems. --- What's promising about the study, researchers believe, is the notion that the brain isn't an immutable organ fixed at birth but is adaptable -- that, with training, people can change their mental agility. The study focused on adults, but researchers want to expand the scope of their work to children as early as next summer.

It's that last bit about the brain not being immutable that is most relevant to chess. We usually attribute scholastic improvement in chessplayers to discipline and concentration, as well as "life lessons" about consequences and planning, which are no doubt factors. But the heavy lifting of calculation, memorization, and visualization in chess may improve those skills in a sense deeper than practice. It also lends weight to the conventional wisdom that chess "keeps you sharp," especially as the aging process slows our mental reflexes.

Of course any chessplayer can tell you that the game can temporarily rewire your brain in odd ways too. Playing a lot often leads to imagining completely unrelated interactions (personal, news, etc.) as chess. These brief daydream flashes usually go away after a few weeks of not playing.

November 18, 2005

Tempest in a World Cup

The official site of the 2005 FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk has been updated and populated with rather unhandy Excel files with the participants list and pairings. Marky-Mark has an html version of the first round pairings on the TWIC homepage. It's 128 vs 1 pairing style (instead of 128 vs 64) so there are plenty of heavy favorites and a few dozen people who will have plenty of time to enjoy the local scenery and the balmy -20C weather. For those unfamiliar with the Celsius scale, -20 is the exact temperature at which your yak freezes.

The first round starts Sunday, Nov. 27. Nobody from San Luis is playing. The top seed is Ivanchuk, followed by Bacrot, Aronian, Grischuk, Shirov, and Gelfand. The time control is the evil FIDE semi-rapid 90'+30". The USA has a remarkable eight players, trailing only Ukraine's 10, China's 9 (!), and Russia's 23. Argentina notches three, dale! Adams isn't there and Short had earlier obligations and couldn't accept his substitute spot, so there are no players representing England. Based on favorites winning, Kamsky would face Zhao Yun, Smirnov, Asrian and Nakamura would face Ganguly, Milov, Gelfand.

New rule: You're not allowed to pick first-round upsets on boards higher than 30; those aren't really upsets. Of course we have to root for everyone who has posted to the Dirt, so we've got the top three Americans (Kamsky, Nakamura, Onischuk), plus Shirov, Sutovsky, Macieja, and Charbonneau. We can toss in Lautier and Needleman by proxy to improve our chances. Go team, go! This makes my upset pick easy: Charbonneau over Dreev. Seeing his name here I realized we haven't seen Shirov in action for a while. If he shakes off the rust he should at least reach the final eight, when the longer matches begin.

State of US Champs

America's Foundation for Chess (AF4C) and the Internet Chess Club (ICC) have teamed up to again bring a special US Championship qualifying event. It's the State Champion of Champions online blitz tournament with the winner going to play in the 2006 championship in San Diego starting Feb. 28. It's being played on the ICC this weekend (Nov 19-20) and next (Dec. 3-4). Here's the announcement and the event rules are lower down on that page. At the bottom I just added the list of players. Three participants were in the 2005 championship: Zilberstein, Kraai, and occasional Black Belt contributor Cyrus Lakdawala, who lives in San Diego.

This event is a terror to organize even though it's online. Just finding out who is a state's champion can be difficult and sometimes there are disagreements about who should go. But there is room to accommodate conflicts because several states never responded. What's up with that? No state federation? No champion? Just lazy? Yeah, I'm talking to you, Kentucky.

November 19, 2005

Linares y Mariachi

Ah Morelia. The beautiful capital of the Mexican state of Michoacan was one of the first places I visited in Mexico before spending a few years in Guadalajara. The twin spires of the cathedral are hard to forget. I was en camino to the smaller Uruapan and then the tiny town of San Juan Nuevo to visit a friend. (And to climb the famous Paracutin volcano.) Chess wasn't much to be found, although I later became the two-time blitz champion of the Tlaquepaque Chess Club, membership 13. (Yes, that's me on the right with long hair and unfortunate-if-wispy moustache. Blame the tequila.)

Morelia is soon to be put on the chess map in a big way, as San Luis, Argentina was last month. As rumored for months, the 2006 Linares supertournament is going to be divided between Linares and the Mexican city. I first heard that perhaps the Morelia phase was going to serve as a qualifier, but that is not the case. Leontxo Garcia, muy macho Spanish chess journalist for El Pais, recently reported the details. The first half of the eight-player double round robin will take place in Mexico Feb. 17-26, the second at its traditional home in Linares, Spain Mar. 3-12, no doubt at the trusty Hotel Anibal.

Mexican contacts tell me there will be two other tournaments running alongside the elite show. One is a GM open, which I've heard has been recruiting American Grandmasters, which may complicate things for the US Championship because of the dates. (Run by Jose Cuchi of New York Open fame?) They say they expect over 100 GMs and a prize fund of 165,000 euros with a 50,000 first prize. Yow. We've been scoping out plane routes and there are flights to LA and Houston, but not direct to San Diego. (As far as I have found online, but a travel agent is a good idea.) There will also be a Mexican Open for players rated over 2300.

One Mexican report even gives a potential field for the main event, not confirmed. They list Topalov, Leko, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Bacrot, Akopian, Kamsky, Vallejo Pons. [Gata posts below that this is the first he's heard of it so this is a very tentative list indeed. And why no Anand, as several ask?] It's weird to see even a hypothetical Linares field without Kasparov's name in it. I'm loving the LatAm surge going on these days and I hope even more strong young players result. I'll definitely be headed to Morelia if I can figure out the flights to the US Championship. It killed me not to be able to go to San Luis in my old home of Argentina, but this time I shouldn't have any books to finish writing. Viva Mexico!

November 21, 2005

More FIDE-Kramnik

I rather lost interest in this when it became apparent that FIDE wasn't involved from the start, but just for the sake of completeness I'll polish off a good weekend away from the blog with links to the latest from Kramnik manager Carsten Hensel and a short reply from FIDE's Makropoulos. I lost interest because I'm interested in combining the resources of FIDE with the classical title of Kramnik with the current top player status of Veselin Topalov. In short, unification.

Kramnik was attempting to poach the FIDE title holder Topalov, which make sense. Why pay 20% to FIDE if you don't have to? Just get Topalov to break his contract with FIDE and you have a ready-made challenger. Topalov, for his part, figured he'd hear what they had to say before talking with FIDE. He could use FIDE as a bargaining chip with Kramnik, saying he needed extra guaranteed money to make it worth his while to break with FIDE and a possible lawsuit.

I'd like to see a match, but FIDE stabbed us in the back with the change to another final tournament instead of a match at the end of their announced cycle. Without that change I would be much less patient with Kramnik not wanting to play under FIDE. But it's more than the change itself, it's the illustration of how this FIDE cannot be trusted. It also shows, again, how short-sighted they are. That Topalov scored +6 in San Luis and is also the world #1 does not mean a double round-robin is a good format for a classical championship. San Luis was a quickie unification attempt and fine for that. But the obvious danger is having a tie for first at +2 and rapid tiebreaks. Boring, inconclusive, and no way to end what is described as a fairly rigorous cycle.

To sum up, life goes on without a Kramnik-Topalov match. The most pressing need is for new leadership at FIDE, a team that understands the importance of a strong world champion and that has the business savvy to reward and keep such a champion in today's commercial world. (The first truly post-Soviet championship immediately fractured FIDE.) We also need players to stand up and take sides and take action. Professional shoulder-shrugging is costing them all money in the long run. Greater prestige for the champion means more publicity for the sport and more sponsors around the world.

November 22, 2005

Idiot Savant Computers

We all know that chess programs play brilliantly in tactical complications and not nearly as well in other phases of the game. For openings they rely on databases of human games and professional opening book makers. For endgames they access tablebases, dozens, even hundreds, of gigabytes of databases that allow them to play simple endgames perfectly and improve overall endgame play significantly.

Great strides have been made in recent years in addressing middlegame blind spots as well. Closed positions are still problematic, as are openings with many exchanges. Both of these trends were on display in the second round of the Bilbao Human-Machine tournament in northern Spain. The most notable game by far was Ponomariov-Fritz, which exhibited progress against some stereotypes before reaffirming others.

As this on-site ChessBase report mentions, Fritz had a winning position against Ponomariov before blundering into a lost endgame. (This preceded by Ponomariov forgetting the en passant rule?) A passed pawn was beyond its horizon and it happily won two pieces for a rook before realizing the pawns were too strong to stop. What I don't understand about the ChessBase item is that it misinterprets the start of the game and leaves out some interesting information about Fritz's blunder.

The report says that Fritz sacrificed its b-pawn in a position where it got no compensation and that White's win should have been "just technique" before Ponomariov's blunder on move 31. I'll agree it was a dubious sacrifice, but they don't credit how incredibly well Fritz played the position. Even before Ponomariov's slip, which should have lost, it would have been one of the more remarkable computer games on record. White was left practically without moves and the position was probably not worse for Black before the double blunder. Fritz's play with the h-pawn and on the c-file were very human-like. No less a computer chess aficionado than Garry Kasparov was very impressed with Black's play in this game.

As for the blunder, Fritz has long had trouble with passed pawns, like most programs. One that has far fewer such difficulties is Shredder, the undisputed endgame king of computer chess. I'm always impressed by how well it evaluates endings – for a computer, although like all machines it is entirely baffled by blockades. Shredder barely considers the losing move Fritz and Junior evaluate as one of the top few moves even after five minutes. After just a few seconds Shredder drops 39..Bc2?? in favor of 39..Qxg3 or 39..Nc4 and never comes back to the bishop move.

Of course you can always find positions that some programs play well and others don't, but this one is more notable than most. The ChessBase explanation is the calculation horizon, so it's interesting that Shredder does not play this move, even viewing it as a bad, in a few seconds. It doesn't see the full winning continuation, however, for over a minute. The key move 43.a5 is what they all miss at first.

November 23, 2005

State Champs Finals

I just updated the US Championship website with the semifinalists of the "State Champion of Champions" event. On December 3-4 the final four will play for the golden ticket to San Diego (actually you pay your own air fare). These matches are two games at g/60 and are played on the ICC. See the event page link above for game times. The four finalists are Ginsburg of Arizona, Zilberstein of Northern California, Denton of Mississippi, and Florean of Michigan. Kudos, gentlemen.

NAFTA Chess

First off, the official site for the Morelia International Chess Festival is now up in Spanish and English. Have they been taking web design classes with the wizards who put this up for the USCF awhile back? (¡Señor Cuchi, estoy a su servicio, llámame!) Anyway, it works. The festival, as previewed last week, includes the first half of the Linares supertournament. The seven confirmed players listed are the same as guessed at except with Aronian for Akopian, not that we'd notice. Kamsky, mentioned in at least one report, isn't there. They have one spot left. Who will it be? If they don't have Anand or Kramnik already it's because they can't afford them, which is sad for the first Linares of the post-Kasparov era.

Then there is the nine-round swiss international open. It has a prize fund of $158,000 and runs Feb. 20-28. The first prize is $50,000. With so much cash in play - and with travel and hotel being offered to some players - and the dates so close to the US Championship, clearly something had to be done so the players who really want to play in both events can do so without HG Wells.

From what I understand, they moved the Morelia event up one day and the opening ceremony of the US Championship has been moved back a day to March 1 with the first round now on the second. No date changes for the event, but the school visit day (Mar. 8, now the 13th) has been moved to the end of the tournament to make room. (Players can choose to do the schools thing on the 1st or the 13th.) So rounds 4-9 are played consecutively. It wasn't precisely a free day anyway since the players have to get up early to visit schools, although meeting kids is less tiring than another game. This is doing a good thing for American players at slight harm to the event; I'd say it's a good move. This way there is a day for travel from Morelia to San Diego, although it will have to be snappy. Let us know if you figure out a good travel plan because I expect to be making the trip myself. The official announcement will come out after Thanksgiving weekend and the US Championship website will then be updated.

Of course this bumps the Morelia Open further into the massive Aeroflot Open, which runs Feb. 8-16. There should be a special Phileas Fogg prize for anyone who tries to play in all three, apart from the frequent flyer miles. Shabba?

November 24, 2005

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to all, even those who only consider it a weird American thing. It was always interesting to explain to friends around the world why we have a holiday based on food. Not that most American holidays aren't. (Okay, Valentine's Day and Halloween aren't really holidays.) So take a break from the gluttony and give some chess thanks in the comments.

I'm thankful that despite all the political BS we've had a ton of good top-level chess. Instead of the usual three, maybe four, top events, we'll have had seven or eight by the end of this year. Linares, the Mtel and San Luis were all memorable. And all topped by Topalov, including a fitting shared first with Kasparov in Linares. We can be thankful someone stepped up and picked up the slack with The Garry away from the board. Thank you, Veselin!

And I haven't hit the potent eggnog yet, but I probably won't have time to post after festivities begin so I'll get maudlin now. Thanks to all the subscribers, contributors, readers, comment crazies, and everyone else out there. There are now over 200,000 visits here every month. You have turned this blog into a tool for turning public knowledge and opinion into real change. I raise my roast turkey leg in salute. (But keep your mitts off the stuffing.)

November 26, 2005

Slugfest Chess

The chess blog of Clint Ballard is new and brief and incorporates the provocative, the interesting, and the erroneous. The modestly named "Ballard Antidraw Point System" would be just another suggestion on the high pile of ways to make chess more "exciting" but Ballard, as he puts it, is putting his money where his mouth is by putting together a tournament using this radical scoring system. Dec. 10-11 on Bainbridge Island across the Sound from Seattle.

3 points for a win with black; 2 points for a win with white; 1 point for a draw with black; 0 points for a draw with white. [And zero for a loss with either color, in case you were wondering.]

There was an article on the event in his local paper, the Bainbridge Island Review, with more info. The direct link doesn't seem to work, but if you go to the paper's homepage and search for 'chess' it's the first item on the results page.

None of the slugfest articles seem to address the main problem with using such heavily weighted scoring systems in open events: cheating. A three point swing makes arranging results very tempting in the final rounds when thousands of dollars are on the line. It also makes pairings crucial because a player with more blacks has more potential points, a dramatic imbalance. Beyond that, giving black draw odds in every game turns chess into a circus, which is exactly what Ballard wants, boasting that White will have to "play like a madman." The less mad suggestion of giving black .6 for a draw and white .4 has been mooted many times.

I'll file this under the "fun variants that trivialize the game" along with shuffle chess. I'm still very much in favor of move minimums, which eliminate short draws (the real problem) and also produce more decisive games. Corsica/Sofia rules are a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with fooling around with goofy systems like "BAPS" in amateur events, especially if you're going to run your own tournament. I wouldn't want to see anything this radical widely implemented, but most of us would be entertained by seeing it as a side event at Melody Amber or Mainz, for example.

November 27, 2005

Chess Beauties, Again

Only eight months behind the curve(s), the de facto chess guy at the NY Times, Dylan Loeb McLain, has an item today on women chessplayers and physical attractiveness. Nothing new if you survived the epic thread linked to above started by an item by Jen Shahade, who is quoted in the Times piece. The beauty contest site run by several GMs, which I thought defunct, is brought up again.

Men like looking at pretty women and combining it with chess is just an excuse to do so. Many women enjoy being admired by men and throughout history many of them have managed to make a buck at it too. In other words, nothing new. I'm not a fan, but it only bugs me when it gets in the way of the chess. It's an old and interesting discussion, but please read through Jen's item and the comments to it before reinventing the wheel here.

This allows me to drop in an item four people sent in last week from a Chilean news site. There's a new cafe in the middle of Santiago with scantily clad women who wait tables and occasionally dance. Nothing new so far. But they are also available to play board games, including chess, against the patrons. If the customer loses he has to buy an overpriced drink or two. If he wins she, dances. (From the description, this wagering system allows them to avoid some types of blue laws about caberet clubs.) One of the women is described as being quite strong. In case you can't read Spanish, here's the link to the photo gallery you were looking for.

World Cup 2005 r1.1

The FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansyisk, Russia (Siberia) is underway. It's a 128-player knock-out, two-game mini-matches with tiebreaks on the third day. Time control is a speedy 40 in 90' then g/15'+30". Apart from the $80,000 first prize (after the 20% FIDE tax) 10 players will qualify for the second stage of the new FIDE world championship cycle, the 16-player candidates matches. As scheduled those lead to four players going to a final world championship tournament where they meet the top four finishers from San Luis. Yes, this last stage is as idiotic as it sounds. 128 players battling it out for four spots while four get a free ride? Tough qualification that ends in a trivial round robin? Welcome to FIDEWorld.

Anyway, the first round was full of the upsets that fans love and hate. They give us something to chatter about but cutting the best players out early is depressing in a world championship event. Shirov gave up a half point, Ponomariov did so with white. Mamedyarov, fresh from winning the world junior, was the first upset loss, taken down by the Kazakh IM Ibraev. The underrated Chinese flexed their muscles with a win by Li over Vallejo Pons and Hungary's Cao beat Volokitin. Ganguly beat Nakamura to put the hurt on US (and Ninja) chances. Kamsky smoothly beat Zhao. Akopian forfeited against Lane in a no-show.

Games are up in PGN at TWIC. The youngest participant, Magnus Carlsen, beat Azmaiparashvili. Is Vaganian the oldest player at 54? The only female player, women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova, lost to Ivan Sokolov. The eight American players made an even score on the day. It wasn't much of a day for the LatAm underperros. Granda Zuñiga, Lima, Milos, Vazquez, Matamoros, Needleman, and Flores all lost. Bruzon and Vescovi won. Early contender for move of the day was 32..Be6! by Pantsulaia in his win against Milov. Ugliest loss was probably Minasian blowing a drawn "wrong bishop" endgame against van Wely after inspired defense. 70.g4 was a simple draw. (72..h6! was sweet though.) Damn fast time control. Inarkiev-Khalifman was a wild one to check out (34.Ra1?!?)

November 28, 2005

Chess and Poker in the NY Times

Erstwhile (where have you gone?!) Ninja contributor Jennifer Shahade had an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday on what she calls the current crisis in American chess and how it can look to the success of poker for guidance. Some excerpts since the article will disappear into their pay archives soon. Dirt items on poker here and here. Jen has some comments here.

Nakamura - who at 15 became the youngest American grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer's record - says that he might give up pro chess because there is so little money in it. Losing Nakamura would be devastating for American chess.

How can chess save itself? No doubt it would make purists protest, but chess should steal a few moves from poker. After all, in the past few years, poker has lured away many chess masters who realized that the analytical skills they've learned from chess would pay off in online card rooms. ...

Organizers of the 2006 American chess championship, to be held in San Diego, are moving in the right direction. They plan to split the 64-player field into two tournaments, and on the last day, the two winners will face off in a match for the title, guaranteeing a thrilling finale. But they should go even further, and run the championship as a knockout.

Of course, there are limits to how much chess can, or should, learn from poker. A Chris Moneymaker can come out of nowhere to win a poker championship, but an unknown will never beat Topalov in a single game. Because there is no luck in chess, gambling at tournaments is unfeasible - after all, why would an amateur with no chance to win contribute to a chess pot? ...

But if more exciting tournaments lead to more television coverage, big sponsors and money will follow. While chess may not have poker's illicit glamour, it does enjoy a reputation as symbolic of intelligence and good taste. With a few tweaks, chess can compete with poker.

But we need to move fast before we lose a generation of chess talent. An average poker professional can earn six figures and become a television personality, but Nakamura, the biggest American chess hope since Fischer, cannot. To raise the stature of chess in America, we'll have to do what chess players are best at - calculate many moves ahead.

No doubt chess can learn from poker and any other successful sport. The danger is confusing the advantages and disadvantages of different sports. Chess cannot compete with poker on poker's terms, or with a few tweaks. Poker's remarkable boom on TV, online, and everywhere else comes from one thing: money and lots of it in every aspect of the process. Not only can an amateur compete for serious cash, but all the PR starts with the massive gambling industry, which bankrolls everything from TV shows to books and magazines. Chess has no such sugar-daddy, or any wealthy party that will directly benefit from chess becoming more popular.

Chess is difficult and has a small base. Changes in format, scoring, and time control will not change this. (FIDE's "exciting" rapid knockouts got less publicity than San Luis, for example.) Poker is several factors easier to play and to understand for spectators. I've been watching the 2005 poker world championship on ESPN and even if you don't know how to play you know the odds and who won immediately. Bluffing and money keep it interesting.

This isn't to say chess TV is impossible, but the key isn't live coverage, it's top-quality post-production. The excellent poker events on TV are edited and voiced over to create an hour of action from hundreds of hours of mostly boring poker. The entire US chess championship could be similarly boiled down to two or three hours of fast-paced key moments with plenty of player personality and snappy commentary. (This also means burying the chess itself, its complexity and beauty. But we'll watch anyway.) But even this requires a large, risky investment and there's no casino industry for us. (I wanted to produce a video package of the 2005 championship for ChessBase Magazine or for DVD, but my video pro girlfriend dumped me shortly after the event, taking the footage and expertise with her. Oops.)

New US Ch Qualifiers

No official announcement yet, but it looks like all our positive vibes helped get Alex Yermolinsky into the 2006 US championship. His solid play at the American Open may have had something to do with it too. Kreiman, Goldin, and Tate are the other new qualifiers, the last two from the National Chess Congress. Kudos and cheers, gentlemen. See you and San Diego. It seems that Ippolito and Bercys are now tied for the Qualifier Grand Prix spot with only one qualifying event left, the North American Open, Dec 26-29 in Vegas.

November 29, 2005

World Cup 2005 r1.2

Well, damn. Hikaru got knocked out by Ganguly in the first round after being unable to break through with white today. He was joined by Volokitin, the two biggest upsets of the first round so far. Lautier and Bruzon can still steal that honor. Of the eight Americans, three are out, three are through, and two are in tiebreaks.

Motylev's 25-move demolition of Roiz was the most diverting game of the day. Movsesian revived the ancient tradition of the spite check upon being eliminated by Paragua, if the score is correct. Neat, I just now stumbled onto a very cool stalemate trick that was missed by Miroshnichenko. I added it to my report at ChessBase, link above. White Belt #152 contained a puzzle with a very similar theme, so it was fresh somewhere in my mind. Check it out.

I Want My Chess

Douglas Bryson has a nice little item for chess trivia fans in his column in the Sunday Scotsman. An Erwin Knopfler played in several Scottish championships in the early 50's. He turns out to be the father of musicians David and Mark of the band Dire Straits, as confirmed by David. Bryson may have had this tidbit cut for space, but I remember David Knopfler's active participation on the World team in the famous "Kasparov versus the World" event in 1999. I was on the other side of course :-)

[Update: Changed the link to a longer version of the article on the Chess Scotland webpage. This one mentions the Kasparov vs the World connection.]

World Cup 2005 r1.3

Tiebreak day. I just went through all the games at the official site to figure out the scores to post them at ChessBase. Full results, report, and second-round pairings are now there, along with some photos. Many of the pics are actually from yesterday because I didn't get the new ones until 5:40am Wednesday. I'll make a photo gallery of the rest later. Speaking of delays, FIDE just now, 13 hours after I put them up at CB, posted the results at the official site. Terrible.

The first underdog to come through the tiebreaks was USA's Yuri Shulman in a sudden death game against Zvjaginsev. (You may remember Zvjaginsev as the "American killer" of the first FIDE KO back in 1997. Not this time.) Kudrin was eliminated by Eljanov so half the Americans came through. Further south, Leitao joins his Brazilian compatriot Vescovi in the second round. Karjakin is out, Carlsen stays in.

Lots of heavyweight match-ups in the second round. Ivanchuk against the up-and-coming Cheparinov, Topalov's second, should be a hot one. Speaking of FIDE champions, here's another bizarre item that I missed about the candidates matches for the 2007 cycle, of which this World Cup is the start. From the regulations 2.2:

The five (5) players who have the initial right to qualify for the Candidates Matches by the average rating list 07/2004 - 01/2005 are: GM G. Kasparov (RUS 2811), GM V. Kramnik (RUS 2762), GM P. Leko (HUN 2745), GM M. Adams (ENG 2739), GM J. Polgar (HUN 2728). The reserve players of this list are GM A. Shirov (ESP 2719), GM E. Bacrot (FRA 2713.50), GM V. Ivanchuk (UKR 2713)

This explains why no one from San Luis bothered to play in Khanty-Mansyisk. They are already all qualified into the candidates or the final tournament by rating since FIDE is using the same rating criteria as they used for San Luis! (Kasimdzhanov is into the candidates as 2004 champ.) Insanity. Only Topalov should be seeded and everyone else should have to play. They should use much more recent rating lists so the players aren't yet sure if they will qualify by rating. Then if a qualifier is also in by rating, you take the next qualifier down the list. Actually I'd be delighted to drop all qualification by rating, or cut it to one or two spots max, not five. The point of a cycle is to play for the championship in a championship event.

November 30, 2005

World Cup 2005 r2.1

Finally got the ChessBase report up. Going through 32 games for such briefly noted highlights doesn't seem like a very productive use of time. Like everyone else out there doing daily updates I'll be quite happy to see the field pared down to 16 so we can pay more attention to the chess. These first few rounds always remind me of election coverage, where they spend all their time talking about the polls and not the issues. Winning is what matters so that's all that is discussed. Certainly the KO format reduces everything to binary. There were many fun games today.

December 1, 2005

Caffeine Memories

The brain scanners are at work again. This study purportedly illustrates that caffeine improves short-term memory, as demonstrated by brain activity and memory tests. The description of the latter is giving me flashbacks to that episode of WKRP in Cincinnatti in which Dr. Johnny Fever gets better and better scores on a portable sobriety reflex test the more alcohol he drinks.

The long-documented efficacy of caffeine in improving alertness illustrates the silliness of drug testing in chess. IOC standards allow the caffeine of a dozen cups of coffee to be found in your system. But a far smaller amount of this routinely available drug – more like unavoidable – is generally performance enhancing. Unless we have a drug situation that is 1) patently performance enhancing and 2) demonstrably harmful, who cares? If there were a smart pill with no side effects shouldn't we all take it? (Of course what would happen is that they would cost $10,000 each, creating a brain/income gap. Not that countries that charge $50,000 a year to go to university don't already have that.)

Lamento Peruano

A melancholy little item from a Peruvian radio website (Spanish). It laments the exit of national chess star Julio Granda Zuñiga from the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansyisk. He was eliminated in the first round by Alexander Ivanov. That's not even the sad part. According to the writer (whose only comment on the games is totally wrong, for what that's worth), Granda's return ticket is for December 7 and changing it would require a fee. But Granda doesn't have any money because he paid his own way to Siberia and is also paying all his own expenses. The Peruvian federation has "internal problems" and was unable to pay out anything. Horrible if true, especially considering that Julio is one of Peru's best-known exports. No wonder he periodically quits the game.

World Cup 2005 r2.2

Results and games in PGN up at ChessBase now. I'm working on the games and photos. Another exciting round, a pity that all this gets reduced to rapid and blitz garbage time every third day. Cheparinov held Ivanchuk with black in a weird game to eliminate the Ukrainian wizard. Radjabov won back with black when Kazhgaleyev totally collapsed under pressure. This could be good news because I have no trouble spelling "Radjabov." Kamsky was in trouble, then not, then totally lost, but Bocharov missed the crusher 55.Qf1+. Onischuk and Shulman are also in tiebreaks.

December 2, 2005

Campaign Season

Bessel Kok's campaign for the FIDE presidency is on in earnest. At the least the website for it is. There is no doubt that Kok is something of a dream candidate for all of us who have been hoping for someone with the business and corporate sponsorship chops to move FIDE into the 20th century, even if it's already the 21st. He has a long history of good works in chess. Supporters include respected Dutch GMs Timman and Sosonko as well as Holland-based American GM Yasser Seirawan, who garnered a great deal of support for his efforts behind the 2002 Prague agreements. (Many had expected and/or hoped to see a Seirawan candidacy.)

As for me, I've been co-opted, if only as as a photographer. I recognized the pic of Bessel they're using as one I took on the terrace of the Zofin Palace during the Prague Eurotel tournament in 2002. Well, I'm a supporter anyway and I hereby donate that pic. I know, I know, such generosity. It's nice that Kok and Yazici are presenting themselves as a real ticket and team with complementary strengths. It speaks of openness instead of what we have now, which is waiting in fear to see what rolls down from Elista. Half of Ilyumzhinov's ideas first float out in bizarre magazine interviews and are turned into law by little more than decree.

I've developed grudging admiration for Ilyumzhinov's ability to wrangle money from the most outlandish locations. Sure, most of them have been out of the way or sponsored by dubious regimes, but at least some of the money has ended up in chessplayers' pockets. But political sponsorship is an unpredictable mess and the sheer opacity of it keeps commercial sponsorship away.

Friday Cat Blogging 4

Morrigan with her favorite toy. Open thread, suggest topics, look at the cuddly kitty and forget your woes and rancor...

World Cup 2005 r2.3

Tiebreak results up at ChessBase. Some wild matches today, will be updating that page with some selected games and notes late tonight. It's all tough battles from here on out. Russia has flexed the old muscles and have seven of the final 32 participants.

December 3, 2005

2005 Russian Superfinal

Russian superfinal dates: December 18th to 30th. That is, starting the day after the closing ceremony in Khanty-Mansyisk. Note that it's not only a sprint if you reach the World Cup final, but the final 16, since they all keep playing every day to decide the candidates spots. Participant list not 100% confirmed, at least not to me. Five of the players on the list I've seen are still playing* in the World Cup. Svidler, Kramnik, Grischuk*, Dreev*, Morozevich, Bareev*, Khalifman, Motylev, Najer*, Volkov, Jakovenko, Rublevsky*. There's even a poll to pick the winner in the Ninja boards. Thanks to Atarov.

December 4, 2005

World Cup 2005 r3.1

Report and photos up at ChessBase. Lots of good chess on the first day of the third round. Also some pretty bad chess, fairly typical of the short time control. Bareev was in a tricky position against Bruzon but probably didn't have to blunder it away in a single move. Sutovsky, after an amazing defensive effort against Bacrot, missed an endgame win. It's not simple enough to make me wonder if the score was wrong, but it's something he would have found with more than the increment left.

December 5, 2005

Blazing Chess

Just flipped on the marvelous Mel Brooks film "Blazing Saddles" for a minute. Came in around the middle, right when the sheriff is asking Gene Wilder's character what he likes to do for fun, "Play chess..." he answers, "screw." The sheriff's deadpan reply, "Let's play chess." They have a brief chess scene and the pieces are used as props to illustrate the hand speed of the Waco Kid (Wilder).

World Cup 2005 r3.2

Report up here. A remarkable 11 of 16 matches are going to tiebreaks, involving most of the top seeds. Quite a few blunders today, although not all of the players can blame exhaustion. A few of the worst were by players who haven't played on both previous tiebreak days. But the stress of the KO format and the quick time control rarely produce memorable games, as has been well documented over the years. Sad to see Shirov go out before making the next stage, but at least Gurevich played a fine game to beat him. Nice interview with Khalifman at the official site. Also one with Ivanchuk if you missed it.

World Cup 2005 r3.3

Bleh, I'm feeling a bit sick today. I hope this doesn't have anything to do with my new pet duck from Cambodia. Results and 4th round pairings up now. At least the tiebreak gods were merciful and spared us further sudden-death horror. Only three of the eleven matches even needed blitz. Rapids are ugly enough, but at least they have increment and are much closer to chess. Few surprises of any kind, although there weren't many clear favorites anyway. The last real underdog, America's Yuri Shulman, was duly demolished by Alexander Grischuk in the first rapid game.

Aronian has played the most impressive chess so far in my mind. Bacrot has also been strong, usually better through the middlegame if prone to adventure in time trouble. But his first two pairings were relatively easy. He now has a grudge match against Lautier, so France is guaranteed a player in the final eight. Kamsky never looked healthy on the white side of the Sicilian against Smirin and will need to be at his best to dent Grischuk.

December 6, 2005

Chess TV Movie Tonight

At 8:00pm on A&E, Knights of the South Bronx with Ted Danson. From all the PR info it looks like a nice love letter to chess in the classroom and in general. (It also tells the entire plot for some reason, not that we couldn't have guessed.) Official site here with trailer and a contest. I don't know if I can handle two hours of cute kids and made-for-TV uplift, but I'll put it on the DVR so I can at least skip the commercials. Bonus points to the first commenter to point out a chess mistake in the film. Should take around nine seconds. There's a positive review of the film at the NY Times today:

The inspiring-teacher genre is getting old, but "Knights of the South Bronx" (tonight on A&E) is one of the good examples. This television film's greatest asset is Ted Danson, whose best-known characters have been less than idealistic (an arrogant bar owner on "Cheers," a curmudgeonly doctor on "Becker"). Mr. Danson is a much nicer guy as Richard Mason, a corporate executive who decides to try teaching after losing his job. But Mason never comes across as a wimp, even when his fourth-grade students ignore his instructions. ("I don't feel like it" is a typical response.) ...

The film makes clear but does not dwell on the dangers and pressures in the lives of these children. Walking to school, they may find themselves in the middle of a shooting. Parents may be crack addicts. Jamal Joseph's script rings true, as does the direction of Allen Hughes, who with his brother Albert made the films "Menace II Society" and "Dead Presidents."

Mason's character is based on David MacEnulty, a New Yorker who did take his Bronx elementary school students to a national chess championship and saw them go on to Ivy League colleges, influenced by the life lessons they inferred from chess. Details have been changed, of course, but not that drastically. ... "Knights of the South Bronx" makes its point that influencing one classroom at a time is more efficient than working with one child at a time. And if we can advance to one school or one school system at a time, the possibility for change is unlimited.

Hmm, sounds better than I would have imagined. Direction by Allen Hughes is a surprise. Btw, it runs at 7pm in the Central time zone, apparently. Check your local listings.

World Cup 2005 r4.1

Games and such at ChessBase. (Not my report.) Grischuk played a very powerful game to beat Kamsky today. The finishing combination was very nice, but it was very strong from start to finish. Kamsky has been getting by on talent and grit and this was the first 2700+ opponent of his comeback, so a rough time was to be expected. He's a famously hard worker, but it's tough to get up to speed when you've got a family. He'll have less than a month after the World Cup to patch holes before going Corus Wijk aan Zee.

There's an interview with Gata on the World Cup site, and also an interesting one by America's Onischuk, who talks about Kamsky's comeback. I agree with his impression that Kamsky has been playing a sort of "old" chess so far. But surviving a super-sharp player like Smirin in rapid and blitz shows his instincts are still there. When the Turin Olympiad rolls around the US will have a strong young team. Nakamura will continue to rise, Kamsky and Onischuk are super solid, and Akobian could make it aboard. The USCF recently released new team qualification guidelines but I haven't sifted through them yet.

Bareev played a line against Carlsen that has been doing horribly and didn't fare much better. He had to force a draw. That Nimzo line has roots in the Kasparov-Short WCh match. Sakaev was playing creatively and managed to get himself entirely tangled up against Rublevsky, who kicked the ball softly toward the open goal. Thanks, chum! Ponomariov ground down van Wely in his finest style. Pono is looking very good so far.

Mate in 2

You never know what a Technorati blog search for chess will turn up. (NSFW)

December 7, 2005

World Cup 2005 r4.2

Just so you have a place to chat as the games end. Pono wiped out van Wely and is through. Playing a must-win with black is a lot of pressure and there's no clear strategy to employ. Risk it all early with a very unbalanced and risky opening? (van Wely's choice) or try to keep pieces on the board for as long as possible and wait your chance? Rublevsky drew to beat Sakaev.

Remember it's not strictly elimination anymore. The defeated players continue playing each other to settle the places. The top 10 go into the candidates matches. Kasparov and Kramnik likely won't play, so Bacrot will be in by rating (along with Shirov). That means if Bacrot finishes top 10, 11 of these 16 players will likely pass to the next stage in the end, not 10. No conspiracy theories in a KO format!

Chess in the Mags

Chess seems to be everywhere lately, at least in the newspapers and magazines I read. First we had op-eds on chess in the New York Times. This month there is a long article on Kasparov (politics, not chess) in The Atlantic. Now there is a nice piece on computer chess by Tom Mueller in this week's New Yorker. (Dec. 12 issue. This article not available online, unfortunately. Go pick it up.) Not too much new information for this crowd, but a some good interview clips with Hydra programmer Chrilly Donninger and Junior team Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. Even my ChessBase chum Freddy Friedel gets a nod at the end. The Adams-Hydra match gets attention, the programmers express boredom with playing against humans, and credit their machines with playing chess that is more creative than that played by humans.

That last is a bit of devil's advocate, but I suppose it's true if creativity is defined as lack of dogma. By definition computers don't have entrenched prejudices that prevent them from finding objectively superior moves, as often happens with humans. But no matter how well they play I will always take issue with any claim of computer chess meaning intelligence. Chess is but a sophisticated equation and from a human perspective (i.e. beating humans) it has been almost completely broken by the brute force of today's computer technology. This is not surprising and not quite yet horrifying.

This leads to a separate entry, but I've been getting a fair amount of mail about computer chess lately thanks to a program you've never heard of. "Rybka" is all the rage with the computer chess geeks this week. You'd think it was the second coming of Deep Blue meets Petrosian. It may well be! More on that in a bit.

December 8, 2005

World Cup 2005 r4.3

The Great Eight are now known. This also means we know eight more of the participants in the candidates matches, the next stage of the 2007 FIDE world championship cycle. Bareev-Ponomariov, Rublevsky-Bacrot, Aronian-Gurevich, Gelfand-Grischuk. The other eight players will continue to play for the other two spots (likely three since Bacrot won and will probably be in on rating). What we do know is that, barring extraordinary circumstances, losing another match leaves you out of the cycle. So these guys playing for 9-16 have more to lose in the next round: Carlsen-Lautier, Kamsky-Sakaev, Malakhov-Dreev, Vallejo Pons-van Wely.

Carlsen was preparing another shocker with a queen and passed pawns versus Bareev's motley assortment of pieces. But the teen missed several winning moves and eventually even let the draw get away to lose the first game with white. Painful. Bacrot played a fine game to take out Lautier in the French duel.

53 of 64 Ready for San Diego

I updated the US Championship website this week. Five new qualifiers, plus confirmation of the new, Morelia-friendly schedule. Not really a date change, just condensing things a bit by moving the first round back a day, to March 2. Full schedule here.

The fifth qualifier is Andrei Florian, who won the online state champion of champions event. Florian, like La Rota last year, has been here for a while but hadn't changed his federation with FIDE. He hasn't played for Romania in a long time and obeyed the AF4C's stricture to file the paperwork to change it before the qualification finals. (By registered mail to the USCF, just in case.) So all is well.

There are still eleven spots to fill. Six will come from the North American Open at the end of the month. That will also decide the Grand Prix qualifier, unless there is a tie. Then there is a special scholastic spot that will be settled in a playoff. Then there are two wildcards named by the AF4C. (One is a lock, the other still under consideration...) But wait, that's only ten. There was a spot left over from the National Open since only one woman participated. This oddity wasn't covered under the rules and various methods could be used to to award this last spot, essentially making it a third wildcard. I think it should go to someone who tried to qualify and lost on tiebreaks, or maybe to the second-place Grand Prix finisher.

December 9, 2005

HB Foundation Foundered

Tom Ewers sends this in as coming from a Minnesota chess discussion group. Apparently the HB Foundation, which sponsored the huge HB Challenge tournament in May this year, is kaput. That event didn't get the number of players it needed to be considered a financial success, at least not according to the pre-event comments of the organizers. Their website is now offline.

Unfortunately, the HB foundation went completely out of business as of Nov 30. Their 2 million dollar endowment now has nothing in it. There are a group of concerned folks doing a letter writing campaign to get it started again...let me know if you are interested in helping.

Brian Ribnick -- HB Foundation Advisory Board Member

That's a lot of money to go through. A shame, as they had some interesting projects even without the big tournament. If you have more information, send it to me or post it below and I'll move it up here. [Update: HB Challenge organizer Maurice Ashley has posted at length below.]

World Cup 2005 r5.1

Just hanging out on the sofa and enjoying watching people trudge through the snow and slush on the way to work. Thanks to the miracle of time zones, all the games in Khanty-Mansyisk are already over. The only decisive top-tier game was Gelfand baring his fangs and beating Grischuk with white. Against Sakaev it looked like Kamsky was getting into trouble again against the Sicilian, but he came through the complications better and won. Malakhov beat Dreev.

For me, the suspense of the event is largely gone since the eight finalists are all going to the next stage anyway. I'm more interested in who else will make the cut than in who will win. It illustrates how much interest the concept of a world championship can generate, even a rather weak tea version of a cycle like this one. That this cycle is designed to kill the great drama of matches with a final tournament is still beyond me. Tournaments should lead to matches, not vice-versa.

Friday Cat Blogging 5

Bagley in the sink, what's not to like? Open thread, suggestions, questions, the usual. I can't believe Argentina got another brutal group this year. The USA is toast. England got a pansy group.

December 10, 2005

World Cup 2005 r5.2

All four of the top-tier games were decisive today, amazing. Just seconds ago Grischuk converted against Gelfand to level the score and force tiebreaks. None of the other matches will require the third day. Ponomariov ground down Bareev, Aronian beat Gurevich, and Bacrot took out Rublevsky. So we are guaranteed four 2700s in the final four, which is great. Note that the matches do not get any longer in this event. The semifinals and finals are still two games and then rapids. Next year's candidates matches are planned to run six games.

In the second group the only decisive game was Carlsen's excellent win with black against Lautier. After various miracles Kamsky held off Sakaev to win that match. I don't think I've ever seen a game in which so many rooks were placed in take by so many bishops! Malakhov drew to win his match with Dreev. van Wely - Vallejo Pons will go to tiebreaks. If you're trying to keep track, this means Carlsen, Kamsky, Malakhov and either van Wely or Vallejo Pons continue fighting for the two or three spots in next year's candidates matches. Pairing discussion below.

Nakamatic!

US champ Hikaru Nakamura might just be biding his time to see if FIDE will finally turn the world championship into a blitz event. The Internet Chess Club recently started a winner take all blitz tournament every other Saturday. The next one is Dec. 17. But despite the dozens of strong GMs and IMs who have come to play in the first three events it looks like they should just call it a "Hikaru take all" tournament. Three swiss system events of 3+0 blitz and three wins for Nakamura! The prize is a cool five hundred bucks and there is no entry fee. But the competition is stiff.

I don't know (or care to know) all the secret and not-so-secret identities of all the Grandmasters who have participated in these events, but I recognize a few and Hikaru ("smallville") is definitely not the only top-50 player in the mix. Of course now I've jinxed him for the next one, but three in a row is impressive. The last one went to a tiebreak, where he beat "zdr" 2-0. (To give equal time, he's more often at Playchess.com as "Star Wars.")

3-0 is the standard online blitz speed and has been for quite a while. My feeling has always been that this is because strong players (and probably all players) think 5-0 gives too much time for computer cheating. Weak players are just as paranoid about this as strong ones. 3-0 is largely reflex and the ever-popular 1-0 bullet chess is close to insanity. Of course they're all good fun, but novices playing these speeds makes the coach in me queasy. A lot of these "white belts" just play chess for fun as they would any other game or video game. But a majority sincerely want to improve and one two-hour game will do much more for them than 20 blitz games. There are groups who play longer time control games online, and of course we have Ninja tournaments!

December 11, 2005

A Ninja Christmas!

According to Cafe Press, this week is the last chance you have to get ChessNinja.com gear you can be sure will arrive in time for Christmas. The ideal holiday gift for a fellow chess geek or for yourself. You can drop subtle hints to your friends and family. Kids' sizes available! Over 100 items sold so far, to seven countries and 16 states. (I think my total commission is around nineteen cents but that might be high.) Personally I'm very fond of my hooded sweatshirt with handy pockets. I'm still waiting to receive photos from people posing in their Ninja goods. Send'em in and I'll post them here. (Especially the three of you who bought thongs. You know who you are. Okay, maybe I'll keep those pics private.)

Of course email training newsletters also make a fine and very inexpensive gift. And those can be ordered on and received on the same day, including Christmas. Plug over.

World Cup 2005 r5.3

Grischuk beats Gelfand in blitz to become the final member of the final four along with Aronian, Bacrot, and Ponomariov. I wish the matches moved to four games at this point. In the second section Vallejo Pons fended off van Wely's piece sacrifice to win and keep Spanish hopes alive for a place in the candidates matches. The official site has many interesting interviews to check out. Funny to see in the Bologan interview that the old myth of supercomputers in "Kasparov's secret laboratory" is still alive. (Suggested by the interviewer and dismissed by Bologan, in case you're too lazy to RTFA.)

December 12, 2005

World Cup 2005 r6.1

The final four didn't show many signs of life. The four young stars should make for exciting chess, but Grischuk-Ponomariov was a brief Petroff draw. Bacrot allowed Aronian to play the Marshall – rarely seen these days – and felt obliged to force a draw by repetition on move 23. In the fight for the last qualification spots, Kamsky-Vallejo Pons was one of the shortest draws of the entire event. It was an antique anti-Berlin line (revived by Ivanchuk against Kramnik at Corus a few years ago) and since it seemed to be Kamsky's choice one wonders how and where Black improved in the space of three obvious moves. With that ten-mover in mind I guess I shouldn't also wonder why Malakhov-Carlsen went on so long in a drawn position. (Actually the game is still going, so if somebody manages to lose this will require an epic retraction.)

December 13, 2005

World Cup 2005 r6.2

Too busy for details, will get to the topic backlog tomorrow. Finally some news as Aronian beat Bacrot to move into the final. All the other relevant matches are going to tiebreaks. Carlsen-Malakhov was the only full-bodied game of the three.

France Surrenders! Thanks so much to Bacrot for resigning and forcing us to look up and/or figure out the way to win that endgame position instead of playing it out. I know that the stronger side should win if the pawns are five files apart as they are here, but doesn't the black h-pawn change anything?

From the final position 51.Kf4 h5 is not easy to crack. The h-pawn will arrive on h4 and be a nuisance. The black king can play to d7 to stop the white king from penetrating on the queenside. If White then plays f6+ the pawn is on a dark square and can't be protected by the bishop. White can't set up a barrier with pawn on f6 and bishop on e6 because the h-pawn will deflect the bishop so the king can get to the f-pawn. Looks drawn to me, but I just woke up.

Update: Some have suggested that the score of the game is wrong, always a thought when these things happen. If the pawn is still on f4 things change, of course. 50.Kf3 looks much stronger. (But it's still probably drawn, see below.) As for the diagrammed position, other sources seem to agree it's drawn, including GM Shipov over at chesspro.ru. But we might be spending time on the wrong position. (Not) Either way, he should have played it out! [Update 2: Diagram is correct final position. Someone in Khanty-Mansiysk looking at the scoresheet confirms 50.f5 Ba7 1-0.]

December 14, 2005

World Cup 2005 r6.3

Amazing! Sure, it's rapid and blitz but the drama was stupendous today. Partially because I'm rooting for fellow Brooklynite Gata Kamsky, who seconds ago took out Vallejo Pons in the second blitz game! This guarantees him at least the 10th spot in the World Cup and a slot in next year's world championship candidates matches. Gata came back from losing the first rapid game with white. (He's had more trouble with white than with black throughout.)

Kamsky will now face Norwegian 15-year-old Magnus Carlsen, who beat Malakhov in blitz after a must-win rapid victory. It will be former prodigy versus the latest model, though it's an anti-climax because both of them are into the candidates. It's good news to keep Carlsen in the cycle as the towheaded teen means mucho PR. (Plus, he's playing at a 2700 level.) Vallejo Pons vs Malakhov still has something at stake, the 11th mystery candidates slot that should exist because Bacrot is likely already in by rating. ("mystery," "likely," "should"... must be FIDE rules.)

Speaking of rocks, Ukraine's Ruslan Ponomariov beat Grischuk with black in the first wild rapid game and comfortably held the next game to move into the final, where he will face Levon Aronian of Armenia. Nice to see the best chess rewarded, which isn't always, or even usually, the case in these KO's. Aronian beat Ponomariov in route to the world under-12 title in 1994! They played three times in 2001 with two draws and a win for Aronian. Of course Ponomariov went on to win the FIDE KO WCh later that year and shoot into the top 10. That's where Aronian is today and where Ponomariov looks ready to return. Hard to pick a favorite; I'll settle for two full games.

PS: In case you haven't been following the comments to yesterday's item, the score was correct and the diagram is of the final position. (Thanks to Gennady in Khanty-Mansiysk.) No one on site has said anything about a time loss. The final position is definitely drawn. Further notes from GMs Yermolinsky and Shipov are in yesterday's comments. I'm cringing in anticipation of Bacrot's statement about this. He may want to stay in Siberia.

Stop Cheating Hearts

Jon Jacobs sends in a link to the online version of an anti-cheating petition he helped organize and send to the USCF. More than anything it's a flare and a call to action regarding the potential for cheating at open events with big prize funds. One incident mentioned in the petition was covered here. (Links to the HB rules were dug up by Duif here.)

Cheating has recently been in the news at the top level as well, when one of the San Luis FIDE WCh players hinted that Topalov might have been aided by a spectator with access to a computer. Kasimdzhanov's similarly themed comments in the latest New In Chess leave seem to finger him as the one involved. His comments in NIC only mention that the conditions in San Luis made such a thing possible, but it's not hard to imagine a listener running such statements into an accusation.

I seriously doubt a pro with much riding on his reputation would risk trying to get assistance, at least not at the top where reputation means invitations. (I'm talking OTB here; even strong GMs have been nabbed listening to Fritzy during online tournaments.) When it comes to amateurs playing for big prizes, that's a different matter, which is why the petition's talk of penalties is so relevant. With consumer electronics getting smaller and faster, having a hall full of players with nothing to lose and thousands of dollars to gain is unattractive.

So far this sort of thing has been left up to the organizers. We know about Ponomariov's cell-phone forfeit, but the same rules aren't universally applied. Having your phone go off shouldn't be treated the same as being caught in the bathroom stall running Fritz. Being caught cheating should result in a serious penalty by the federation, not just the loss of a game. Conclusive evidence will be hard to come by, one of the things that makes it tempting. But a watch list is certainly a good start.

An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, we need some ideas about how to control the playing environment without turning the hall into a prison. Checking all electronics at the door is not very practical, unfortunately. Prohibiting spectators is a drag, as is forbidding the players from leaving the hall, or only using one or two authorized restrooms. So deterrence may be the best solution and that means a coherent penalty system that is actually implemented. Are there any federations that have policies about this?

December 15, 2005

World Cup 2005 r7.1

The finals are here and in just two more days it will be all over. Ponomariov and Aronian played a sharp, interesting draw today. It is great to see Super-Mariov back on track, playing powerful, risky chess again. Aronian was up to the challenge, though it's a shame they didn't play out one of the pretty fireworks lines that lead to dead equality from the final position. It looks like Grischuk and Bacrot have decided to play rapids for the few thousand dollars that separate the 3rd and 4th places. In the last round all four short draws in the first game were matched by equally short draws in the second. Tacky.

In the other match that (probably) matters, Malakhov outplayed Vallejo Pons in a wild one. Turn off Fritzy and enjoy trying to figure out these lines, very sharp stuff. The winner of this match will finish 11th, which should be good enough for a spot in the candidates matches, unless FIDE changes its qualification rules or unless either Kramnik or Kasparov shock the world and play. (Again: K and K are in by rating. If they don't play, Shirov and Bacrot are in by rating. Bacrot is also a World Cup qualifier. He goes in by rating, creating an extra spot from the World Cup, lucky number 11.)

Kamsky's tremendous defensive effort was on the verge of ruining a spectacular attacking game by Carlsen, but the American blundered a piece and, as Alekhine would say, "the game arrived to its most logical conclusion." (36..Bc3 37.Rxd6+ Kc5 and Black should hold.) White's stereotypical sacrifices against the Sicilian were still fun to watch. The kid is dangerous and he's not getting tired! Isn't it past his bed-time? Gata may have been a little winded after yesterday's stress blender against Vallejo Pons.

There are quite a few more interesting – if abysmally translated – interviews on the official site. Also some fun, if also technically terrible, photos in today's photo report instead of just the usual boring at-the-board shots. The correct score of van Wely-Dreev is almost certainly 44.Qxg8+ Ka7 45.Qg5.

Your Questions for Bessel Kok

Bessel Kok and Ali Nihat Yazici are the "Right Move Team" for the 2006 FIDE presidential election. Their website covers some positions and policy, if not heavy on the specifics. They agreed to an interview that will run here and at ChessBase and I thought I would open up the floor. The best questions will be added to mine and submitted next week, with publication likely to come in January. Please read their website materials, including their bios, to avoid too much redundancy.

Before you ask, I'll be happy to extend the same questions to the current FIDE administration. It would be a positive step if they showed any sort of openness, even if it is only brought on by this first serious challenge to Ilyumzhinov's power. Speaking of, Anatoly Karpov apparently gave an interview in Russia a few days ago confirming that he was running. Having another well-known candidate in the race could have serious strategic consequences. Everyone seems to assume that Ilyumzhinov has already bought off X number of smaller federation votes, though this general assumption of corruption is rarely backed up with anything approaching evidence.

December 16, 2005

World Cup 2005 r7.2

Ponomariov and Aronian rocked the chessboard again today. No matter who wins on tiebreaks tomorrow they both deserve our applause. Aronian again had the upper hand, so you could say he would be the more deserving winner if you want to nitpick. He tackled Ponomariov's creative kingside invasion with admirable sang froid and ended up with a knight and pawn endgame that definitely looked winning for White. But Ponomariov dug in and with Aronian playing on increment he managed to save his Ukrainian bacon.

Kamsky, yet again showing he's lost none of his steely resolve, came back to beat Carlsen and send their match into tiebreaks. It was looking like a long defense would be required of the Norwegian, but he missed a pawn push deflection and had to resign immediately. Vallejo Pons couldn't make any progress against Malakhov so the Russian wins their match to finish 11th. That gives him the inside track on sneaking into the candidates matches.

December 17, 2005

World Cup 2005 r7.3

Levon Aronian of Armenia is the winner of the 2005 World Chess Cup. He beat Ruslan Ponomariov 2-0 in the rapid tiebreaks to take the title and the $80,000 first prize. (I subtract the 20% "FIDE tax" first. Prize funds should be stated in the amount that goes to the players. Armenian or German taxes are Aronian's problem.) In the first game Ponomariov blundered against Aronian's provocative opening play and was down a piece by move 20. Aronian held easily with black to take the title.

It capped off a tremendous run of fine chess from the young new star. He played at a high level throughout and is unquestionably a deserving winner. He only required tiebreaks twice: against Vallejo Pons in the fourth round and Ponomariov in the final. His tournament performance was over 2800. He never lost a single game at any time control (nor had Pono until today). Aronian will be the top seed in the candidates matches next year.

The 23-year-old Aronian has lived in Germany for the past five years. This result will solidify his place in the top ten. His real trial by fire begins in a month when he goes up against the big dogs at Corus Wijk aan Zee. There was a pre-final interview with him on the FIDE site and here's one from a few months ago at ChessCafe (pdf).

Grischuk and Gelfand saved their worst for last and were demolished by Bacrot and Bareev, respectively. A solid 3rd place for Bacrot, who will also be at Corus. So will Gata Kamsky, who beat Carlsen in a pair of interesting games. As he pointed out to me by email, as against Smirin he was again saved in a R+N endgame. Carlsen will be playing in the Corus B group, but after this event he probably wouldn't be picked to finish last in the A.

December 19, 2005

2005 Russian Superfinal

This powerful event started today in Moscow with Svidler, Morozevich, and Kramnik leading the field. Continuing a dubious tradition for this event there were two last-minute drop-outs. Grischuk publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the prize fund days before the event. Najer apparently withdrew due to health reasons but I don't have any more information than that. They have been replaced by Zvjaginsev and Tomashevsky.

The $40,000 first prize was unknown until days before the event started, which only somewhat mitigates Grischuk's bail-out. (FBF posts the full prize list below and this year's event has a larger total fund, so Grischuk's move is bizarre.) Last year the event had Kasparov and a $125,000 prize fund. The first prize he won was more than this year's, $50,000. All these drop-outs are ridiculous. This isn't an open; it's a prestigious national event and one of the strongest of the year. But ad hoc organizing is going to engender equally unprofessional behavior by the players.

Rublevsky and Bareev sprinted in from the World Cup and faced each other in the first round, a win for Rublevsky. Svidler is playing for a win against Kramnik in a R+N endgame right now. Maybe Kamsky could stop by on the way home with some advice?! Svidler missed a pretty winning shot with 40.Rc7! but still has good chances for the full point. (Update: he found it a move later. Now 1-0, I believe Svidler's first classical win over Kramnik.)

Update: Misha posts below that Najer required an operation, but is out of danger. And that the Russian site e3e5 is providing some coverage in English. Games in PGN at TWIC.

December 21, 2005

Topalov on Comps

A fluffy Reuters item on CNN.com has Veselin Topalov talking about chess and computers. Interesting timing since he's not doing anything with them in public right now. Or is he? Perhaps he was sought out by a reporter under the influence of the recent New Yorker item on computer chess.

"A human, a world champion or a top grandmaster at his best, should still be better, but you achieve this condition only a few days a year," he said. "In a long game, people still have a chance, even if it's not much of one."

Not exactly the tough talk you might expect were Topalov angling for a big-money match with Hydra. I agree with the comment in the article that says GMs often don't take computer games seriously. For most they are occasional exhibitions and treated as such. Kramnik and Kasparov prepared hard for matches against Fritz and Junior in 2002-03 and could only draw. Kramnik and Kasparov! I doubt lesser players think they can survive against stronger machines with little or no preparation. They simply don't much care. If they lose, they're almost supposed to and there is no loss of Elo, reputation, or pride.

December 22, 2005

Freed Dlugy

If you Google "Dlugy" the number one hit is this May 17 Daily Dirt item mentioning that US GM Max Dlugy had been arrested in Russia and had actually been detained since April 12. Now there are several reports about his acquittal. ChessBase also has an item up.

The Kommersant report says he was behind bars for over two years, which is not the case. (The usually excellent Chess Today repeats this error.) Eight months is certainly long enough, especially for such flimsy charges. I'll post an item when he gets home to New Jersey. Best wishes to Max and Marina.

IM Caruana

Back in July I wondered if 13-year-old American Fabiano Caruana might be on the Olympiad team in 2008 or 2010. I believe he just received his third and final International Master norm by winning the latest "First Saturday" IM event in Hungary. And he might be playing in the Olympiad next year! But not for the US. John Henderson writes in to say that it's almost certain Caruana will be changing his federation from the US to Italy, where he will be residing with his family. Turin hosts the 2006 Olympiad and since the home nation gets multiple teams, it's very probable he'll be get a spot. (Indeed he may already have been promised one.)

2005 Russian Superfinal R4

It's still a log jam, although Sergey Volkov has distanced himself by taking charge of the cellar with .5/4. Svidler, Rublevsky, and Zvjaginsev lead with 3/4. Zvjaginsev flaunted his good form, almost tempting fate, by playing the King's Indian against Kramnik. This is the same Kramnik who was responsible for driving Kasparov away from one of his favorite openings by beating his KID in the famous Novgorod, 1997 game. Kasparov never played the King's Indian again (except in a blitz game against Kramnik the next year; he lost that one too).

Zvjaginsev had some new ideas and managed to suffer and survive by keeping all the play on the c-file. I don't think anyone has dared the KID against Kramnik since KID die-hard Smirin in the 2002 Russia vs the World rapid tournament. Smirin won, but the KID has been in decline at the top level since Kasparov gave it up. Radjabov is the other current adherent.

Most of the talk about the early rounds has now switched from Kramnik's first-round loss to Svidler to Morozevich's loss to Jakovenko in the third round. Morozevich, a GM at being a flake, apparently overslept and forfeited the game. He came back today to beat Khalifman in a fascinating game.

December 24, 2005

2005 Year in Review Preview

[Update: I put up a new version of the same poll so you can pick four stories instead of one to make it more interesting. The obvious winner (with 73%) was Kasparov's retirement, but there should be more variety with the third and fourth spots. So vote again!]

There's a week left in 2005 and it's been a big year in the chess world. I'm putting together a year in review item that will focus on the most important stories. Of course some of the biggest were things that didn't happen, or may happen, but I didn't include those in the message board poll up now. In no particular order:

-- FIDE Announces World Championship Cycle
-- Garry Kasparov Retires
-- Hydra Beat Michael Adams 5.5-0.5
-- Topalov Wins FIDE WCh and Becomes New #1
-- Rise of Unknown and/or Open Source Chess Programs
-- Classical Champ Kramnik Falls Out of Top Five
-- Arkady Naiditsch Wins Dortmund
-- Bessel Kok and Others Challenge Ilyumzhinov
-- Bobby Fischer Released to Iceland
-- Ninja T-shirts and Mig's New Nephew!

None of these require explanation to Dirt readers, so go get your vote on. (Again!) "Important" is open for debate, just like "great" and the other adjectives that fuel our endless discussions. I mostly considered relevancy and the amount of debate sparked. I tried not to get too abstract (six supertournaments this year, for example). Feel free to go through the monthly archives on the left, very handy. I have my own opinions of course, but won't spin yet.

December 28, 2005

Home Stretch

Back online for a few minutes and in 12 hours I'll even be back in cell phone land. Really, it's a scandal that the hills in the East Bay have such lousy coverage. But I'm leaving the Bronze Age tonight and the normal pandemonium will resume shortly with our interview of Bessel Kok, our biggest stories of 2005, our hopes, promises, and predictions for 2006, and a chat with Garry Kasparov, who is just a few months away from a full year away from the board. What else do we need to cover?

2005 Russian Superfinal R9

It's going to be hard to stop Sergey Rublevsky from winning the Russian championship superfinal in Moscow. He has a full point lead and has white against one of the tail-enders tomorrow. The favorites have mostly disappointed, at least result-wise. There have been many spectacular games (far more than in the World Cup, certainly). Bareev-Morozevich is worth the price of admission alone, as are, as usual, most of Moro's games, although he lost that one. There was a brief interview with Rublevsky before he sprinted from Siberia to Moscow.

December 31, 2005

Help Wanted

I'm trying to track down some players to solicit their input for the next volume of Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors book series, this one on the opening revolution of the 1970's. Either their contact information is expired or they are ignoring me. Hoping for the former, if you have up-to-date contact information for these people, or know them, or are them, please drop me a note at mig at chessninja.com or call me at +1 718.369.3316. Many thanks.

Robert Byrne, Jonathan Speelman, Jonathan Mestel, Zoltan Ribli, Gyula Sax

I've tried phone numbers and email addresses for all of them, but no responses so far. So if you are a friend of theirs tell them Garry wants their help! (The list of players we have talked to already is much longer, natch.)

Tops of the Pops

The top 100 January 2006 FIDE rating list is out. I'm sure Mark will have his usual summary top list up soon enough. [ChessBase has some stuff up now, though without the handy gainers and losers info Mark usually has.] As expected, Topalov completes an amazing 2005 and comes in as the top active player at 2801, becoming only the third ever to crack 2800. These marks are fun but irrelevant. 2700 used to mean world championship class; now that would cover the top 19 players.

Aronian arrives at #5 in a big leap although Corus, starting in a few weeks, will be the true test of his status. Kramnik is #6 at 2741, a point ahead of Leko. Mamedyarov jumped past Radjabov on the list. Amazing to see names like Shirov, Adams, and Bareev barely clutching to the top 20. A new generation is coming up and there are still only ten spots in the top ten, which has proven far less exclusive in recent years than it used to be. Only Kasparov, Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, and Leko can really be called permanent members. Svidler looks like a rock at #4, but a few years ago even he was out of the top ten. Ponomariov is back at the ten spot after a few difficult years and he's again looking like the star that won the FIDE KO in 2001.

Not that 2800 is a piece of cake just yet. And it's fair to say that with Bareev as #20, "championship class" really does include 20 players. This is the way it has always evolved. It was almost inconceivable for someone outside of the top few beating Lasker or Capablanca in a single game, let alone a match. Now you've got a few hundred players who can take games from the elite and Sergey Rublevsky just finished ahead of Kramnik, Svidler, and Morozevich in a round-robin. (Naiditsch who?!) So the new age of parity has come in ways other than Kasparov's retirement. Now if only the rating system were more dynamic to allow even greater movement and more accuracy we'd really have some excitement.

Happy New Year! (with cats)

It's not Friday, but we'll make do. Happy New Year and an open thread for a present. And cat photos. My two keeping my legs warm and then a pair of reader cats (or maybe their owners are readers). Black and white, of course!

Thanks to Rusty Miller and IM Dave "fluffy" Vigorito for the kitties.

So what should we expect, and hope for, in 2006? New leadership in FIDE that will bring back matches and bring in corporate sponsorship? Corus and Linares with fewer than 50% draws? Who medals at the Turin Olympiad?

January 3, 2006

Running of the Ponomariov

Tired, schmired. Rublevsky and Bareev sprinted from the World Cup to the Russian Superfinal, where Rublevsky won the title with +4 and Bareev played spotty but rich chess for a +1 score. Ruslan Ponomariov, fresh from losing the final match against Aronian, had a few more days to rest but a longer distance to travel – and more adjustments to make regarding climate – when he traveled to Pamplona, Spain for a strong round robin.

The 2001 FIDE champion turned in a professional win with three victories over the tail-enders. (There were no decisive games among the top four finishers, so this wasn't really a gripping affair.) Harikrishna could have caught Pono by beating him with black in the final round but instead offended his fans by offering a short draw. So the Indian #2 was caught by Cheparinov, who played to win with black and pulled it off.

Ponomariov was the top seed in an unbalanced field, but it suffices as another indicator that he has returned to 2001 form. He is back in the top ten on the rating list and played great chess in Khanty-Mansiysk. He's young, motivated, and has played regularly, so his dip off the charts makes you ponder the matter and meaning of the overused word "form." We can't blame two years of middling results on the disruption surrounding his aborted match with Kasparov. His youth – he's still only 22 – was no doubt a factor and he'll have a better chance of sticking around this time. A short interview with Ponomariov from the World Cup site.

January 4, 2006

Fischer for Sale

I didn't bother reporting on the second attempt to auction a bunch of Fischer's lost/looted possessions on Ebay last month, especially since much of the information in the auction description was wrong or misleading, although corrections were made in some cases. Our man in Iceland, BradMajors, reports in the comments that these things may now be returning to Fischer in Iceland. I believe many of his other things, lost when his Pasadena storage locker was emptied, have been successfully auctioned on Ebay and elsewhere over the past few years. If you want to work on your Icelandic you can read about it here.

2006 Candidates Pairings

FIDE has gone ahead and announced the pairings for the 2006 six-game candidates matches. They have confirmed to their satisfaction that Kasparov and Kramnik (I reflexively typed "and Karpov" there. How old do I feel?) aren't going to participate and so their rating spots kick down to Shirov and Bacrot. As predicted, this creates a final spot for 11th-place World Cup finisher Malakhov since Bacrot is also in from that event.

1. Levon Aronian (ARM) - Magnus Carlsen (NOR)
2. Peter Leko (HUN) - Mikhail Gurevich (TUR)
3. Ruslan Ponomariov (UKR) - Sergey Rublevsky (RUS)
4. Boris Gelfand (ISR) - Rustam Kasimjanov (UZB)
5. Etienne Bacrot (FRA) - Gata Kamsky (USA)
6. Alexander Grischuk (RUS) - Vladimir Malakhov (RUS)
7. Judit Polgar (HUN) - Evgeny Bareev (RUS)
8. Alexei Shirov (ESP) - Michael Adams (ENG)

Send your condolence cards to Vallejo Pons, who lost to Malakhov for that 11th spot, and to Ivanchuk, who is the next rating reserve despite being higher-rated than Bacrot and Shirov over the past year. As I've ranted many times in the past, it's a crime that FIDE is using such old rating lists for the 2007 championship. It's another that they have given free rides to half of the San Luis field to the next final tournament. As currently planned these 16 players will fight for four spots in a final double round-robin tournament. Bleh. Maybe new FIDE leadership can come in in time to save us and institute a worthy finish to this first decent cycle in a decade.

Of course it's great to see Shirov squeak in even at the cost of poor Chukky. He's a formidable match player and I can imagine him seeing this as his chance to catapult back into the limelight after an obscure 2005. But he has a tough "old school" match against Adams, another fallen angel.

January 5, 2006

Ill Kramnik Exits Corus

A stunning, if not entirely surprising, press release by Vladimir Kramnik announced his withdrawal from the Jan. 13 Corus Wijk aan Zee supertournament and his treatment for a severe form of arthritis.

Statement by Vladimir Kramnik

“I would like to inform the chess community that due to health problems I shall not be able to participate in the Corus Chess Tournament 2006.

A couple of years ago a form of arthritis was diagnosed. This disease causes painful inflammation in the joints. Unfortunately since that time, the symptoms have started to appear more often and with greater severity. A new recent crises makes it necessary to undertake serious clinical treatment. Solving the present problem within a few months will allow me to come back and enjoy competitive chess at the highest level.

I want to stress clearly, that – as always – I am eager to continue and enhance my chess career. There are still many goals to achieve.”

Kramnik has long had bouts of ill health and low energy, including back problems going back to his teens. Rumors of a chronic illness had gone around even before he dropped out of the Russian superfinal in 2004 with remarks about exhaustion and sickness stemming from his Brissago world championship match with Leko. ChessBase takes an informed guess at Ankylosing Spondylitis being the culprit. (Link goes to FAQ.)

This is terrible news for the chess community and also for chess, which over the last few years has seen the nearly unprecedented decay of one of the most talented players of the last quarter century. We wish him well and hope the treatment is both painless and entirely successful. Please post your best wishes below.

Valery Salov had both physical and mental troubles and dropped out for a while. He came back strong but left entirely in 1999. The sad case of Brazil's Henrique Mecking is well known. He was one of the top five players in the world when he was brought low by a serious illness in 1979. He returned to chess twelve years later but hasn't played often. Other cases include Pillsbury and his syphilis and many brilliant careers (and lives) cut short by alcoholism. Of course there is little in the way of health care for GMs.

As for Corus, they have experience with last-minute replacements. Svidler and Ponomariov are the top-rated players not already participating. Then Morozevich, Grischuk and Polgar. Perhaps young Mamedyarov? Or maybe the most successful Corus last-minute replacement ever could do it again. Garry Kasparov played in his first Corus in 1999 when Nigel Short dropped out and went on to score 10/13...

January 6, 2006

Mamedyarov Replaces Kramnik at Corus

The Corus Wijk aan Zee website reports that world junior champion (two-time!) Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan has replaced Vladimir Kramnik in Group A. The 20-year-old just leapt up to the #15 spot on the rating list (2709), surpassing his more famous countryman Teimour Radjabov. He's clearly on the way up, but he doesn't have much experience against the elite. He's only played a handful of games against 2700+ competition and as far as I can tell, didn't win any of them.

Mamedyarov is known for his blitz skills and is regularly near the top of the blitz rating list at Playchess.com. (Other names are rumors only, my lawyer suggests I add!) Last November he beat Kasimdzhanov, himself a formidable quick-chess player, 5-3 in a blitz match in Baku. He finished =2-3 in last year's B Group at Corus, a point behind Karjakin. The KO format doesn't seem quite as agreeable for him. He lost to Nakamura in Lausanne and to Najer in the second round (in sudden death) in Khanty-Mansiysk.

January 7, 2006

Our Questions for Bessel Kok

[Below is the letter and the questions I sent to the Bessel Kok and Ali Nihat Yazici campaign for the FIDE presidency. Many are culled from or inspired by your posts to the comments of this item. The questions are after the break. His replies will come in a separate item when they arrive.]

We’ll try not to repeat material already available on your campaign website or other interviews. If something looks similar it’s mostly likely a request for more details or explanation. Of course the presidency isn’t a dictatorship, or shouldn’t be, and your wishes won’t be law, but we would still like to hear those wishes and opinions.

As you can tell, the world championship dominates the thoughts of the fans. This is important because to me this has always meant the prestige and success of the cycle and final are essential tools for creating new fans, and fans mean sponsors. As many relevant thoughts and details you can provide about your plans and opinions here will be appreciated.

Continue reading "Our Questions for Bessel Kok" »

January 8, 2006

2006 Keres Rapid

Rapid chess didn't exist professionally when Estonian hero Paul Keres died in 1975. The rapid tournament in the Estonian capital is a strong one, held annually since 1998. (Before that there was one in 1993.) Vancouver also hosted a Keres Memorial that started around the same time, honoring the location of Keres' last tournament. He was on his way back from winning in Vancouver when he died. (The well-known Estonian banknote bearing his image can be seen here.)

Baltic son Alexei Shirov won the event in 2004 and 2005 and was back this year in a field that included excellent speed players Karpov, Ivanchuk, and Kasimjanov. These four were the heavy favorites and three of them finished in a first-place tie. But what people keep sending me mail about is Shirov's amazing score: 0.5/9. Most are in shock, and one even wondered if he had taken ill and left the event, forfeiting the majority. But the scores are all available. It's only a two-day event, so if you're out of form you don't have any time to recover. I'm not brave enough to ask him about it, but if he's feeling up to it maybe the new ACP board member will post a comment before trying to push it out of his mind forever!

January 9, 2006

Kasparov in the ACP

If your reaction was also "Whaaaa!?" you should scroll down the page of people who voted in the recent board election of the Association of Chess Professionals. It's right there, "Kasimdzhanov [sic], Kasparov, Kazhgaleyev..." This was a bit of a shock since Garry Kasparov's comments about the ACP (of which I'm a member) have been contemputous at best, mostly regarding their inability to raise any money. You may have figured out by now that the vote came from Belorussian IM Sergey Kasparov, ACP member and bane of database searchers everywhere. And just like in those searches, the ACP should include a first initial on the list to avoid any such confusion.

The new board has selected officers: President – Pavel Tregubov, Secretary – Bartlomiej Macieja, Treasurer – Almira Skripchenko. All were on the previous board. Good luck to them. It would be nice to see a statement of goals and purpose for the new year. An organizational endorsement for the FIDE presidential elections could be on the agenda soon. There is no reason to be impartial on something so critical to the lives of its members.

Korchnoi vs Cow

Mike Roberts just sent in a link to a commercial at the new Google Video service. It's for milk and has none other than Viktor Korchnoi playing a game against a cow. The ending voiceover is in English. Anyone seen it or know where this was shown? There are a few other chess videos on the site, mostly very lame homemade affairs. The old AltaVista commercial with Kasparov is there, but not his SuperBowl Pepsi commercial. Maybe it's a good place for me to start dumping my hours of chess footage and interviews.

Chessplayers are a natural fit for advertising. We've had epic conversations here about why this hasn't happened. Chess imagery is used in ads and movies all the time, even in the supposedly anti-intellectual, "chess is for geeks" USA. But companies (or ad firms) don't see why they should go the next step and employ actual chessplayers for these spots. I'm impressed that the milk ad doesn't explain who Korchnoi is at all since it's unlikely he is widely known by name or face anywhere I can think of. Perhaps some of the chess-mad countries would note his name when presented in a chess context like this.

January 13, 2006

Busy New Year

Still alive, just been swamped this week. Lots of news to catch up on, individual items forthcoming. My interview with Max Dlugy will be up at ChessBase in a day or so. Fully acquitted and released from nine months in Russian prison on bogus charges, he and his wife came into the city to see their friends the Kasparovs. Recorder and camera were ready.

The field is almost set for the US Championship and there is a lot of news. The event collided with the FIDE women's world championship and a deal is in the works to enable players to participate in both. It will involve splitting the top women out of the main championship field after four rounds.

Corus 2006 starts tomorrow with its usual all-star field. Kasparov's predictions won't hit print in New In Chess for a few weeks, but Topalov isn't his pick for first. (Due to the pressure of playing as #1. He's a target now.) He's quite favorable about Aronian's chances.

Cheating allegations continue to fly around. Some are related to US Championship spots and are under review. Others are of the old-fashioned cash variety. All are reprehensible if true. Details as they become available.

Noteworthy GM norms here and there. Dirt favorite Pascal Charbonneau of CANADA (!) got his final GM norm in Chicago. 12-year-old Negi of India got a GM norm in Hastings. Eeek.

FIDE announced regulations for ad hoc world championship challenge matches.

Has anything else fallen through the cracks?

January 14, 2006

Corus 2006

The games are underway in this annual classic. Wijk aan Zee, as usual, brings together the super-elite, the top Dutch players (just one of whom is Dutch this year), and a few intrigues. Topalov and Anand ran a dead heat in the message board poll to pick the winner. I hasten to remind that Leko won last year with +4, beating Anand in their game. (Topalov finished third.)

Kasparov favors Anand and, to preview his upcoming New In Chess column, says Topalov winning here would be even more impressive than his win in San Luis. The favorite has additional pressures.

Anand didn't win a classical event in 2005 and could be due. No doubt he would like to avoid the perverse fate of never being rated #1, being topped by Topalov just as Kasparov finally drops off the list. Is this 2005 super-Topalov really a stable version? Can Leko and Adams get back up to speed? Is Kamsky again ready for prime time?

Watching the new generation is of more interest to me than picking the winner. Do Aronian, Bacrot, Mamedyarov, and Karjakin have what it takes to swim with the sharks? Everyone is very strong, but there have to be more than a few negative scores. (With Timman not playing and van Wely playing solidly, someone putting up -7 is unlikely.)

Live games at Playchess.com, ICC, and the official site. The first two have online commentary. GM Yasser Seirawan is doing multimedia commentary at Playchess. I'll be contributing to the wrap-ups at ChessBase.com. So if you see or hear any brilliant insights into the games while watching online, post them in the daily threads here so I can steal them.

January 15, 2006

Corus 2006 r2

Pretty good bang for our buck in the first round, I'd say. The ChessBase report should soon be updated with some notes from me and comments from Kasparov, among others. The official site has more features than in the past, kudos to them. They have a first-round report up with some basics.

Anand showed Karjakin what elite preparation is about these days: winning in the Najdorf without leaving home. White is already lost after 23...Nc7!! 24.Bg2. 23...Qa8 is natural and so must also have been in Karjakin's preparation, but having good chess software and knowing how best to use it aren't the same thing. (Finding 23..Nc7, and how long it takes to realize it's winning, is a good engine test. Shredder 9 is the only one on my machine that picks that move from the start, then taking two minutes to see White is lost. Others go longer and still suggest different moves (like ..Ng4) with a plus for White.) A win with black for Anand in the first round is a great omen for his winning chances.

Topalov pounded Kamsky, who essayed an unbalanced line of the Scandinavian and then went full tilt with the wild novelty 10...g5. It's hard to imagine such a position holding up in classical play without considerable luck and flawless tactical play. The game would have ended even sooner had Topalov seen the line 17.Be5 clean through. Aronian's impressive-looking pawn wall and erroneous piece sac were taken apart by Ivanchuk.

Lots of good games in the B Group as well, which has become one of the strongest and most interesting tournaments of the year in its own right. The most notable difference is the relatively inferior level of defense compared to the elite A Groupers. Inferior positions tend to turn into blunders and collapses almost routinely; at least they did in the first round.

I confess to having slept through most of the round. How have your live coverage experiences been? For those of you who don't want live Grandmaster commentary and chat, the official site has a simple new Java viewer that still doesn't let you grab the raw PGN. But at least it worked and their server held up fine.

Updates: Kamsky rocks Gelfand in a very nice game. Brooklyn, baby! Adams is throwing the entire kitchen at Topalov in a spectacular game.

January 16, 2006

Women Troubles

As has been tracked here in the past, the late but unavoidable change of dates of the US Championship (San Diego; Feb. 28 - March 12) moved the event into conflict with the FIDE women's world championship (Ekaterinburg, Russia; March 10-27). Among the complications, the Championship has obligations to the host NTC Foundation, whose employees dedicated to the event are on limited schedules. Pushing the Championship to April wasn't an option.

But some creative thinking by the AF4C may yet save the day and prevent the US participants from having to make a painful choice between the two most important events on the calendar. The plan currently under consideration has the women playing the field as normal for the first four rounds and then moving into a separate event against each other for the last five rounds, which will be played in three days. (All the women, not just the top scorers.)

As I understand the process, this was first floated by FIDE to make sure norm chances would be intact, then passed to the USCF. Now the women players themselves will vote on the new plan, in a secret ballot with unanimity required. Kudos go to Irina Krush for not taking things lying down, even when it didn't look like anything could be done. It was her drive that pushed the powers-that-be to come up with this attempt at a solution. Let's hope for a happy, and speedy, ending.

I also agree with Irina that this should never happen again. Official US events shouldn't be allowed to conflict with official FIDE events (on the rare occurrence that FIDE has their dates set well in advance). Of course this was accidental, caused by construction delays at the US Ch venue, but it should be in writing in the future.

Updating the official US Championship site now with a variety of things. Btw, I just stumbled onto that FIDE item about the 64-player Ekaterinburg KO event, with regulations, qualifiers, and reserves. The invited US women are Susan Polgar, Rusudan Goletiani, Tatev Abrahamyan, and Irina Krush. Anna Zatonskih is far down on the reserve list.

Can you name the current women's world champion? No peeking. Topalov's victory in San Luis put her back in the news, if you need a hint.

January 17, 2006

Corus 2006 r3

Chukky, Chukky, Chukky, what to do with Ivanchuk? A good opening against Anand turned into a desperate and futile struggle for survival after he pinched a poisoned pawn. As Kasparov put it to me, "typical Ivanchuk, two great wins with black and then he grabs the a-pawn like an old computer." He was also harsh on Kamsky again, perhaps not noticing that his two ugly losses with black sandwich a strong win with white against Gelfand. But it's true he was beaten by Karjakin with little fanfare, eventually losing on time.

Anand now leads, both his wins coming with black. Bacrot played a few horrible endgame moves to lose to Topalov, who, as always, deserves credit for playing hard. Adams also lost weakly, to Gelfand, perhaps after celebrating too much after his spectacular win against Topalov in round two. Or perhaps just to put the lie to my comments the other day about the level of defense being so much better in the A Group. The final rounds are set for excitement. Topalov-Anand and Leko-Topalov finish things off.

Official site. ChessBase reports. Various discussion threads in the message boards.

January 18, 2006

Corus 2006 r4

A strange round with three wins by black. As we pointed out in the ChessBase report, there have been relatively few draws, 50%, but this has come at the cost of a rather spotty overall level of play. There have been quite a few blunders and a lot of poor defensive efforts. Consistency is what wins these long events, and that has always been Anand's hallmark.

The game of the round was undoubtedly van Wely - Topalov, another notable demonstration of Topalov's wealth of opening innovations. As with Kasparov, the Bulgarian is combining formidable opening prep with mastery of the complications he induces and relentless pressure in every phase of the game. van Wely had a few chances to defend better, not exactly what you want with white. 25.Ra8+ was probably the last best chance.

I feel for Kamsky, who is struggling with his instincts as he tries to recover his game. It may not be possible to do that at this level without serious work on the openings, which Kamsky hasn't had much time for. It's amazing he almost drew against Aronian after hanging a pawn early on. As I pointed out in the report, 54.Bd6 gives excellent drawing chances, though precision is required. But he'll pick up more draws and at least one more win on sheer grit and hierarchy.

Wednesday is a free day, Anand-Leko comes in round five.

US Championship Updates

Been updating the site. Another set of qualifiers that include a Dirt hand, IM Jesse Kraai. (Collective Dirt reader karma is directed toward all players who post in the comments or send me stuff.) After some initial confusion caused by a whiskey overload in the Seattle area (guessing), Mean Dean Ippolito became the narrow winner of the qualifier grand prix. Kudos. (When I see him I'll try to get the correct score of his game against Becerra at the HB Challenge, which has mystified me for a while.) If anyone has photos of qualifiers Batchimeg Tuvshintugs or Alan Stein, or can contact them to request a pic, I'd appreciate it. [Thanks to John Fernandez and Michael Aigner]

The qualifiers are over and there are just five spots left in the field. Two are the usual wildcards, one is a special scholastic spot. Then there are two "leftover" spots created when women's qualifying spots went unclaimed. There are many good arguments about how best to distribute those last two spots. The initially obvious logic of giving them to other women players by some formula doesn't sound as logical when you consider it was apathy on the part of women players that led to these extra spots in the first place. They needed to show up and score 50% and in most cases they (the strong women) didn't bother to show up. We wouldn't want to contradict of the entire point of the qualifiers. (That this may form an argument against the women's qualifying formula itself is another matter.)

That argument also has its flaws. It's hard to say it's better to give a spot to someone who didn't try to qualify than to someone who tried (repeatedly) and failed. But it would be nice to see some formula applied to these spots. I'd vote for them going to the next two finishers on the grand prix point list, Sarkar and Kleiman. They both played in six (!) of the eight qualifiers and both came close to qualifying directly.

There's also a new brilliancy prize, women-only. Joyce Jillson, who knew? If I sponsor a $500 ChessNinja prize, what should it be for? Best chicken factor? Worst dressed?

January 19, 2006

Corus 2006 r5

Results and games at ChessBase. Report with my notes and comments from Kasparov and on-site will be added tomorrow morning.

Anand continues his torrid pace by beating Leko, who looked completely helpless. He's really shown some horrible form lately. This was as bad as his hideous loss to Svidler in San Luis. All credit to Vishy, but Leko never used to lose games like this. He's put up negative scores in his last two events and is on -1 now at Corus, where he won last year with +4, beating Anand in their game.

Ivanchuk moved back up and is in a tie for second with Topalov after adding to Kamsky's woes. Just not pretty to watch. Chess is hard. Brooklyn's pulling for ya, Gata. It won't get any easier; he has white against Anand tomorrow. As Shiv commented, it's not exactly a fair rematch of their amazing candidates match encounters from 1994-95. The last time they played it was a brilliant win for Kamsky at Dos Hermanas, 1996.

Topalov-Mamedyarov was the most interesting game of the round. Wild drawing combination by Black at the end, very nice stuff. Mamedyarov, a late substitute for Kramnik, is starting to warm up a bit perhaps. He's now the only player without a decisive game. Aronian-Adams went back and forth. Mickey missed excellent winning chances with 38..Re2! in time trouble. Bacrot played a dubious theoretical move (19..fxe4?!) against Karjakin and got into serious problems almost immediately. It's over after the nice 29.Bd2!, likely what Black missed. The Frenchman and the American have both castled long now.

Beliavsky lost to Carlsen in 20 moves. Ugh. Garry's comments about this disaster are amusing, as you might imagine. By my count Black wastes something like five moves of the first dozen or so. ..Bb7, ..Bc8, ..Be6, ..Bxa2 ?? You've got to be kidding. Big Al forgot to take his gingko biloba today.

Cheating Heart Attack

Cheating - mostly meaning game fixing - is quite common at in American swisses if you listen to the players. Allegations of fixing to get into the US Championship started here in mid-December in the Dirt comments. Now it appears something may actually be done, which would reflect a major sea-change in general, regardless of this specific case.

First, the game in question, which was posted by Jesse Kraai in the Dirt (link above). It's De Guzman - Kreiman from the American Open last November. This game, a win for black in the final round, was essential for qualifying Kreiman for the 2006 Championship. The Filipino IM's play in this game was, how shall we put it, absurdly pathetic.

1. d4 Nf6 2. g3 d5 3. Bg2 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. O-O O-O 6. Nbd2 c6 7. c3 Na6 8. e3 Bf5 9. Re1 Qc8 10. Qe2 Re8 11. Nb3 Bg4 12. Bd2 Ne4 13. Rec1 Qf5 14. h3 Bxh3 15. Bxh3 Qxh3 16. Qf1 Qf5 17. Kg2 Bf6 18. Qh1 h5 19. Be1 c5 20. Qh3 Qxh3+ 21. Kxh3 c4 22. Nbd2 Nd6 23. b3 b5 24. Kg2 Nc7 25. bxc4 bxc4 26. Kf1 e6 27. Rab1 Rab8 28. Ng1 g5 29. f3 g4 30. f4 Be7 31. Ne2 Kg7 32. Rxb8 Rxb8 0-1

IA Randall Hough, arbiter at the American Open, sent a letter including this game to America's Foundation for Chess, the group in charge of the US championship. He invited them to examine it, saying the game "was "fixed" to a virtual certainty." Kudos to Mr. Hough, who has more balls than the New York Yankees to take action. His attitude carried over to AF4C, who took his recommendation and sent the game moves to half a dozen GMs with the question, "how strong a player do you think white is?"

The answers came back 1400-1600, which is rather ungenerous to my White Belt readers, few of whom would play so passively and then simply resign. After further internal consideration, AF4C has contacted the USCF with this information along with the proposals that 1) the game should be circulated widely to shame the participants and 2) Kreiman should lose his spot in the US championship. Other punishment, such as a ban on rated play, may be considered by the USCF, or they could ignore it.

What isn't clear is who, if anyone, has the right to prevent Kreiman (or anyone) from playing in the championship or from playing chess in general. Organizers usually have total discretion, but an official event like this one is more delicate, hence the involvement of the USCF. Fixing is impossible to prove without a confession (and even then the other player can deny it), so organizers - and perhaps the USCF - must have the courage to act on overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Punishments must be severe enough to function as a deterrent, to the point where players will be hesitant to approach others for a fix. Organizers can ban players from their events, USCF players can be banned from rated play entirely for a period.

In the thread linked to above, USCF board member IM Greg Shahade blames most of the rampant cheating on the swiss system itself. Not literally true, of course, but it certainly encourages bad behavior by making it lucrative in a majority of cases. One good thing about the new board is that it's stocked with hard-nosed people with a load of practical organizing and playing experience. If anything can be done from an institutional perspective.

January 20, 2006

Corus 2006 r6

Kamsky beats Anand! Kamsky beats Anand! After three losses in a row, the top-ranked American takes out the tournament leader in a very smooth effort. Not dead yet! Adams beats Ivanchuk, Topalov headed for a draw unless Tiviakov blunders. Carlsen beats Naiditsch with black to take the lead in the B Group.

Friday Cat Blogging 7

A Brooklyn cat in honor of Gata Kamsky's win over Anand. He's now beaten Vishy twice in a row. Every ten years like clockwork!

A close-up of Morrigan taken with my new Canon Rebel XT and a 28mm f1.8 lens. Love that bokeh! Happy thoughts for the weekend, look at the pretty kitty. Open thread, topic suggestions, questions, etc.

January 21, 2006

Indian Givers

At least 50% of the chess news that comes in via news searches at Google and other services originates from India. Their mainstream media cover junior events, local clubs, and tournaments local, national, and international. Little of it is of particular interest to an international audience, but every once in a while something catches your eye. The last paragraph of this cutesy report on U-10's playing at a tournament in New Delhi, for example. Anand is invoked, as always, but then it finishes with this:

So what is their dream wish? They are unanimous in their answers and it has a Russian flavour to it. “We want to spend a day with Gary Kasparov and learn the finer points of the game from him,” they say in unison.

Disloyal rugrats! Maybe they saw Anand's loss to Kamsky? Joking aside, it's a little scary to think how long Kasparov has held this position in the imagination. In his post-retirement interview with New In Chess, Kasparov spoke about being touched when Anand came up to him after Linares to talk about how he and his clubmates had pored over his famous 1982 Olympiad game against Korchnoi. Anand was 13 at the time, but thanks to him they start much earlier at home these days. I had that interview in mind because I just received a copy of NIC editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam's latest collection of interviews, The Day Kasparov Quit. Great stuff.

San Diego Calling

We hope you are also packing your bags for the US Championship in San Diego. (Easy for me, I still haven't unpacked from my holiday travels.) In case you are, the NY Times today dedicates their "36 Hour" travel section to downtown San Diego. I saw virtually nothing of the city during the last championship despite being in the area for almost two weeks. We were sequestered in nearby La Jolla, which has no convenient public transportation to the city, and I was working 20 hours a day and never left the hotel.

This year's event is more centrally located and some of the finer fish taco places should be well in range. I'm hoping to get at least a little use out of the San Diego guidebook I bought last time and never bothered to unpack. In fact, it might still be in my suitcase... See you at the Hash House!

Btw, sign-ups have started for the US Championship Kids Simul on March 4.

Corus 2006 r7

Report now up at ChessBase, and Freddy is there now for photos and interviews and such. Topalov had no trouble with Sokolov's wild sacrifice and moves into clear first place. Karjakin and Carlsen both got winning endgames with what looked like tremendous ease. Weird. Leko almost blew the win against Kamsky, but his position was just overwhelming in too many ways to cope with.

January 22, 2006

Plagiarism Chronicle

Since we've been talking so much about cheating chessplayers, why not a bit about cheating chess writers? It's not news that the internet has made plagiarism much easier, as well as more profitable. Photos and articles can be copy-pasted, perhaps slightly changed, perhaps not. Often they are translated into other languages, reducing the chance of the theft being noticed. I've certainly seen my own writing and photos pop up all over the place over the years.

Usually these are relatively small sites that aren't run for profit and/or aren't in direct competition with the copyright holders. Sometimes they are amateurs who aren't aware what they are doing is illegal. (One, not an amateur, insisted that using photos he found on the web wasn't stealing because he "found them on Google.") Or they think they can use what they like as long as they include attribution.

Then you have blatant, commercially motivated plagiarism, which is what we have before us today. Thanks to Petrel for sending in a detailed analysis of an article by someone named Frank Kolasinski for something called Chess Chronicle, which appears to be a subscription-based online magazine. The offending article (from a free sample issue) seems to be mostly lifted - entire paragraphs, verbatim sentences - from various online sources, largely ChessBase.com articles by Jeff Sonas and me and including Dennis Monokroussos's blog. I wonder if Kolasinski's closing New Year's wishes were equally original and sincere.

Of course the author is responsible, and that he is listed on the masthead as "Game Editor" does not speak well of the publication. As when these things happen in the mainstream print media, the editors are also deserving of criticism, but it is their reaction to this by which they will be judged. I well understand that chess journalism is mostly semi-professional, especially online, and I include myself in that description. So I don't expect the editors to have the New Yorker fact-checking team. (Hikaru's role with them is mostly editing the Yugo-English analysis articles.) That I recognize in the magazine and site at least three uncredited photos is a lesser matter. As is that the interview with Botvinnik has been freely available online since 2003, although at least that is from the same editor and author.

Repackaging and/or translation and republication are hardly rare or wrong. One assumes that Russian and Serbo-Croat chessplayers might recognize some of the annotations, for example, but bringing material to a new audience is almost as good as new material. But straightforward plagiarism as perpetrated by Kolasinski, passing someone else's hard work off as your own (for profit or not), is pathetic, as well as illegal.

I'm not going to bother to collect every issue of this magazine to look for my writing and photos or to google for those of others. Just like I don't bother with the Colombian website that translates my articles into Spanish and sells them. Life is too short. (It took around 10 seconds to find that Kolasinski's articles in their other two sample issues also plagiarize heavily from ChessBase and other sites. Google cuts both ways, doesn't it? Malcolm Pein at London Chess Centre is far less forgiving about this stuff, I should add, and TWIC has also been victimized.) Caveat emptor.

Btw, I see several friends are involved with the project or have contributed to it. I wish them success and also luck in cleaning up their house. [Update: Executive editor Abdul Karim posted below and later called me to apologize, which I much appreciate. As was obvious, the editors were unaware of Kolasinski's plagiarism and they will work to remove the material.]

January 23, 2006

Corus 2006 r8

Anand moved back into a tie for the lead with Topalov. Some notes on his endgame win over Bacrot are in my short ChessBase report. (Photos now up.) Frederic is having internet problems so hasn't been able to get photos up from the last few rounds. As is often the case it's easier to do event reporting from as far away as possible. (It's hard to concentrate on posting photos and flash reports when you are schmoozing with Bessel and the usual suspects. More of a problem is how many sites kick all the journos out the minute the games end, which of course is exactly when you need to be online to post your goods.)

The predicted duel between Vishy and Topy has duly come to pass and it won't surprise anyone if it continues in other events for the next year or two. But how many events will see them both in action? Anand won't be in Linares next month. The rumored field for the 2nd Mtel includes them both, as might Dortmund unless there is bad blood between the Dortmunders and Topalov after their attempt to organize a match with Kramnik fell through. Monday is a free day.

January 24, 2006

Topalov Shuffle

He also talks about comps in this article. Nothing much new, although I was surprised to hear that Topalov has never played shuffle chess since so many top GMs have participated in the Mainz Chess960 events.

My radar has picked up news of a very high profile shuffle event later this year, btw. I've never been a big fan of it and certainly don't want to see it replace classical chess. But it's clear that computers – both databases and engines – are breaking down the openings at an ever-accelerating rate. While there is still plenty of scope for originality, prepared variations reaching past move 25 and to the very end of the game are increasingly common and sheer memorization is more important every year. Balloted openings are one possibility. The problem there, of course, is that you eliminate most of the innovation and all of the balloted positions will be analyzed to dust.

Kasparov has suggested a form of balloting for shuffle chess. Each year, or each event, for example, a few positions will be used instead of starting each game from a surprise position. This allows for some work and some of the goofier positions can be discarded. Many positions give White a huge advantage or are so bizarre that they hurt the eyes, not to mention leading to terrible blunders and 20-move games. It would be nice to keep some of the patterns and geometry of the classical game.

Corus 2006 r9

A lack of top-ten battles today in Wijk aan Zee, but Karjakin-Topalov is critical for the standings. Topalov has already had his armor dented (as has everyone else) and we can hope that the youngster will swing for the fences and go for the lead. Kamsky-Adams is another good nostalgia trip for us old folks. They first met OTB in 1989 at the Lloyd's Bank Open when Kamky was just 15.

Gata logged in from Wijk aan Zee and posted in the round eight thread to thank everyone for the support he's been receiving in the comments. Obviously he's not happy about being in the cellar, but he says it will stop him from getting complacent after his World Cup qualification last month. Regardless of his finish here, we'll see him in action again quickly at the US Championship that starts on March 1. No one there will be rated higher than anyone at Corus (barely), but of course it's a rough-and-tumble swiss and an in-form Nakamura should be favored.

FIDE Hints Topalov-Kramnik Match

Don't panic. I'm waiting to see something official before running it at ChessBase, but since standards are blessedly lower around here I'm letting rip. The site russiachess.ru is reporting that, in a FIDE statement about their January 20 board meeting (?), a match between FIDE champion Veselin Topalov and classical champ Vladimir Kramnik will take place in September of this year in Elista, the capital of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's Kalmykia. (I just posted a more complete item at ChessBase. "More complete" meaning still entirely vague and worthless.)

No titles mentioned, on the line or off, etc. Zilch in the way of details. No mention of sponsorship or if there's really anything behind this other than an "it would be a good idea" initiative. Hard to tell from the (translated) wording, but the Russian sites are giving it plenty of exclamation points and saying "FIDE has announced..." It says the executive committee has been "assigned to arrange it." Trying to find out if this involves the last initiative for this match.

According to FIDE's recently announced regulations for world championship challenge matches, it would be a 12-game match with the title on the line. If Kramnik wins he's the champ and Topalov would take Kramnik's spot in the qualification cycle. Since Kramnik is not in the current cycle, having been replaced by Shirov as a rating qualifier, I don't know what would happen to Topalov this cycle should he lose.

I truly hope this is for real, and that it is a success immense enough for FIDE to realize that matches matter and that this final tournament idea is a joke in comparison. As long as I'm wishing I'll toss in the fervent hope that there is a change in FIDE leadership this summer, just in time to put people with sponsorship experience in charge of the event. More as news becomes available.

Alexey posts below to this Sport Express report in which Ilyumzhinov says Kramnik supporters Joel Lautier and Justin Portman are in charge of finding the money. In other words, it sounds like a lot of "ifs" and probably isn't related to the last attempt. Resume normal pulse rate.

January 25, 2006

Corus 2006 r10

Wow. Veselin Topalov is as real as real can get. He played a spectacular game to beat Aronian today. (ChessBase report here, should have my notes added soon.) As has been his pattern, a great piece of preparation followed by further sacrificial play. Truly amazing, and I'm not the only one who's impressed. Kasparov was full of admiration about the game, although I didn't get any variations from him. Maybe tomorrow. If anyone was still thinking that Topalov's rise last year was temporary or flukish, you stand corrected. He's at +5 and picking up speed.

So the Battling Bulgarian now leads by a half point ahead of Anand, who made a short draw with Mamedyarov. van Wely outplayed Leko with the bishop pair and Kamsky duly lost again, to Bacrot. Oddly enough, Thursday is another free day. This will give us plenty of time to drool over this Topalov game. It looks like he's well past being posterized by other players and on to being in the anthologies in bold print.

January 26, 2006

FIDE Confirms... Something

In a reply to my enquiry about the degree of concreteness to the Topalov-Kramnik match statements by FIDE prez Ilyumzhinov, the FIDE Secretariat responded with:

The statement of the FIDE President Mr Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, published yesterday in Sport Express naturally reflects the official position of FIDE.

Well, yes, okay. But what is that official position? As translated here (not by machine), it basically states that Elista is willing to host such a match if Kramnik's supporters can come up with enough money and abide by FIDE's various rules. The same would ostensibly be true about a match with any 2700+, according to the challenge match rules FIDE issued a few weeks ago. How much money? According to those regulations:

a. The challenger’s side shall provide an amount of 1,000,000 (one million) USD as guaranteed prize money for the incumbent World Champion, net and not subject to any further deductions such as tax. The challenger's side should also provide the exact total prize fund of the event (World Champion and challenger), net and not subject to any further deductions such as tax.

b. At the same time, the challenger’s side shall guarantee the organisational budget of the match, including a contribution fee to FIDE in the amount of 20% above and over of the total prize fund, net and not subject to any further deductions such as tax.

The incumbent champ gets one million, win or lose, regardless of the total prize fund. So it's not really correct to refer to the sum in point (a) as a prize fund. It's a fee. Anything above that is a prize fund. I suppose this doesn't mean the loser's share must be one million. Maybe you can hand the incumbent his million and then play for half that. Otherwise it's at least two million just for the prize fund, which is preposterous right now. Even if the challenger is willing to play for very little it's going to surpass $1.5 million in total costs and probably quite a bit more.

It's not unusual in such formats to have the champ get a big guaranteed payday. In boxing, for example. The challenger is banking on winning and making the big bucks later. But under the FIDE system that's not likely and certainly isn't guaranteed. If the challenger wins he's quickly dropped into a tournament or candidates match with only small chances of winning and no big payoff in sight other than what he can rustle up himself by exploiting the title. And in boxing the challenger doesn't come up with the cash himself.

The amount is just way too high. The defending champion should be delighted to play for much less. Why not? It's not as if there's a great chance of defending the title in the current format so you might as well cash in while you can. Topalov got around a quarter-million for winning San Luis. I assume the numbers are so ridiculously high to prevent anyone from challenging. FIDE doesn't like the match format because it gives too much power to the players – see Kasparov-Short, 1993. They want a weak, rotating title. I hope Kramnik can come up with the money just to spite them.

(Off-topic synapse firing: When Microsoft approached the Rolling Stones to use their song "Start Me Up" in their Windows 95 launch campaign, instead of refusing, the Stones, who almost never allowed their songs to be used in ads, put a huge price tag on it, reportedly $12 million. They bought it.)

January 27, 2006

Corus 2006 r11

Just tossing out a thread before I dash out to run some errands. There is actual sun outside, if a bit on the frozen side. I got excited when Kasparov told me Ivanchuk had winning chances, but it's looking more drawish with every move (after 49..Kd4 now), especially since Chukky's using a lot of time. [Update: Drawn on move 63.] Leko beat Mamedyarov, who has looked somewhat overwhelmed in this event. Karjakin beat Sokolov. Kamsky has good swindling chances against van Wely. [Update: "Binary" Kamsky won! All or nothing!]

Motylev won one for Mother Russia and pounded Carlsen to take over the lead in the B Group with 8/11. Maybe he's insisting on having at least one Russian in the A Group next year. Official site.

January 28, 2006

Corus 2006 r12

Topalov-Anand a 23-move draw, albeit one with a diverting liquidation finish. Anand used 17 minutes. Topalov maintains his half-point lead. In tomorrow's final round Anand has white against Gelfand and Topalov has black against Leko. For the sake of keeping it interesting let's hope Leko pushes to get himself to a plus score and reclaim some street cred by beating the champ.

Anand and Gelfand have a long history. The Israeli GM used to give Anand fits when he was first entering the elite. I believe the quote by Vishy after another loss, in the 1993 Interzonal was "I hate losing, but I really hate losing to him!" The score used to be +4 for Gelfand, but of course Anand went on to become Anand and has long since more than evened the score. I don't think Gelfand has beaten him since that game.

Kamsky wins again! As I mentioned in my ChessBase notes yesterday, despite the steep number of atrocious losses, only Topalov and Anand have more wins than Kamsky! Karjakin also has four. That's really an amazing stat. He barely survived the opening in most of his losses, but when he gets to a decent middlegame he's been lethal. Today he absorbed Mamedyarov's pawn sac and consolidated impressively to extract the point. Put it this way, Kamsky has as many wins as Sokolov, Mamedyarov, Tiviakov, Bacrot, and Aronian combined. Of course not losing is perhaps greatest the test of top-level chess today (which is why it can be so boring). But winning a game at this level is simply not easy. Once Kamsky gets his openings in shape, watch out.

It should be noted that since he's obviously rusty everyone is trying to beat him, which in turn can make the games sharper and give him more winning chances. But four is four.

January 29, 2006

Morelia International Cancelled

But the Linares leg still looks okay. I've written to the organizers for more info. If you visit the site of the Morelia chess festival, you now find this under the international open.

Due to last minute circumstances beyond our control we have been forced to cancel the International Open Ciudad de Morelia Chess tournament. We wholeheartedly apologize to the chess players that intended to participate in this event as well as to the Chess community in general for any inconvenience and disappointment this may cause.

Ay caray, que pavada. I know several players who had already bought tickets to this event from North America and Europe. When the organizers started to recruit American GMs a change was made in the schedule of the US Championship to allow players to participate in both events, which meant cutting a day of activities in San Diego schools. This is a serious blow to the credibility of chess organization in Mexico, although the tournament organizer was Jose Cuchi of New York Open fame. [Mr. Cuchi writes in to correct me here. He was an advisor, not the organizer.]

Corus 2006 r13

Topalov drew with Leko and Anand beat Gelfand in a tough game to catch up and create fitting final standings. Topalov and Anand tie for first with impressive +5 (9/12) scores. They were clearly a class above the field, with Topalov's play being the more notable. Watching Topalov and Anand duel for supremacy over the next few years should be a great show. They aren't going to separate from the pack the way Kasparov/Karpov did, but who at this point would pick someone else to win an event? Great chess, great results, hats off. Great tournament, too. Hail Corus.

As predicted, Ivanchuk didn't miss a chance to teach his young countryman Karjakin a thing or two in the final round. The lesson today, the bishop pair. Nice win by Chukky to round out a solid showing. It was still a very impressive event by Karjakin, who had trouble with the supers but was devastating against the tail-enders. No doubt he's the real deal, as is Magnus Carlsen, who won in the final round to tie for first in the B Group. (Motylev won on tiebreaks; TWIC reports Carlsen will also go to the A Group next year. Official site says Anand won the A Group trophy on tiebreaks. This is the first shared first in Wijk aan Zee in a long while, since Kramnik/Anand in 1998.)

Karjakin was the only member of the new school to keep his head above water. That Topalov and Anand dominated was no surprise, but it was great to see Mickey Adams back to his solid self and Ivanchuk keeping his head after a tough loss to Anand in round three. Aronian beat Sokolov in the final round to salvage some rating points, but it was an unimpressive showing all round. He couldn't dent the old guard. Nor could Bacrot or Mamedyarov. Sokolov missed the GM norm.

Speaking of salvage, Tiviakov scored his only win of the event in the final round against Kamsky, who missed saving chances with 28.Qb3. Although quite a few of Kamsky's eight (!) losses were terrible, he came to play every day and scored two wins against the top half of the crosstable. Here's a weird stat: Kamsky was the only player without a plus score to beat someone with a plus score. (Yes, that approaches tautology, but it doesn't quite get there.) -4 doesn't get you a comeback of the year award, but wins against in-form Anand and Gelfand say a lot about the potential of Kamsky's return. No limit.

January 30, 2006

Women Troubles 2

A few hot topics today, while a few others are still unresolved. I'll start by pointing out that while I run the official US Championship website, regularly relay official information from the organization, and am delighted to work with AF4C, I do not speak for the organization here. My opinions do not reflect those of AF4C except when they coincide and nothing should be taken as 100% official until it appears on the official site or you hear it from someone at AF4C (or, on some issues, the USCF). End of disclaimer. There haven't been any problems so far but I don't ever want there to be a case of "but Mig said" when it comes to Championship news and policy.

First off, the idea of changing the format for the women players in order to allow three of them to play in both the US Championship and the FIDE women's world championship, whose dates overlap. I covered this on the 16th. It went to a secret ballot of the women players with unanimity required. Seven players voted yes for the change, six voted no, one abstention. So it's not happening, although several other ideas were floated and shot down for various reasons. So Goletiani, Krush, and Abrahamyan will have to choose which event to play in.

Obviously, this sucks. I'd be happy to criticize anyone and everyone if only I could find someone to blame or come up with a solution that didn't have major drawbacks. The original schedule didn't have this problem but construction at the event site forced a one week delay and there is no way the event can start any earlier without changing the venue. Since contracts there are very much in place – and the host NTC Foundation is a major sponsor – that can't happen. It's a crime without a criminal and the most important thing now is to make sure it doesn't happen again. But what if the US Championship's dates are announced well before FIDE announces conflicting dates for an event? This is why one of the most essential things for professional sponsorship is a fixed calendar. Corporations assign such monies years in advance and the chess world is lucky to know what's right around the corner. (Hola, Mexico.)

Related, a few withdrawals which in turn result in a few new players. Greg Shahade has withdrawn and will be replaced by Salvijus Bercys, who is next in line from the US Open. Susan Polgar has withdrawn according to her blog, though I can't make much sense of her stated reasons. It's a big swiss; this isn't a preparation issue. Of course no one is obliged to provide reasons anyway. It's too bad she won't be there again. Having a woman with a legit chance of winning the event would be a boost. (She's also not playing in Ekaterinburg.) Regarding her comments about the change in schedule to accommodate Morelia players, this had no effect at all on the conflict with the FIDE Women's WCh. The closing date is the same; a free day was removed. I believe Jen Shahade has also withdrawn, but don't have that officially yet.

This opens another can of worms regarding the women's spots, one the AF4C is already dealing with regarding unfilled qualification spots. Polgar and Shahade were rating seeds, but if more rating seeds replace them quality starts to become a real issue. Is it a good idea to drop in a few more 2000-rated women players to sit at the bottom of the crosstable? Obviously there will be major changes next year, perhaps discarding the women's spots entirely, but this year still has to be dealt with. I don't think any more rule changes should be made at this point, however. Maybe serendipity will take a hand and Vanessa West will get one of those spots. (That's still unresolved.)

2006 US Ch Wildcards

The official announcement is now up at the official site. The two AF4C wildcard spots have been announced. The first one was easy. 16-year-old IM Alex Lenderman of New York won the U16 gold medal in Belfort last year, the first US junior title since Tal Shaked in 1997. Congrats to Alex, who I met last year at Kasparov's master class to US juniors in NY City. (Pic of Alex on that page.)

The next one is more of a surprise. New Jersey GM Max Dlugy has been in the news lately, if not for chess. He spent nine months of 2005 in a Russian prison on spurious charges of which he was entirely acquitted in December. I met with Max, his wife Marina, and Kasparov and his wife a few weeks ago and will run a full photo report on Max and his imprisonment on ChessBase.com in a day or two.

The AF4C wildcards are used to promote chess and the event, so a little whimsy is to be expected and encouraged. Last year they went to Bercys and Kamsky, so this sort of repeats that formula of junior + comeback. Dlugy's "convict to competitor" story might catch a few sparks in the press. He hasn't played a serious tournament game in a while, but the legendary blitz player still keeps a hand in online and crushed the field in a blitz tournament in Russia in 2004, if I remember the dates right.

Among the many possible jokes about this invite is that they wanted to invite Bobby Fischer but the message got sent to the wrong prison.

January 31, 2006

Wanted: Wojtkiewicz & Tate

[Update: Both Wojtkiewicz and Tate have made contact. Wow, that was fast. Behold the power of Dirt! Thanks, guys.] The AF4C is putting out an APB for US Championship qualifiers Aleks Wojtkiewicz and Emory Tate. Their player contracts are well overdue and they haven't been able to contact them despite a frantic search. Replacements will be named unless they return their contracts. Tate's trail stops at the Liberty Bell Open a few weeks ago, where, according to several accounts, he was involved in a serious altercation with hotel security. Don't tell me we have another invitee in jail! As for Wojo, if he becomes the first player ever to lose his spot by forgetting to send in his contract, the Polish jokes are going to be hard to avoid.

Now that I've managed to offend everyone with a simple request for information... Seriously, if you can let them know to contact the AF4C ASAP or can provide their contact info to John Henderson at the AF4C it would be greatly appreciated.

Cuernavaca 2006

What should be a great event begins Feb. 2 in central Mexico, the Cuernavaca Young Masters. You may remember the pretty town of Cuernavaca as the host of the Nakamura-Karjakin match in December, 04. (4.5-1.5 for Hikaru.) Now billing itself as the "world capital of junior chess," they are hosting a powerful round robin with 10 of the world's best under 25.

The players: Ponomariov, Vallejo Pons, Karjakin, Nakamura, Volokitin, Cheparinov, Bruzon, Dominguez, Felgaer, and Mexico's Manuel Leon Hoyos. All except the 16-year-old local hope (who trained in Cuba) are in the top 100. With all that testosterone and spicy food, the nine-round all-play-all should be a real slugfest. Ponomariov, the #10 player in the world, is the Elo favorite. We'll see if Karjakin and Cheparinov were warmed up or exhausted by Wijk aan Zee. Vallejo Pons is also in Linares, which starts just a week after this ends.

They have a live games link at the top of the page – "partidas en vivo" – and I know Playchess.com will be relaying the games. No message board buzz yet.

February 2, 2006

Cuernavaca 2006 R1

I'm only rarely up for event coverage, but this looks like a good one. Plus, our main man, US Champion and Black Belt contributor Hikaru Nakamura is in action. I haven't seen pairings at the official site yet, but H-Bomb sent in an email from Mexico to let us know he's going to start with a bang. He's got black against top seed Ruslan Ponomariov in the first round today!

Mexican chess legend and organizer GM Marcel Sisniega helpfully posts below some info of the sort that is lacking at the official site. Muchisimas gracias, maestro.

The first round is: Ponomariov-Nakamura; Volokitin-Vallejo; Cheparinov-Karjakin; Bruzon-Dominguez and León Hoyos-Felgaer. The time control will be 100 minutes for the entire game, plus 30 seconds increment per move. This was done to accommodate the Sofia-Mtel, "no short draw" rules. The players basically favored these rules, as long as the time control did not imply six to seven hour games each day.

Carlsen, Bacrot, Radjabov and Harikrishna were invited. Carslen declined because of school work. Bacrot also declined, possibly due to his playing Linares a week afterwards. We figured Radjabov was in the same position. Harikrishna initially had a tournament in Bermuda, which was later cancelled. By that time the ten players were booked.

Games start at 1600 local time, which is 5pm EST, 2200 GMT/UTC.

February 3, 2006

Pics 06 - Media Krush

On September 16, 2004 (Mexican Indepence Day we note, irrelevantly), Irina Krush of the USA played a two-game rapid match against Almira Skripchenko of France in New York City. The venue was the Russian Samovar restaurant in the Theater District. Krush won to go on to play Zhu Chen in Times Square in the "Accoona Women's World Championship." Four months earlier, on May 14, 2004, both players attended a press conference and photo-op at the restaurant. Here's a nice pic of IM Krush that didn't run in my report on the press conference, to which I arrived a bit late.


Larger, uncropped versions here: 800x600 (100kb) / 1600x1200 (334kb)
Free for non-commercial use.

To my knowledge, Krush is the only player who will represent the USA at the 2006 FIDE Women's World Championship starting on March 10 in Ekaterinburg. (Abrahamyan is also listed, however, although I thought she had confirmed to play in the US Championship instead.)

Previous Pic items: 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05

February 4, 2006

Cuernavaca 2006 r2-3

Revenge was served nice and cold in round two in Mexico. US champion Hikaru Nakamura outplayed Andrei Volokitin of the Ukraine, the man who defeated him in the final of the Lausanne Young Masters last year. I'm not sure it was, as IM Ben Finegold put it, "the most complicated game ever," but it was a great grind. Both sides were loaded with weak pawns and Nakamura did the better job of hitting weaknesses. With his usual fearless calculation he grabbed the exchange and allowed his king to be chased around, coming out on the other side with a winning endgame. He shares the lead with Vallejo Pons, who beat the underdog local player Leon Hoyos.

I'm loving the Sofia rules, although these young guys would fight hard anyway. Playing things out to clearly drawn endgames makes things more interesting for the fans. It also pushes them to find creative ways of continuing on occasion. I'm not sure who would have been trying to win Cheparinov-Ponomariov, for example, but there were many fun twists and turns before the liquidation.

Round 3 update: The only decisive game was Hikaru's methodical win with black over Leon Hoyos, so he leads alone. A remarkable number of draws so far, although quite a few of them sharp and fun to play over. Seeing some offbeat stuff in the openings. Pono's 6.Bd3 didn't get anywhere against Karjakin, who held his countryman off easily.

February 6, 2006

Early Draw Offer

In his latest annotations for Black Belt, US champ Hikaru Nakamura comments his tournament-clinching final-round win against GM Nikola Mitkov from the North American Open in Las Vegas last December. He starts with a paragraph that catches the eye as much as any of the moves in the game.

Being as I had the higher rating, Ibragimov was dropped to another 5, Perelshteyn, while I got White against Mitkov. I was surprised by this pairing because my dad and I had calculated that I would, in all likelihood, be playing Akobian. Strangely enough, before the round an intermediary asked me if I would "give Nikola a draw for compensation!" I promptly replied by saying "no, I play straight chess!"

You can see from the crosstable link above what good financial sense it would have made for Mitkov to be guaranteed a draw. Hikaru was clearly the agent of karma in this one. I'd heard this sad tale second-hand and there was some float among organizers about banning Mitkov from their events. Dunno if anything has or will come of that.

February 7, 2006

Cuernavaca 2006 r5

After a peaceful start, a lot of blood was spilled for the second round in a row. Unfortunately, some of it belonged to the Dirt home team. US champ Hikaru Nakamura got into a bad bishop vs knight endgame against Dominguez. In the rush to put up tomorrow's pairings, today's games have disappeared from the official site and there's no download link yet, and I'm tired of waiting, so no game comments right now. But if it was possible to hold that I'll be surprised. Just for that, I'm not going to let Dominguez crash at my place when he defects; that'll teach him.

All five games were decisive in round five. Wins by Ponomariov and Vallejo Pons jumped into first place on 3.5/5, ahead of Nakamura and Dominguez with 3. The Ukrainian trio formally abolished any suspicions of Soviet-style truce-making. First Ponomariov beat Volokitin and today Volo beat Karjakin. It's a very balanced event, more of one than expected thanks to Leon Hoyos's defeat of Cheparinov in a Dragon in round four. Hikaru's game against the Argentine Felgaer tomorrow splits my loyalties a bit, but loyalty to the Ninja flag is for true patriots, so I hope Nakamura mashes him.

February 8, 2006

64 Chosen Ones

Or maybe 63. The complete list of 64 players at the 2006 US Championship is ready. The final spot went to San Diego's Elliott Liu, who won the Scholastic Champion of Champions spot in an online tournament hosted by the ICC. Great luck to have a local boy make good.

Then there were the five new replacement / vacant spots. Two spots were left vacant while Polgar, Krush, and Shahade (x2) have withdrawn. Sarkar, Kleiman, West, I. Schneider, and Milman are in. (Bercys replaced Greg Shahade earlier.) Sarkar and Kleiman were the top runners-up on the Grand Prix list. Igor Schneider (not to be confused with Dmitry, who is already in) and Milman are two of the top juniors in the country. West was, in my opinion, a "do the right thing" appointment, since she was the only player to fall under the "50% score required" rule that was created after there was a vacant spot at the National Open.

The only remaining doubt is the status of Kreiman, whose spot is under review after accusations of game fixing, documented here and with considerable related recent discussion here. I believe the case has been handed to the USCF board and they will vote on it in the next few days. I assume his spot would go to the next qualifier from the American Open. BUT, since this seems to be Jesse Kraai, who later got in at the North American Open, he may become the qualifier from the American Open, replaced by the next person down at the NAO! That looks like David Pruess. But I'm not 100% sure of that; it could be Levon Altounian from the AO. Or they could keep Kreiman. Ah, suspense.

Cuernavaca 2006 r6

Wow, once they started drinking the water these guys really got fired up. It was another exciting, gory day in Mexico. 4/5 games were decisive, including wins by the leaders. Vallejo Pons and Ponomariov scored over Karjakin and Bruzon, respectively. They're tied for the lead with impressive 4.5/6 scores.

Hikaru Nakamura bounced back with yet another terribly complicated game. He beat Felgaer with some sweet reorganization to move back to +2 and holds clear third place. For a while their game looked like a contest to see who could get the worse bishop. Nakamura ruthlessly blitzed the Argentine as Black's position and clock deteriorated. It started out with a wacky anti-Sveshnikov, Hikaru pulling 4.a3 out of his bag of tricks. The ever-creative Ljubo Ljubojevic sprang that one on Tony Miles back in 1985. (A game that has one of the most bizarre positions you'll see this year on move 15. White knights on g5 and h7!)

As regularly occurs in Hikaru's games, this one is a good example of using an unorthodox opening without worrying about theoretical superiority, only getting an original position where you can outplay your opponent. White's consolidation and expansion was almost Hedgehog-like. On move 20 White only had one piece beyond the second rank. Contrast this with his ultra-theoretical win over Volokitin. Black Belt readers get to wonder which of his games Hikaru will annotate, although he might not have time before running off to San Diego to defend his title.

Yet again, the official site made the games disappear. They immediately put up the new pairings in the game viewer and the PGN of the day's round isn't up until the next day. Dale, mariachi! Off to copy-paste them from playchess.com again...

And another thing. dcp23 asks in the comments why Cheparinov is playing with a Russian flag on his table. Careful examination of the photos, even checking with Photoshop (yes, these people need more work), shows that the middle stripe is blue, not green. A yellow highlighter should solve the problem.

February 9, 2006

2006 US Ch Rules

I just posted the regulations and prize fund at the official site. Two groups of 32 players, nine-round swiss system, winners of each group play final rapid match. As mentioned yesterday, the field is complete but the actual pairings aren't up because the Kreiman case isn't resolved yet. "Either before or right after the weekend" is what I'm told.

February 12, 2006

Cuernavaca 2006 Ends

Sorry for not keeping up with this and various other things. Been terribly busy on another project this past week. Today's snowstorm makes it a good day to stay in and get caught up. First off, this excellent event came to an end yesterday. A blackout in the eighth round interrupted two key games, which had to be continued later at the hotel. (A bus crashed into a streetlight, knocking out power to much of the town.) ChessBase has a final report up now. IM Ocampo Vargas has some detailed color reports up at NotiChess. In Spanish, but you can look at the pics and the notes if you don't habla.

First place was shared by Francisco (Paco) Vallejo Pons of Spain and Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine with powerful +4 scores. These two had by far the most top-level experience in the field. Ponomariov has been playing in supertournaments regularly since winning the FIDE world championship KO in Moscow, 2001. Vallejo Pons, by virtue of his nationality, has been a regular at Linares. They displayed their precocious solidity by going undefeated in a very combative field. They drew with each other in the final round to finish 6.5/9. (According to the rules on the official site, they are using Koya for first tiebreak. That means best score against those with 50% or better scores. This should mean Ponomariov wins the tiebreak, for what it's worth.)

US champion Hikaru Nakamura came very close to their pace by winning in the final round to reach +3 and clear third place despite an earlier loss to Dominguez. He won as many games as the leaders, his four wins including impressive victories over Volokitin and Cheparinov. Nakamura's 2750 performance should add another pile of rating points on the next list, along with his 6/7 at the North American Open. He won his final game over Topalov's second Ivan Cheparinov in the most theoretically dense line in chess, the Botvinnik Semi-Slav. If 19..Rd5 was a product of Topalov Labs, Cheparinov's boss will be glad his second played it and not him.

Karjakin was either tired out by his fine Corus Group A run or Cuernavaca just isn't his town. He lost as many games in this event than he did in Wijk aan Zee! (3, and he was in serious trouble in two others.) It was a good event for the Cubans. Dominguez was by far the more solid of the pair, winning two and going undefeated. Bruzon won his last three in a row and moved to a plus score by beating Karjakin in the final round. The tail-enders unbalanced the event dramatically, unfortunately. The -5 of IM Leon Hoyos wasn't much of a surprise and at least he got a nice win over Volokitin. He missed at least one other win. Argentina's Felgaer collapsed entirely, drawing his first three games and then losing six in a row! Obviously he's not that weak, but he's likely somewhat overrated at 2600. This effect was commonly discussed in Argentine chess circles. A small, isolated group of players can produce players with substantially higher ratings than they would have were they playing regularly against wider competition.

Sunday Snow Blogging

Wheeeee! Taken from the top of my front porch here in Brooklyn. I'm not going down the snowy steps in my slippers just to get a better photo.

Open thread, questions, topic suggestions, complaints to the management, shout-outs to peeps, best wishes to players, happy thoughts...

February 14, 2006

Cuernavaca Tiebreak Confusion

Maybe I'm not the only one who is confused here, but now the arbiter is saying that Vallejo Pons won the title on tiebreaks ahead of Ponomariov. The official site says they are using Koya for the first tiebreak. This means best score against those with 50% or better. The arbiter's results page (thanks to Seppe) even lists Vallejo Pons with Koya 5 to Ponomariov's 4. But a quick glance at the crosstable shows Ponomariov scored 3.5/5 against those with 50% or more (three draws and wins against Bruzon and Volokitin) and Vallejo Pons scored 2.5 (five draws). Those should be their Koya scores.

I don't really care much about system tiebreaks, but what's up? None of the Koya or Koya Extended instructions I can find provide any way it would be possible to alter this, or to produce scores of 5 and 4, unless I just can't read the instructions. (Wouldn't be the first time. My IKEA bookshelf first turned into a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.) Koya goes from the 50%+ group on down, seems simple enough. Can someone please confirm that I've lost my mind or that the wrong guy took the trophy home? Maybe the Spaniard got a 5 from the French judge.

[Update: Organizer GM Sisniega has spoken to arbiter Zaragoza, who recognizes that he got the numbers wrong. "Ponomariov was definitely first and Vallejo second. Fortunately, the prize money was split evenly and there was no trophy involved. Zaragoza will be issuing an apology shortly." I guess it's still possible I've lost my mind, but not about this. At least no harm was done. I was just curious because I announced Pono as the tiebreak winner the other day.]

February 15, 2006

Aeroflot, Aerofrance

There are only two rounds left to go in this massive display of chess power, the Aeroflot Open. (An entirely absurd website, yet again.) Yet another Ukrainian is in the lead, 23-year-old Pavel Eljanov. (Did you notice that three of the players in the Cuernavaca young masters event were Ukrainian? Only Azerbaijan has similar junior power.) Eljanov is a true open warrior, traveling Europe the way American GMs go from Vegas to Philly and back. His 5.5/7 may not hold up considering the array of Elo right behind him. Top seeds Mamedyarov, Akopian, and Sasikiran are in the group on 5.

Doug pointed out that among these heavyweights is Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the 15-year-old French hope. He's the 84th seed in the Aeroflot but he's on an impressive run. He hasn't lost a game and he has wins over Akobian, Sadvakasov, and Naiditsch. France has a former "youngest GM ever" in Bacrot, who hit the top ten last year. Without Vachier-Lagrave France has six players in the top 100. For comparison, Germany and England have just two each, the Netherlands has four, the USA has five (four active). This happened just when the strong French events Cap d'Agde and Enghien les Bains have disappeared (?). C'est la vie!

February 17, 2006

Linares, Buey!

Qué onda, vato?! The Wimbledon of chess is putting its fresas in the crema this year, splitting into two parts and starting out with the first half in Morelia, Mexico. I've been to this pretty town quite a few times over the years, a pity I'm too swamped with work to make it down for the show. El Fred is there for ChessBase. I'll be chipping in with some live audio commentary at Playchess in a mix of Spanish and English when time allows, assuming they can get the live moves out and assuming I can get the broadcast encoder thingy to work.

As far as I can tell, this embarrassment of html is still the official site. I had no idea you could train squirrels to design web pages, but there you go. The players: Topalov, Leko, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Aronian, Bacrot, Radjabov, Vallejo. Double round-robin. peach's message board poll had Topalov as the prohibitive favorite, garnering over 50% of the vote. Ivanchuk was a surprising second, followed by Svidler and Leko.

It's hard to disagree with the Topalov pick. I'd take him versus the rest of the field for a share of first at two to one if I were a betting man, which I'm not. Other than that I'm interested in seeing if Leko can get his pawns out of his ears. The way he's been playing lately I'd rather watch ice prancing, or whatever it is they're doing in Italy. Radjabov has been under the radar for a while. No longer a kinder, he needs to push his rating up to get back on the invitation gravy train. The ever-unpredictable Ivanchuk will play his 4th and 5th games against Aronian in as many months. Right now it's +2 -1 for Chukky.

According to various Mexican and other LatAm newspapers, there was an opening shindig last night for the drawing of lots. The players lifted up giant chess pieces to reveal the numbers. (Vallejo Pons 1, Svidler 2, Bacrot 3, Aronian 4, Radjabov 5, Ivanchuk 6, Topalov 7, Leko 8.) The full pairings are up with opening ceremony pics now. The mayors of Linares and Morelia were there. Eight of the ten sports items in the local Morelia paper are about chess, either Linares or the concurrent open. It runs Feb. 18-26th in Morelia and then March 3-13 back home in Linares. By then I'll be in San Diego for the US Championship.

Some translated press conference highlights from Topalov in the local paper:

"I suppose I am the favorite, yes, but I also feel more pressure and get more attention from the media than my rivals do. And I just finished playing in Holland and haven't had much of a chance to prepare for this tournament as I'd like. I see Svidler as the best prepared, the most rested since he didn't play in Holland. He's been playing at a very solid, high level in the past few years. Ivanchuk is a very unpredictable player who can win any tournament. Everyone knows his problems aren't faults in his chess, but in controlling his nerves. If he can do that he is also capable of winning. ...

It's a big change; it's the first post-Kasparov Linares, there are eight players instead of seven, and we've moved to a different continent. The Spanish-speaking market is an attractive one for chess in general because from what I've seen here chess is seen more as an art than as a sport, while in Europe the journalists are look more at the results and not so much at the virtues of chess. ...

Chess has great potential, but it's lacking a big star like Kasparov was, as well as administration and organization. There's no danger of chess coming to an end; in the short run computers aren't a threat to the sport of chess. ...

I don't want to be one of those champions of recent years who won and lasted just one year. I'd like to do it better and distinguish myself, that's what motivates me. I'm one of the few who have survived the test of time and I'd like to stay on top for a while, a few years more."

Just stumbled onto a comment from Leko in which he says "last year was a great one for Topalov, but this year can be the end for him because I feel sure I can win the Linares tournament in Morelia." Good to hear him sounding cocky.

I assume Frederic will be including such things in his onsite reports at ChessBase in the future, but of course it's usually much harder to get any work done when you are on site.

February 18, 2006

Q&A with Bessel Kok

I finally posted our Q&A with everyone's favorite candidate for FIDE president. The "to do list" in the first question are vague boilerplate ("Better management of resources available"? Brilliant!), but most of the answers have real meat on the bones. Nice to hear an excoriation of the 90'+30" control, even if it's what so many of us have been saying for a long time. Vote early, vote often.

Morelia Open - Linares Coverage

Event arbiter Jonathan Berry is posting the pairings to the Gran Torneo Abierto Mexicano Ciudad de Morelia (currently underway) at his own site. (or www.tinyurl.com/cymdf). As we can see from the Linares site, la internet isn't exactly a priority for the organizers. But don't go dissin just the mariachis; remember that Dortmund declined to show the games live last year.

But wait, what's this I see?! The Spanish Linares site is up and running with this year's event. Since El Fred is there in Morelia, ChessBase will still be the place to go though. I'm sure all the usual suspects will be running the games live if the broadcast in Morelia works, which doesn't seem to be a sure thing with the first round games just minutes away. The Spanish site's "live games" link goes to Playchess so there might not be a web broadcast at all. Feel free to post results below as they come in if you're watching live.

Linares 2006 r1

Broadcast at Playchess seems to be going okay after initial delays and the usual trauma on-site in Morelia. If you aren't cool enough to go there, linares.soloajedrez.com is running a java board broadcast that seems stable so far.

Below the jump (moved to save space and bandwidth) is a screen shot from the spiffy new Fritz 9 Playchess interface with the Linares games in progress. Four boards at once, chat on all boards, pretty cool. You can't copy the moves in multi-board view, however. But when viewing just one game at a time you can just copy the moves ctrl+c or edit-copy.

R1: Svidler-Topalov 1-0; Aronian-Radjabov 1-0; Vallejo Pons-Leko 0-1; Bacrot-Ivanchuk 1/2

Topalov went with the Berlin (groan) he essayed in San Luis to fine effect. Svidler answered sacrificially and achieved an ingenious bind. Topalov had to give back material to survive and went further downhill in time trouble. Radjabov made it through a King's Indian alive but also lost the endgame. Vallejo Pons was out-prepared in a sharp Nimzo line. Bacrot-Ivanchuk started dull but heated up. Ivanchuk missed great winning chances in the endgame. I'll have some light notes and a few comments from Kasparov in tomorrow's ChessBase report.

Continue reading "Linares 2006 r1" »

February 19, 2006

Linares 2006 r2

A second straight round of ferocious chess in Morelia. Three decisive games again, though with some uneven play. Leko and Svidler lead with 2/2.

Vallejo Pons-Svidler 0-1, Topalov-Bacrot 1/2, Ivanchuk-Aronian 1-0, Leko-Radjabov 1-0

I had the luxury of watching while on the phone with Kasparov, who is staying up way past his bedtime to watch the games. I'll include some of his comments in the next ChessBase report. He has been impressed with Leko, who outplayed Radjabov in a line they both specialize in today. The game finished explosively as Radjabov tried to find a tactical way out. 36.Qc4 was a star move.

The relentless Topalov was held by Bacrot, although it looked a lot harder than it seemed it would be. With just four pieces on the board Topalov played on and made it interesting. Bacrot collapsed against Topalov in an equal endgame at Corus and came close to a repeat performance. Vallejo Pons won the draw to start out with two whites and has been blown out of the water right out of the opening in both games. His new try and follow-up against Svidler's Grunfeld was, in Kasparov's succinct summation: "pathetic." It's in the same country, but Cuernavaca it ain't. Ivanchuk bamboozled Aronian in trademark fashion. The knight trek Nb4-Na6 is a classic.

Some player comments translated from the local paper:

Topalov: "I felt good about my chances during the game, but I think I let a few chances to win escape, not just one. My technique wasn't very good and sometimes you make mistakes in long games."

Vallejo Pons: "It's a shame because I've been getting bad openings and I haven't been able to come back. I'm not happy but I'm not playing badly. We didn't prepare for Svidler's ..Bf5."

That last is curious. I imagine the only reason you wouldn't expect 9...Bf5 is because of 10.g4. But Vallejo didn't play it until the next move, when it was too late. During the game Kasparov wondered "why play h4 if you aren't going to play g4?" Bad preparation and worse reaction.

February 20, 2006

Kreiman Punishment (Not)

I don't have the official statement from the USCF yet, but they have decided not to prohibit GM Boris Kreiman from playing in the US Championship, which starts on March 1 in San Diego. Follow the story here, here, and here. I'll have the final player groupings up today at the official site.

I doubt we've heard the last of this. The USCF is one thing; organizers can do as they like. It's not at all clear to me whether the AF4C could, if it wanted, reject Kreiman's participation. Anyway, now that this specific incident has passed, what's to be done in the future? (Other than being more convincing when you arrange games.) To accusations that they sing castrato the USCF and AF4C can claim they didn't have anything in writing to give them the authority to reject a participant on these grounds, making them legally vulnerable. Language needs to be added to the participant contract that allows for rejection on grounds of bringing the game and/or the event into disrepute. (Similar to the clause that allows Nike to dump Kobe Bryant when he's accused of a crime.) A panel and an appeals system should be part of it to avoid witch hunts.

February 21, 2006

Linares 2006 r3

Wow, what a game. Thank Zeus that Topalov has more grit than the rest of the field put together. At the very least he played many more moves than the rest of the field put together today, and then some. He and Aronian battled for 123 moves, the last 70 of them in a theoretically drawn N+2 vs R endgame that Topalov defended without adventures. The insanity came earlier and it came in waves.

Topalov gained the initiative in the opening when Aronian, to his credit, wanted to play for a win after being surprised by 18...a5! Taking on a6 should be fine, but 19.Be4 is dubious. White got out of trouble with a creative temporary exchange sac but seemed to lose the thread. I thought the point was to play 24.Bxb7 and White gets the exchange back or a strong b-pawn. Topalov had an extra pawn and all the chances at that point, especially when Aronian selected an absolutely bizarre defensive plan, part of which was blitzing out his moves. The entire scheme 27.Rd1 28.Rd4 29.g3 looks ridiculous to me. g3 against a light-squared bishop?! Anyway, it was exciting, fighting chess on both sides.

Topalov was breaking through and just about to put White away when Aronian's blitz tactics paid off. On move 35 Topalov mouse-slipped his f-pawn (well, you get the picture). Instead of the deadly 35...f5 he played 35...f6? allowing a miracle perpetual check sac. Aronian pounced and then the final twist. Instead of retreating to f8 with a likely draw, Topalov ran his king into the open on the final move of the time control with 40...Kd7??. Suddenly White was winning, or close to it. The game ended up in a tough N+3 vs R+1 endgame that Topalov managed to draw. (57...f5+! is a joy.) It looks like White must have a win in there (55.Nf5, eventually winning the f-pawn looks good), but it's not as easy as it looks. Whew. Comments from Kasparov will be at ChessBase later today. (He was brutalizing Aronian's strange play so I'm glad he went to bed before Topalov blundered and almost lost!)

By the way, speaking of annoying endgames that should be won, nobody has answered my plea for a winning line in Vallejo-Leko from round one after 34.Kd3 instead of 34.Bxh5? It's weird that a rook and passed a-pawn don't win trivially, but providing a variation hasn't been easy. A few lines: 34.Kd3 Re5 35.Kc4 a6 (35...h4 36.Kb5= c4+ 37.Kxc4 a5 38.Kd4 Re2; 35...Kh7 36.Kb5=) 36.h4 (36.g3 Kh7 37.h3 Kh6 38.h4 (38.g4? h4) ; 36...Kh7 37.g3 Kh8 38.Bxh5 Kg8 39.Bg6 Kf8 40.g4 Re4+ 41.Kxc5 Rxg4 (41...a5 42.g5 a4 43.Kd5 Re1 44.f6 gxf6 45.gxf6 a3 46.e7+ Rxe7 47.fxe7+ Kxe7 48.Bb1 Kf6=) 42.h5 (42.Kb6?? Rxg6!) 42...Ke7 (42...a5 43.Kd6 Rd4+ 44.Ke5 Rd1 45.h6=) 43.Kb6= Ra4 44.Kc5 a5 45.Kb5 Ra2 46.Bh7 a4 47.Bg6 Ra1 48.Kb4 Kd6 49.Bf7 Rf1 (49...a3 50.Bg6) 50.Kxa4 Rxf5 51.Kb4

US Ch Player Groups

The two 32-player groups are up now at the official US Championship site. February 2006 USCF lists used, I understand. Only six days to go!

February 23, 2006

Linares 2006 r4

Will the real Veselin Topalov please stand up? For a while I wasn't sure. Svidler played a brilliant game to beat him in the first round, and I'm not at all convinced that the Berlin is to Topalov's taste. Then he came very close to making something from nothing against Bacrot. In round three he completely outplayed Aronian and was on his way to a well-deserved win with black when time trouble (and Aronian's alertness, to give some credit) struck and he had to salvage a draw. A little rocky, but no reason to panic.

Panic! Topalov lost to Radjabov's King's Indian in round four in a truly ugly game. Granted, Radja is no sissy and counts black wins against Kasparov and Anand in his oeuvre, but this really looked like something was wrong with Topalov's radar. And he knows these positions, having been a Benoni man for most of his career. The kingside storm had the stench of desperation. 20.g4 is such a dog it could hump your leg. As always, full props for being aggressive in an equal position, but that was pretty ugly. I'm assuming he missed the cute 26...Nh5! He could have bailed out with 27.Rxf8+, but kept looking for more and went down. Again, give credit to Radjabov for ruthless precision, but this was mostly self-inflicted. (And how about that KID!? Refuted indeed.) This puts the world champ in the cellar with -2 and out of the running for anything but pride.

Yes, there are still many rounds to play, 10 of them to be exact. But Leko and Svidler are tearing things up with 3.5/4 scores. Leko nabbed a pawn against Ivanchuk and converted quickly. Svidler took more time to grind Bacrot in a superior rook endgame well worth study. I'll be at Playchess.com in a minute watching the round five games while on the phone with the world's highest rated guest...

February 25, 2006

Linares 2006 r5

I was halfway through this item yesterday and forgot about it, closing the browser. Oops. Take 2. I'd have these notes up a lot quicker here and at ChessBase if the players would stop playing these tough endgames. Another couple of games like this and I'll be desperate for a few 20-move draws. Nah. Leko leads alone after a short draw with Bacrot. (28 moves but only seven of them new.)

This time it was Aronian-Svidler and Radjabov-Vallejo causing trouble. Svidler has been playing very well, but he imploded in this endgame. It was tough already, but 30..f5 turned it into a forced loss. Quite the hallucination. 37..Be8 lost instantly, but it was already doomed. I posted some raw analysis in the round 4 item Lots of pretty stuff. Radjabov's game with the Spaniard was a wild one. White had a good attack going, then black had a good attack going, then it was an endgame draw. Fun tactic with 29..Ne3+ if 30.Kxh3 Rh6 mate!

The Evil Ivanchuk showed up in round five. He was completely overrun with white by Topalov, who is now one win away from an even score. Really a pathetic game. Kasparov and I talked about the games and he was beyond disgusted. Even worse, Ivanchuk got into serious time trouble and had to make seven moves in seven seconds. Not a recipe for success. Garry pointed out this cool line: 29.Qh1!? with the idea of Qh6 if Black playes the natural 29..Nd2. After that White can force an amazing draw. Or win after 30.Qh6 Rxc1? 31.Ndf4!! If I have time I'll put an item with more analysis and Kasparov comments up at ChessBase today. Lots of action in the message boards today for a weekend.

US Championship Countdown

Can you taste the salty sea air of the Pacific yet? Or maybe that's just sweat. I spent last night moving the US Championship website to a new, far mightier server. We're ramping up for the massive hit we get during the live game broadcasts. All chess sites have server loads that graph like Devil's Tower. Everybody comes in at the exact same instant, game time. Bandwidth isn't much of a problem these days, but if you're running games in an applet environment in Java or Flash, your machine needs horsepower and memory to run a few thousand simultaneous processes.

The first round is on March 2, player visits to schools and the player meeting on the first. The players can figure out their pairings easily enough, but they don't know which color they'll have until lots are drawn in San Diego. (#1 vs #17, #2 vs #18, etc. So it's Nakamura-Friedel and Kamsky-Browne on the first boards.)

The Internet Chess Club, one of the event's sponsors, is setting up a webcam at the site. Not sure if they'll have a specific page or Chess.fm. Playchess.com will also be running the games live. I expect even more player bloggers this year, always a good time. Last time there were quite a few players who had no idea what the word "blog" meant! We'll also be having trivia contests and online polls. I'll post a thread here for each round and I'm sure the message boards will be buzzing since the second half of Linares will be going at the same time.

The Kreiman saga has another twist. The AF4C hasn't received his player contract yet and they haven't been able to contact him. If you're out there Boris, they need to hear from you! He can't play without signing it, but since the USCF waited so long to decide on whether or not he could play, obviously he gets to the last minute. This makes it tough to have an alternate who might not play. If Kreiman doesn't show, maybe they'll tap an IM we know will be nearby, San Diego's Cyrus Lakdawala.

February 26, 2006

2006 Women's WCh

FIDE has put up the final list of players and the pairing tree for this 64-player KO event that starts in Ekaterinburg, Russia on March 10. The top seeds are a mix of veterans like Cramling and Chiburdanidze and the new school with Koneru, Kosteniuk, and Lahno. Defending champ Stefanova, former champ Zhu Chen, and another Chinese player, Xu Yuhua, are somewhere in the middle.

In such a balanced field, anyone over 2400 might win in this format. In a curious twist, my national loyalties are split in the first round as Irina Krush faces Claudia Amura, the lone American versus the only Argentine. Ninja friends to root for include Krush, Almira Skripchenko, and Svetlana Matveeva. The top rated women in the world, Judit and Susan Polgar and Xie Jun of China, aren't playing.

My opinions about professional women-only events have been given here many times – nice for affirmative action but in the long run harmful to women's chess by insulating them from top competition. Judit Polgar's mere existence turns a contrived title into one that is almost insulting. Anyway, chess is chess and big money KO's are always fun to watch in a train-wreck sort of way. And I'm always happy to see money going to chessplayers. Nice logo, too. I'd like to get a larger version.

February 27, 2006

Linares 06 at the Half

Been a buried with a few projects before heading off to San Diego for the US Championship tomorrow. Barely had time to watch the games yesterday, let alone post Marin's typically fine commentary this morning at ChessBase. (Apparently there was a glitch in the analysis file he sent for round six, deleting almost all his commentary. It will be replaced today, so check out the round six report again later.) (And to go all parenthetical again, while GM Marin's analyses have been overall very good and widely acclaimed by fans, his notes on Aronian-Topalov were shredded by Kasparov. To be fair, doing same-day annotations is asking for trouble, especially when the games are so complex. He's trying to provide instructive comments for fans, and is succeeding admirably in that. I'm trying to put together an analysis recap with some of Garry's comments.)

At least I missed a round with three draws. Even that couldn't get the draw average for the first half of the event over 50%, which is astounding. It's fair to say that lots of losses mean some inferior play, but it's mostly combativity. They aren't playing razor-sharp stuff – 17 games with 1.d4 nine with 1.e4 (two with 1.Nf3), but they've been playing hard in equal positions and several of these games have ended decisively. Everyone but Leko has a loss and everyone but Bacrot has a win. Would we see a higher objective quality of chess if they replaced, say, Radjabov and Bacrot with Anand and Kramnik? Yes, but we would also see draws back near 70% and many more short draws. It's not only that more draws naturally occur between super-prepared super-players but the conservatism that often takes hold in elite-only events.

Linares has been synonymous with that ultra-elite ethos for over a decade – a double round-robin (since 1998) with only the best plus a Spaniard. But recently it's often been better for bragging rights for the winner than for the fans and the chess. (The various Kasparov explosions notwithstanding.) When everybody thinks they can win any given game and plays accordingly, that gives us some great fighting chess. Speaking of, the story of the event so far is Topalov's collapse. The highest-rated player in the world has shown flashes of good play but has been horribly inconsistent. His loss to Vallejo Pons in round six came in just the sort of full-board attacking play in which he usually excels. Just when I was going to suggest that Vallejo nail his h-pawns to the board, he wins this one spectacularly.

Also in round six, Ivanchuk grabbed a pawn against Svidler's Grunfeld novelty in an offbeat line and held on to it like a pitbull. When Svidler tried to grab one back, on g2, his fragile position crumbled completely. When the Grunfeld goes wrong it doesn't drop out of school and get caught shoplifting. It burns down the school and robs a bank for drug money. The only decisive game of the seventh round was Bacrot's third loss in the last four rounds. It was a fantastically unbalanced game with Aronian, who isn't blowing anyone away but is proving his inventiveness and tenacity.

The other story is the return to form of Peter Leko, who was mediocre or worse in Dortmund, San Luis and Wijk aan Zee. I'd brag about having picked him to win in the message board poll, but I also picked him to win San Luis so I'm not exactly heading to the betting parlor. The Spanish half of the tournament begins on March 3. We can only hope it is as exciting as the Morelia half. Maybe all major tournaments should play a few rounds in Mexico if this is the result.

February 28, 2006

Hit the Beach!

No, not the shores of Tripoli and this isn't From Here to Eternity, but it sure has felt like it! The countdown clock on my US Championship website has finally gone grammatically incorrect with one days left. Wahoo! We'll be having regular contests, although I'm not sure of the prizes just yet. But I'm doing trivia contests if I have to give away newsletter subscriptions and old beer coasters. Here's another reason I'm happy to be headed west:

I don't know what orifice they pulled "33" out of, but it was 14F when I woke up on Monday. Brrrr. I'll take a mild rain any day. [And it didn't even rain today. Very nice.] I'll post regular items here but will also be running a new and improved Champblog on the official site. Boris Kreiman has confirmed his participation, btw.

March 1, 2006

USCh Under Construction

Took a tour of the playing venue at NTC Promenade here in San Diego. Beautiful place and area, lush and right on the water. New York sent me off with a thick layer of frost on the ground and it didn't rain at all here, despite the nifty icon I posted yesterday insisting it would. No accountability for weathermen, that's what's wrong in the world today.

In case you thought that the October change of dates was a ruse, this photo should provide proof enough that construction was indeed the cause.

Yep, those doors haven't been attached to the playing hall yet. Actually, they were on earlier and then had to be removed for a bit. 36 hours to go or it's Elista II, Revenge of the Drafty Hall. The doors are more necessary for noise than for wind. Yes, it's a quiet and mostly empty area, but the noisy traffic is overhead, not on the street. The local airport, as any San Diegan can tell you, is close enough make you feel like you're about to be strafed by the Luftwaffe every ten minutes. Not teeth-rattling, but the doors will be welcome. Of course I'm only singling out the inevitable glitches here. And who doesn't love the smell of fresh paint?

It's a beautiful hall and stage, which has a giant screen behind it where they are planning to project the top four boards. The two groups are split to separate sides of the hall along the walls with spectators (we hope) in the middle. The tech team will be wiring things up without a break. All the boards are connected, thanks to Eric van der Schilden and the Tachyon guys, but they have a few long nights ahead. Not that I'm not still up at 05:36 writing this (Ninja server is on NY time, as is my body) before getting back to the website, which I've updated with a few tidbits. Much more going up later after the opening reception and player meeting, especially photos.

March 3, 2006

2006 US Ch r1

We haven't even had round two yet and I'm already exhausted. It's 8:21am here and I've been up all night working on the official site. The coveted, and incredibly annoying to make, player profiles are now up. That took around 13 hours. No, really. Finding and formatting 64 photos, oh joy. (Some aren't so great, will make a list of people to hunt down for portraits today. Wanted to have them all from this week.) The day before the event started I was handed a folder full of hand-written player questionnaires. Not that I'm above menial data entry, but I rather imagined the staff could have handled typing them up. So instead of setting up the blog and going out to grab players to blog, I was typing in these things because I know how everyone has been wanting them. But I'm not bitter, just tired.

I didn't even know what had gone into the questionnaire. A dozen players didn't fill it out. There was nothing asked about chess achievements, so you'll learn about musical tastes but not about US championships won, etc. I'll try to add some of that material myself and/or ask the players what they'd like to list. Would also be nice to have how they qualified. Perhaps I'll cut some of the material. I don't know if it's worth reading "seven, my dad" 60 times just to find the one who learned from her mother. Same goes for 60 people who aren't superstitious to get to Joel and the Fed's lucky pens. Not exactly Proust material.

64 is a lot of players, man. After putting these together I'm beginning to come around to the people here who want it to go back to a 12-player round-robin... They're probably full of typos and c/p errors, will look at them again after a nap. Do post below if you see anything, guys. They are all individually tagged so I can link to them from anywhere on the site. If you'd like to do so, the anchor tag is the first initial the the first three letters of the last name. So Elizabeth Vicary is http://www.uschesschampionship.com/2006/news/meetplayers4.htm#evic You still have to know which of the four pages to go to, but I'm confident of your alphabet abilities.

Oh yeah, there was some chess too, I hear. But wait, I was also busy putting out server fires today, typical first-round trauma. Our satellite internet provider was using a caching system that kept telling our machines that certain files were 404, leading to a few broadcast glitches. (And an error log the size of a phonebook, thanks much.) After I spent 30 minutes figuring out it wasn't local and that it probably wasn't my server, our net dude volunteered that it might be their cache. Seems so.

Chess, yes, I managed to glimpse a few of the games, but had almost nil contact with the players after the round started. I had to kick them into the commentary room. Nobody could find a place to analyze or find a set for post-mortems. I took a few game notes, but not much worth blogging. I'm going to try to sleep for a few hours and get there in time to grab some players to blog. They can send entries in by email this year, but most need to be grabbed.

So how about those games? Actually, the opening reception was a good show. The area around the venue is very pretty, with a nice central fountain. Food was good. Kamsky made quite an entrance, limping around with his right foot in a cast. I was one of several who made the joke about how brutal it must have been at Corus if this is how he came out. But he broke it back in Brooklyn. I suggested that the next time someone asks what happened he should say, "I broke it kicking Anand's butt in Wijk aan Zee."

Okay, okay, round one. Nakamura played an amazingly speculative sacrifice against Friedel, really wild stuff. Hikaru missed a win and soon fell under attack and lost. Tate played a brutally efficient attack against Akobian in the other big upset of the round. Zatonskih was distressed by allowing a three-time rep against Gulko. I haven't had time to really look at them all, but there were many good games today. Great to have John Watson and John Donaldson back for commentary and analysis.

I'm going to be putting up photo galleries regularly, if not every day. The mayor of San Diego was here to open the first round, said something about all the participants being smarter than he is. Play went smoothly from what I could tell. Gulko accidentally broke the "no draw offers before move 30" rule, on move 16.

March 5, 2006

Linares 2006 r8-9

I've barely had time to see the games, unfortunately. Just when I move closer to Mexico the players flee the continent. Coincidence? I think not. But the only fear going on in Linares now that they are actually in Linares is fear that Topalov was just taking the first half off and is ready for another San Luis explosion. (Or, as various commenters have suggested in various ways, maybe his radio transmitter didn't work on the Mexican frequencies.) Topalov has now won two straight to make it back to an even score. The man never quits, and while this can be a problem when you are in lousy form, it usually bears sweet fruit. Reaching +3 seems quite improbable, although it doesn't look like anyone else is making a move.

Speaking of lemons, the leader, Peter Leko, has shown a return to his old form too. I.e., too timid by half. I honestly thought there had been a transmission error when his game with Vallejo Pons ended in a draw. He's playing like he believes his +3 will hold up to the finish. I note that he has black against Topalov this time around. Svidler is doing his best to destroy the sales of every Grunfeld book on the market. Aagaard, Khodarkovsky, Rowson, and Davies should beg him to switch to 1..d5. That's 1/4 if you're scoring at home, and three losses with it in a row. Both Svidler and Topalov have even scores with three wins, three losses, and three draws.

Ivanchuk, what can we say that hasn't been said many times? He lost on time in a superior, probably winning, position on move 39 against Bacrot. Last year in Stepanakert he did something similar, losing on time in a trivial endgame against Bu Xiangzhi. This is Bacrot's only win. Clearly his first big supertournaments haven't been the showcases he and his fans were hoping for. It's a rough trip to Corus and Linares the first time around and there isn't always a next time.

2006 US Ch r2

And the ChampBlog is back at last. Round two was the first day I had a chance to go out and grab players to blog and I'm sure it will pick up from now on. I won't run pictures with every entry, especially not after they've already blogged once. It slows the pages down too much. I'm putting up regular photo galleries to compensate. Let me know if you want specific pics. Keep it clean, guys, this ain't ChessBase.

I'm putting up $400 in prizes for a Best Blogger award. A $300 first prize and a $100 runner-up. Both quantity and quality will be taken into consideration. Your votes will be important of course, but I reserve the right to ignore you if you lose your minds. We want to encourage frequent and entertaining blogging, perhaps with game comments. From what I hear, most of the players waste spend considerable time reading The Daily Dirt, so let them know what will garner your vote for Best Blogger. Also let me know who you'd like to hear from in particular.

The free day/festival was fun, although I was a late arrival since I was trying to catch up on sleep. We'll have a full photo report on it tomorrow and NTC organizer Toni Robin has already blogged it. It's always nice to meet readers in person as well as just hang out with chessplayers and chess kids in general. The Ninja t-shirts I'm handing out are a hit. (Not as much as Shabalov's first-round "Nakamura" jersey, perhaps.) Speaking of, today a woman handed me a two-dimensional wooden chess piece (like something you'd hang on a giant wall board, but nicer) and practically begged me to have Nakamura sign it. I felt like a roadie for the Stones.

If you can believe this, here are the two top seeds spending their free time after the simul and other activities at the Chess Festival. Yes, that's Gata Kamsky and Hikaru Nakamura playing blitz on the ICC at the venue Saturday. At least they weren't playing each other this way... Okay, I can see light under the door, time for my nap.

March 7, 2006

Linares 2006 r10-11

I'm all extremities to the grindstone here in San Diego at the US Championship, so I can't really say I've spent much time looking at the Linares games this week. But that won't stop me from making sweeping generalizations and baseless commentary, of course. Vallejo Pons has turned into a giant black hole of bad in these last two rounds, sucking up all the bad around him. Someone should have told him that when you follow a 1978 game between Tal and Dorfman for 16 moves YOU WANT TO BE TAL, NOT DORFMAN. No offense to Iossif, but you don't hear tales of "the Magician of Jitomir." To be fair, Vallejo improved. Dorfman dumped another pawn with 16..Ne7 17.Bxh7! And Aronian played amazingly to hang on to the f-pawn.

Vallejo's slow slide to the bottom has made things look better for Bacrot, who is competing with him for anti-honors. The Frenchman has played a couple of nice games in the second half. Ivanchuk has also slid below the horizon after consecutive losses with white. (Including, ahem, one against Radjabov's King's Indian. And who doesn't love the King's Indian?) Topalov always finishes strong and has pulled within a point of Leko, who is holding on to the lead with a very shaky grip. He hasn't won a game since the fourth round, that's seven draws in a row. (A winless streak shared by Svidler.) Meanwhile, Aronian has crept up to a half-point back despite the loss to Topalov. The last two rounds include Topalov-Leko and Leko-Aronian.

Many of the players here at the US Championship follow the Linares games closely, keeping an eye out for opening details they might make use of. I doubt the reverse is true, but you never know.

2006 US Ch r3-5

Two hours into round five and all 32 games still going, that's always cool. The 30-move rule is a welcome addition just in case. Site is working fine, the ChampBlog is more popular than ever with the players and the readers. I'm making an effort to grab some of the senior and/or more reserved players who ordinarily wouldn't think of it. Most of them are quite interesting once you get them going.

Just about all the feedback we've received has been great, and I appreciate all the comments here, corrections and compliments alike. There has been some amusing feedback as well, although I did eventually give in to the people who couldn't find the live games and put text under the "watch live games!" link. The most comic touch so far was someone who complained about the use of the words "curse" and "graveyard" in the report on round one!

"I had no motivation to continue reading such an article, with such inappropriate wording (not even under quotation marks) and possible hidden messages to chess fans and professionals visiting the San Diego website."

He goes on to call these "alien expressions." Hilarious stuff. (Hint, use a dictionary or google the phrase "graveyard of champions." Wimbledon ring a bell?) Hidden messages!?!? Even better, he sent this complaint to most of the directors of the USCF, who have nothing to do with the site, as they pointed out to him. Of course he knew this, as the person who wrote this comedy is none other than Jovan Petronic, a frequent poster here. Quite a coincidence. What's up with the FIDE guys in Greece these days? Don't they have better things to do than make me feel important? Now I really believe Kok can win.

Didn't mean to waste this entire item on that silliness, will post more on the tournament tonight.

Chimi Rocks!

If you have room for a new chess hero, make it Batchimeg "Chimi" Tuvshintugs. She just beat her third GM of the US Championship, black against Becerra! She beat Fishbein in the first round, Kreiman in the third, and drew with black against Gulko in the fourth. Only a loss to group leader Yury Shulman slowed her down. The 19-year-old Mongolian lives in my old stomping ground in the East Bay. I'll try to get her to share some annotations from her games.

John Donaldson is already guessing at the huge rating leap she has in store and fills us in with some other info on his club's new star member:

She's played opposition over 2550 and scored 3.5/5. He rating going in was 2208 FIDE and 2271 USCF. In both systems she's gained around 50 rating points. Even if she falters in this system, she has killer tiebreaks. Her only loss is to Shulman, who is leading the tournament.

She plays faithfully in the Mechanics Club Tuesday Night Marathons. (Eight round swisses, 30'+90", g/30) and she usually wins. (One game a week with two week break between events.) She always calls her coach Batsaikhan Tserendorj "teacher." He's only expert level but she swears by him. Over the last month or so she's been parked on the 4th floor of the Mechanics Club with her laptop studying chess. This with her job and studying for school. Both of her sisters are also on the rating list. One I think still lives and plays in Mongolia. Batchimeg is quite ambitious and I think she would love to be on the Olympiad team.

More coming soon. Donaldson is now filling us in on the veritable golden horde of Mongolian players in the US today. Apparently there are more strong Mongolians here than in Mongolia. But the husband-wife team Tegshuren Enkhbat and Tsagaan Battsetseg that were in the last championship didn't make it this time.

March 8, 2006

ChampBlog 2006

So who are the Best Blogger frontrunners with three rounds to go? I haven't had time to read comments this week. (And the hotel wireless was out last night so I updated the site with dial-up. Dial-up for Zeus's sake.) I don't know if he'll blog again, but Ildar Ibragimov may need some special prize for his zoo + game commentary poetry. Incredible. It's great because he's a quiet guy I've never talked with and suddenly he pops up with this. Definitely worth at least a few Blog Beers. (I used a six-pack to lure in a few of the more reserved veteran (and contending) competitors. "One Blog, One Beer" says the sign on it in the fridge.)

March 11, 2006

Aronian Wins Linares 2006

Good! Armenia's Levon Aronian played interesting, combative chess throughout and beat Peter Leko in the final round (with black!) to seal the deal. Aronian is Linares champion. Kasparov's prediction that Aronian would do well at Corus was just off by a tournament, perhaps? I would also have been content with Topalov completing his miraculous comeback to win. Leko led almost the entire way but simply stopped winning after a great start. He capped off his long run of draws with losses in the last two rounds to drop him to fourth place. Radjabov really showed some quality here, beyond the usual pragmatic opportunism. Svidler started out with the same 3.5/4 as Leko but never won again. His Grunfeld failed him but he also had a few whites, don't forget.

Overall it was a very exciting tournament, although the word uneven could also be used. Everyone had a win and everyone had at least two losses. Linares 06 was full of fighting chess on both sides of the Atlantic. As much as I like wins and losses, I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with Linares having this many sloppy games. But it's not fair to complain about everything all the time. Dropping Kramnik and Anand into the field (for example) would have almost certainly increased the number of draws while dropping the number of blunders. If the "year of Topalov" is to be continued by a year of sharp, unorthodox play by guys like Aronian and Radjabov, with more risk, more tactics, and the inevitable increase in the number of mistakes, I welcome it.

March 12, 2006

2006 US Championship Final

Onischuk held on against Nakamura by a thread. Incredible play by Hikaru to get winning chances against the rock-solid Onischuk, who has been in great shape. 29...Qxf3 would have been very tough to defend against. There's a very pretty line there that is what Nakamura missed, although he was playing very quickly at that point. (You'll see it on the annotated game page by morning at the official site. No time to post it right now.) That left Onischuk in the clear with his massive 7/9. Shulman wasn't so lucky and was brought down by a nice Fishbein tactic. This left a big tie for first, but Shulman's tiebreaks won out over those of Kamsky and Christiansen, who both won nice games.

Of course now everyone is groaning about how there should be rapid playoffs instead of system tiebreaks. (Even the place prizes are decided by system tiebreaks this year, to encourage fighting to the bitter end.) I got into the various reasons yesterday, but basically almost all of the top players on the advisory panel voted for system instead of rapids long ago. Most of them remember midnight blitz sessions that turned things into a joke. Rapids are exhausting, the chess is lousy, the advantage is much to the younger players, etc. Of course it feels fairer to have everything settled on the board, but if someone plays a much tougher field but is caught in the end and loses in blitz, everyone would complain about that, too.

There simply isn't a way to make everyone happy and having unlimited classical tiebreak games just isn't feasible (or desirable). You have to know when the event ends and players don't like epic rapid/blitz games either. Remember Anna Hahn beating Krush and Shahade back in 2003 in rapid playoffs after facing a weaker field? Everyone bitched about that. If Kamsky or Christiansen came out of a rapid/blitz playoff ahead of Shulman, the anti-rapid crowd could freak out since Shulman played a tougher field.

Zatonskih will play Goletiani in the women's final. It's karma for Zatonskih, who was the top female performer at the last championship but who collapsed at the end after facing an incredible field. Her experience was mirrored by Tuvshintugs this year. She played seven GMs in a row but lost to Zatonskih (who lost to Goletiani in 2004 near the end) and then again today to lose her final four games and finish out of the picture despite beating three Grandmasters.

Now we have the other controversial implementation, the final rapid matches for the titles and the prize money. This has been discussed to death here in many items with lots of good arguments on all sides; no need to repeat them all here. I'm not a fan of mixing time controls or of the two groups format, but the reasons for trying them were sound ones and it's far from the tragedy some take it for. Regardless of who wins, Shulman and Onischuk dominated their groups and a deserving winner will emerge.

March 13, 2006

The Last Blunder

The last post from San Diego... The last blunder of the US Championship turns out to have been made many months ago. As the saying goes, to err is human but to really screw things up you need a computer. Due to an error in an Excel spreadsheet formula used to calculate the prize fund distribution, the itemized prizes add up to around $20,000 more than the prize fund of $253,600. (They didn't count the top two women's prizes.) This wasn't discovered until they were writing out the checks after the tournament ended. (I could hear the groans and forehead smacking coming from the next table.) This meant there was no way to tell the players until the closing reception when the checks were being handed out. Most of the prizes were 11% lower than listed, although of course the actual prize fund was not changed at all.

The four finalist prizes had been publicly announced and could not be changed. The other 60 were then adjusted to the correct figures and rounded up to the nearest hundred, increasing the total by about $600. Of course the players don't just look at the total prize fund, they look at the prizes they think they might win, especially the night before they get their checks! The other top money makers "lose" the most; Ibragimov and Kamsky going from 11,600 to 10,300. The lowest prizes are 2000 instead of 2200.

Many of the players were annoyed, a few more than that, although it didn't seem to sour the closing party much. (Photos soon.) The organizers here had no authority to exceed the prize fund or to bounce checks a la FIDE. (AF4C prez Erik Anderson wasn't here due to personal reasons.) Both the correct total amount and the incorrect distribution are in the player contract, but I hope nobody goes legal about this. Nobody knew what they were getting until the night before and I doubt anyone spent the full expected amount before finding out the next day. On the other hand, there's a casino nearby.

Since they have been up front about taking the heat, and since everyone will ask, I'll go ahead and name the names of chief arbiter Robert Tanner and AF4C liason and press dude John Henderson as the ones in charge of falling on their swords for the blunder. They stress this had nothing to do with AF4C or NTC. Both are stand-up guys and it's a shame they have to suffer so much for what was basically a typo they failed to catch until the last minute. The prize fund is the prize fund and it didn't change, but perception is important and clearly many of the players feel like they lost money, at least at first blush. Had someone noticed before the tournament began it would have been no big deal. And I wonder how quickly the players would notice if the distribution added up to LESS than the prize fund!

Of course this is made even more ridiculous (I hesitate to use the word "stupid" when I worked and ate with these guys every day for two weeks and know they aren't stupid. Except for their love of Denny's) is that something similar happened last championship. That was more of a mental error than a mechanical one, counting the women's prizes twice and actually increasing the prize fund. Ironically, Robert Tanner (a former accountant!) was the one who caught the error last time too.

March 14, 2006

2006 US Ch Recap #1

Well, Dirt-style at least. I'll be posting all sorts of leftovers here and on the official site for a few days. I still need to put up more photos and a quick recap of the final match games, although I don't think they really require much in the way of analysis, being sloppy rapids. The problems I had getting good pictures with my new camera continued through the final day, made worse by nighttime conditions, so my shots of the trophy ceremony suck. I'm trying to get others from some "official" photographer who showed up sporadically and whose output I barely ever saw. Most of the photos on the Championship site are by John Henderson, the rest by me (most of the good ones are John's).

Two good arbiter moments: Wojtkiewicz trying to claim a repetition draw in a position that hadn't even repeated twice, let alone three times. Similar, Kreiman, on Novikov's move, going to the arbiter to warn him that he and Novikov were about to repeat three times before the 30 move rule, then Novikov varying and winning. Arbiter Franc Guadalupe already blogged about how he admonished Vigorito and Becerra for their game ending before move 30 only to be asked by fluffy if it was okay if he resigned on move 27...

All in all a good show with lots of amazing chess. The two groups thing, of which I was not a fan, was bad for expected reasons and good for a few that surprised me. One element I didn't see mentioned much, and that perhaps was too obvious to mention, was that it meant we had two tournaments to follow. Two leaders, two chasing packs (four if you count the women leaders), so there was more drama and more sporting interest. Perhaps not exactly double, but it definitely created the feeling there was a lot more going on. (KO events take this to the extreme, of course.) It created technical problems with the pairings, particularly colors, but certainly it wasn't a disaster.

The final matches did feel a bit anticlimactic simply because they were over so fast. Two weeks of brutal, wonderful chess and then 90 minutes of rapid just doesn't feel right, at least not to anyone following them the entire way. I didn't see the TV crew they had hoped for, but there were over 400 people filling the hall for the final match, probably the largest chess audience in the US – certainly for a professional event – since the various Kasparov vs computer matches. It was a very pleasing sight to see two great players battling it out in a crowded hall in front of a giant projection of the game. This is US chess! Awesome.

Local coverage was good. It was mentioned on the local network news (and Don Imus?!) and there were regular items in the local papers. Having a 30-year-old Ukrainian as champ instead of a 16-year-old New Yorker won't help national coverage, but this is a slim vs none discussion. (And sad, because Onischuk is cool and well-spoken.) There's no demand for greater chess coverage in mainstream media because the community is so well served by specialist sources like this one. We LIKE to see chess in the newspaper because it makes us feel accepted and helps to spread the game, but it's not like our local paper is going to present more or better info than we get from ChessBase, TWIC, and official sites. We can't judge the success of a US event by how many times it's mentioned in the paper when there isn't a demand for such coverage. I regularly beat the drums here to write letters and email to local papers and such, but real fans already know where to get their chess news and all the press releases in the world aren't going to make it into the headlines if there is no demand.

March 15, 2006

US Ch 2006 Prize List

I just added the full prize list to the US Championship website standings and crosstable page. This is the corrected list. (Typed in by hand from a scrounged player sheet. Argh.) The group distribution on the rules page is still wrong, but I added a note.

33 players made at least $2,900, the lowest prize was $2,000. The prizes were distributed with the tiebreak system, a somewhat cruel but effective way to encourage fighting games all the way through. Stripunsky and Christiansen came out on the cruel end of things, losing out on over $4,000 for finishing third instead of second on tiebreaks. Of course Shulman went to the final on tiebreaks too, but I don't begrudge that since he led the whole way. You win some you lose some on these systems and it's true that there was a record high degree of combativity.

As many have pointed out, and as was mentioned last championship, the official hotel was too expensive for most players, even the strong ones who could expect to finish in the top half with at least an even score. I'd say fewer than half stayed at Humphrey's, which was a pretty place but a bit rich at $125/night for 12 nights (that's $1500 for you English majors out there). The organization wants to promote an elegant image for chess and for the event, but they are pricing the players out of the official hotel this way. Either they need to drive a better bargain or accept that most of the players will prefer the Holiday Inn or the Loma Lodge ($250 for a week!). As long as there are plenty of alternatives around it's not a big deal, I suppose, but there are advantages to having nearly everyone under one roof. The organizers didn't seem to mind and no one was forced to stay at the official hotel, as is happening at the Euro Championship again.

One of the frequent suggestions about the field is to cut it to 32 or fewer and keep the same prize fund. I see the point, but I also like the festival atmosphere and many stories created by the giant field. You also take away many chances for US players to get norms. For better or for worse, players here are used to risking not coming away from an event with a profit and it's somewhat fitting that quite a few who are mostly playing for the honor of the invitation just break even financially. (I was about to say that at least there isn't an entry fee, but there's that $75 qualifier fee, paid multiple times by many players.) The chance for big bucks with breaking even as the worst case scenario isn't too bad or they wouldn't show up. Ten players made $5,800 or more, plus the $5,000 Larsen Prize.

Failing to keep this item on the money – format discussion and venue critiques still to come – one idea tossed about was to add another layer to the qualification system, making into more of a cycle. Then only 10-24 players make the final, which would still have the big prize fund. First prize could then be closer to $100,000, a number that might be big enough to catch the attention of the money-mad US media. Have only the defending champion seeded into the final, toss in the top two or three women qualifiers, and that's it. Amateurs would still have a chance to make it, but the field would be much more compact. The second tier of qualification could take place online (with proctors) to cut costs, or done regionally. This second stage might build interest, the way the candidates matches did for the world championship.

Below the jump, some comments from Gata Kamsky and Larry Christiansen posted to an earlier item.

Continue reading "US Ch 2006 Prize List" »

March 16, 2006

2006 Women's WCh

Didn't have much time to focus on this one from San Diego, especially with Linares going too. Most of the favorites and big names were tossed out of this knock-out in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in the first two rounds. (ChessBase has assorted reports.) The mighty Chinese contingent was reduced to just one in round three, Xu Yuhua. The home team is doing very well despite the elimination of young hope Tatiana Kosintseva. Although the rise of the Chinese and Indian teams (men's and women's) has been impressive, the final eight in Ekaterinburg has a decidedly vintage feel with three Russians and two Georgians, including the indominable former title holder Maia Chiburdanidze. The veteran went to blitz against the 15-year-old Wenjun Ju in the third round.

Of course this is FIDE KO lottery style, so there's no point in making sweeping conclusions. Koneru, Kosteniuk, and defending champ Stefanova left early. The women's title, as with the FIDE title under the KO regime, isn't much about the chess or the hierarchy of the winner. The new women's champion will do a lot of good PR and garner a few good invitations. The Corus B group and Essent are usually locks.

Three years ago I pointed out that Judit Polgar had played one classical game against another woman in ten years. Unless memory fails, that can be updated to 13 years. Her path is hard to compare because she was too strong for women's events at a very young age. Still, the young Kosintseva sisters play at least half their games in women-only events, facing fellow 2400s instead of 2600s. (Although they are practically over the hill at 20-21.) Katerina Lahno seems to be trying to break this tradition, eschewing most gender-segregated events.

Part of my dislike for women-only events is a selfish desire to test the other side of the chicken-egg argument, or at least one part of it. We don't have nearly enough information on whether genetics or upbringing have an effect on women's chess abilities and we won't have such information for generations, if ever. Not that this lack of data has stopped us from discussing it to death. But the theory that women play worse because they spend many key years playing weaker opposition is readily testable. However, the point may already be moot by the time they are professionals.

I haven't had a problem with girls' events because they avoid the hostile minority environment of a traditionally boys' game. (It was no surprise to see that just about every player in the US Championship learned from his/her father.) All-girl events are great, perhaps essential, encouragement. But due to the much smaller pool of girl players and a standard bell curve talent distribution, this means girls are playing weaker competition right from the start. Dilemma.

March 17, 2006

US Ch 2006 Awards

I just posted the last content items to the US Championship website. I'll try to put up two more photo galleries later today, so get in any requests you might have. First was the review of the final day. I added quite a few photos. As I mentioned earlier, my pics of the stage weren't that great and they were complicated by the screen showing a loop of the final games. Nice idea, but the projector bathed everyone on the stage in blue light and chess pieces from the shoulders up and created weird shadows. Great. I've Photoshopped most of these to diminish the alien pallor.

There's also a separate page for Hikaru Nakamura's win of the $5,000 Larsen Prize for fighting chess, with a letter from its sponsor, Jim Roberts. Nakamura played with reckless abandon throughout and his games were always watched closely. The honorable mention list should include Fernandez, Shabalov, Tate, and Finegold. As someone pointed out in the comments, with the 30-move rule in effect this award becomes more subjective. But that's not a bad thing and there was no doubt many players fought on in many cases with the award in mind.

The blog awards I sponsored could have gone to a separate page just to include the many blog highlights, but it's more fun to read them all anyway. I was the first prize-giver at the trophy ceremony and I read a few selected items. (Several people have sent me pictures of myself at the podium and I see no good reason to publish them.) First was the mini-roast of poor Elliott Liu, who gained instant infamy for blogging (in caps, no less) that he wanted to be paired with a woman so he could win a game. He quickly apologized, but he was teased about it mercilessly, especially after being spanked by Vanessa West in the last round. Elliott turned nine shades of purple as I told the story. Vanessa got a round of applause.

Many of the email voters singled out specific posts. Joel Benjamin's line about wanting to win so he "could play an adult again" was a classic. Ibragimov only posted once but I had to give him a special prize for his poem. As one of the voters put it, much of the humor in it came from the fact that it came from the preternaturally quiet Ibragimov. Shabalov's was also great and yes, I actually did lure people in with "one blog, one beer" that day.

There were 270 votes, many with only one or two names. It became clear pretty quickly that I only had to count three names: Finegold, Serper, and Vicary. Liz came a strong third and I'm sorry I rushed through my notes and didn't give her the honorable mention shout-out she deserved. The teen team (Itkis, Ross, West) posted some entertaining insanity and garnered quite a few votes from their peers and other people who know that "anyway" ends with a z. Others with double-digit vote counts included de Firmian's account of being driven to his hotel by military police, Benjamin, Liu, Vigorito, Fernandez, I. Schneider, and Ginsburg (who probably came fourth). Doing the ChampBlog was again a highlight and I'm glad so many players and fans seem to agree.

March 18, 2006

US Ch 2006 Photo Gallery

You can never please everyone, but between the three photo galleries, the blogs, and the daily reports there are several hundred photos now online at the official site. Whew. The latest is this big one with thumbnails. Most of the pics are by John Henderson, the rest are by me. Most of the great at-board shots are John's, the post-game shots and closing ceremony pics are mostly mine.

It's not random, but it may as well be because it's alphabetical, sometimes by first name, sometimes by last name, sometimes you'd never guess. I started out using a spiffy flash gallery template but wanted people to be able to save these images if they like. Jpg compression level is relatively low (55) because it looks like we're going to have this monster server and its 1,000 GB of transfer for another month. I may even use it to distribute some old video clips and the like.

I still need to put up a photo gallery of the off-day Chess Fest, but I don't know who various VIPs are since I wasn't there and nobody sent me a key to the pics. I guess I'll just skip the captions. Pics of cute kids and chess, boo-yah.

On the right, new US women's champion Anna Zatonskih. Oddly enough, putting on her Ninja shirt for a photo was her idea. Alexander Onischuk said he'd send me a pic of him wearing his standing next to Karpov at the Poikovsky. I don't know exactly why I think this will be hilarious, but I do. Speaking of Onischuk's clothing, one pic on the new gallery shows NTC honcho Alan Ziter presenting him with Chess Fest logo boxer shorts. Baffled laughter all round. No thong for Anna, but if you need a chess-themed thong, you know where to go.

Poikovsky 2006

Tune your Google Earth to "chilly" and check out the seventh edition of this excellent annual event in Siberia. The first round is underway now, in case you were also fooled by their having the opening ceremonies on the same day. (TWIC lists it starting tomorrow.) There are live games at the Aeroflot chess site. The official site is in funny characters. I guesstimate it at a category 17 [18, actually. 2680 avg], with Ponomariov, Bareev, Shirov, Bologan, and one of the event's founders, new US champion Alexander Onischuk, who didn't get much rest. He could have used it since he's the lowest-rated player in the event!

Seeing one of the games already drawn in 18 moves was startling after working the US championship, where a 30-move minimum was in place. The field is a curious mix, heavy on Russian veterans. Last year's co-winner (with Bologan), Bacrot, isn't playing. Nice to see Shirov back in action in an event worthy of his caliber. Perhaps he'll play for Spain this year in Turin?

March 20, 2006

Melody Amber 2006

The annual blindfold and rapid spectacular is underway in Monaco. The official site has live games and fine round reports by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, the moonlighting editor of New In Chess. The player section (under "info") also has some nice tidbits. Grischuk's apparently serious interest in poker, for one. He played in a big poker tournament in Monaco a week before Amber started.

In the second round Linares winner Aronian beat Topalov in the blindfold after starting with 1.f4 and getting a lousy position. The blindfold games tend to illustrate how harmonious normal GM chess is by usually looking very disjointed. Of course the games aren't much to look at later without adding "for a blindfold game," with the occasional notable exception. Kramnik's immortal blindfold game against Topalov in 2003 is the only non-blunder game that comes to mind. Speaking of, Kramnik withdrew to continue his recovery from his arthritis treatment, according to TWIC. He's replaced by Amber first-timer Grischuk.

March 22, 2006

Tournaments a Go-Go

I built up enough speed to escape the Kasparov gravity zone, aided by his leaving New York for Luxembourg, where he will be delivering a speech on strategy to a roomful of Icelandic, Norwegian, and American banking folks. While we were working on that I got the benefit of his occasional barbed commentary on the Amber and Poikovsky games. He's been a fan of Aronian's spirited play (mini-match wins over Topalov and Leko), but when Aronian lost to Nielsen in a wild game Garry commented, "Aronian wanted to play like a genius, but someone forgot to tell Nielsen that Aronian is a genius!" True. If only our opponents believed in our sacrifices as much as we do.

The Poikovsky has been an incredibly drawish affair. I could be snide about how this is fitting for a tournament named after Karpov, but there has been a good level of fight in most of the draws. Poor Bologan has been the loser in four of the five decisive games after four rounds, although as I type he's close to beating Ponomariov.

The women's world championship is down to the four-game final match that starts tomorrow. Alisa Galliamova faces Xu Yuhua. Galliamova lost a 16-game world championship match against Xie Jun in 1999 and she was then rated 2556. Xu Yuhua made it to the semifinals in the 2001 KO in Moscow, losing to Kosteniuk.

March 24, 2006

Birthday Boys

Posting at midnight so I can split the difference between the March 23rd birthday of Viktor Korchnoi and that of Vassily Smyslov on the 24th. (No adjustments for the Julian calendar necessary, but it's a close call.) Korchnoi is 75, Smylov 85. Both, along with Lasker and Najdorf, stand out for peak performance and longevity.

Korchnoi was more active in the 80's and 90's than any other period of his career. His clear first in the category 16 Biel 2001 event ahead of Svidler and Gelfand put him into his own septugenarian category. His two world championship matches against Karpov (2.5 if you include 74) and his sheer longevity make him the leader of the "best never to win the title" pack. ChessBase has an item with some nice pics up. My pic of Korchnoi here. The recently released Volume 5 of Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series is on Korchnoi and Karpov. Viktor is the only non-champion to get such cover status and the games and stories fully back up the choice. Tons of fascinating material. In a business speech given in Luxembourg on Wednesday, Kasparov paid tribute to Korchnoi's 75th with a closing note:

"This date in history also has meaning in the chess world. Seventy-five years ago today the great player Viktor Korchnoi was born in Leningrad and I would like to pay him tribute. He was already a veteran when he played Karpov in three world championship matches. He was well over twice my age when we met in 1984 in a world championship qualification match. Now Karpov has retired from serious play. I have retired from professional chess. But Viktor the Terrible is still playing strong tournaments all over the world at the age of seventy-five! From time to time he still beats the teenage prodigies. He has lost none of the fire and spirit that have made him great for over fifty years."

Smyslov has been largely forgotten by the current generation of fans. His world championship reign, like Tal's, was a single year thanks to Botvinnik's rematch clause and his deadly efficiency in such matches. He also had success well into what are usually the golden years, facing Kasparov in a final candidates match in the same cycle as Korchnoi did. His last notable results were in that period, the mid-80's. His vision became so bad - he is now blind - that although he continued to play he spent much of his time at the board with his eyes closed. I treasure having met Smyslov in the at the 2001 Botvinnik Memorial matches between Kasparov and Kramnik. His wife watched the screen and spoke the moves to him. A pic of Kramnik meeting Smyslov at that event here. Smyslov has continued with chess composition.

Both players had distinct styles, if not as clear-cut as the stereotypes would have it. Smyslov's is usually called "harmonious," perhaps influenced by his serious interest in music as much as his maneuvering play. Korchnoi's is inevitably called materialistic, awkward, and defensive. As with all such capsule evaluations, they represent things invisible to 95% of chessplayers and ignore that you have to be great at every facet of the game to play at that level. They met over the board 20 times, Korchnoi having a +1 score. Both are justly renown for their endgame prowess. Smyslov was occasionally called "the Hand" for his intuitive feel. Korchnoi's nickname "Viktor the Terrible" stems from his combative nature as well as his devastating results.

Happy Birthday to these living legends. Thanks for all the great chess, past and future.

March 25, 2006

Xu Yuhua Women's Champ

Not to start up the discussion about the relevance of women's titles again, but China's Xu Yuhua defeated Alisa Galliamova to become the new women's world champion. The 30-year-old won both games with black to end the match in three games, 2.5/3. ChessBase item here. Official site here, though it doesn't have the final news yet. Xu Yuhua is ranked #635 in the world. Three of the last four women's champions have been Chinese. Albert posts below that according to the Chinese media, Xu Yuhua is pregnant. Mazeltov!

March 26, 2006

Chess Poster, Cheap

Got $1200 to spare for a Swedish chess poster for a French movie? Me neither. If you do, this poster for the 1927 film Le Joueur d'échecs might be just what you're looking for. I'll stick with my DVD of the movie. What's the most money you've ever spent on a chess item? Memorabilia, book, set, table? Not including the cumulative costs of magazines, lessons, fabulous email newsletter subscriptions...

Are you also afraid to calculate the total amount you've spent on your book collection? Being interested in the content and not the collectability, I've never spent more than $100 on any individual book. I have ended up with quite a collection of Kasparov stuff, for obvious reasons. Few of my favorite books are rare or unusual, though many are old and largely forgotten. One (two, really), that I both love and treasure is Miguel Najdorf's "15 Aspirantes al Campeonato Mundial" on the Zurich 1953 candidates tournament. (Ataneo, 1954) Its obscurity is due to the lack of an English edition and the long shadow of the justly famous Bronstein book on the same tournament.

I've picked up a quite a lot of stuff over the years at various tournaments and I don't put these personal souvenirs in the same category as buying yet more stuff online. (The problem with stuff, described by George Carlin.) Then there is the flotsam of KasparovChess Online, including this poster of one of the original logo sample ads. (There was another of these poster samples where he was thinking "Bomdiggity!" Really. It was never used.) I've got enough chess clutter not to want to decorate with a chess theme, so I'll leave the Swedish one on Ebay for someone else.

March 27, 2006

Shirov Is Back!

Alexei Shirov today won the Poikovsky (Karpov) tournament with a steady +3 undefeated, beating co-leader Dreev in the final round to escape the very tight field (with one exception). Viktor Bologan played his only draw in the final round, with white against US champion Alexander Onischuk. Eight of the tournament's anemic total of 15 decisive games were played by Bologan, who started out by losing four in a row. Half the field had only two decisive games; ten games were drawn in fewer than 25 moves. Bleh.

It wasn't Shirovian sturm und drang, but it was a solid win over a strong field in which wins were hard to come by, unless you played Bologan early on. Shirov's second win came in a bizarre game in which Najer gave up a queen for two minor pieces on move 11 of a Four Knights game! Amazing. Adams had a good showing at Corus, so it may be that the two fallen veterans are rounding into shape to make their candidates match a real clash.

March 29, 2006

Teen Dream

Gotta love this clip from a pic on a page put together by Anand's Indian management company, TNQ Sponsorship. Teen pics and a career highlights page included. The main Anand page is here, the photo gallery is here. [Thanks to JaiDeepBlue] I figure it's okay for me to post this because I recently put one of myself up back in the unfortunate moustache days. And I was also regularly felicitated back in high school.

Hard to say which chessplayer has the most embarrassing kid photos out there. Certainly Kasparov seems to have the most. ChessBase's amazing Playerbase even includes a picture of him as a tot on a tricycle, though most of these are also in various game collections from the early and mid-eighties. The Reshevsky sailor suit simul pics probably weren't on Sammy's mantle later in life. I've posted them before, but Karpov's agitprop Soviet youth pics of the young champion carrying a fish and walking through a wheat field carrying a scythe are classics. (From "Chess Is My Life")

March 30, 2006

Question Time for Kasparov

John Henderson sends this in: "Garry Kasparov will be appearing on BBC TV's famed political debate show Question Time at 22.35 GMT tonight (BBC1). He appears as part of a panel of politicians and experts answering audience questions on this famous, long-running British TV show which has relocated to Moscow for the occasion. Kasparov gets star billing ahead of British and Russian government ministers. I know Douglas Alexander very well - and also his sister, Wendy, who is the Scottish MSP for Paisley. If you click the video link on the righthand side, Question Time can be watched for a full week after the show."

Sure, but it's politics, not chess. So to chess up this item a bit, toss in your own chess questions for Garry below. To avoid redundancy it would help if you read his recent ChessCafe interview first (Link to PDF because of their bizarre system of rotation with no permanent html link), and his New In Chess columns. His upcoming NIC column is all about Linares, of course, with some mentions of Amber. Impressions and questions about Volume 5 of My Great Predecessors would be interesting to hear. I was amazed by all the stories and interviews with Karpov's seconds and other contemporaries. You can have a good time reading it straight through without even going over the games.

March 31, 2006

Moro & Anand Win Amber 06

Melody Amber is over in Monaco. Anand dominated the rapid, as usual. Moro dominated the blindfold, as usual. The Russian obviously has a special gift for visualization, and/or his unorthodox brand of play is even harder to deal with when his opponents can't see the pieces. Anyone who has ever played blindfold knows that it's more difficult when your opponent makes unusual moves, even if they are bad. (Not that Moro's are, of course.)

I once played a few blindfold games against a friend's 11-year-old, who had only been playing for a year. The nearly random moves in the opening, but without hanging anything, made the position harder to keep track of than going through a GM game! Kramnik was also always particularly good at the blindfold in Monaco, and his play is hardly unorthodox. I went over some historic blindfold tidbits in an article on Amber a few years ago.

I've long pushed visualization exercises for students, especially in White Belt. (Some samples here.) Of course they help for practical play, but they also help you get a lot more out of your printed chess materials. Most players end up jumping from diagram to diagram when they read, rarely bothering to set up a board. The prevalence of chess software for going over games is a mixed blessing. It's incredibly handy, irresistibly so. But when you see every single move, main line and subvariations, you don't have to visualize anything. If you wonder how a variation will work out, it's too easy to just zip through it, probably with an engine running at the same time to make sure you don't use your brain at all.

April 1, 2006

Ilyumzhinov Tops April Rating List

In a remarkable leap, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov passed Vishy Anand and Veselin Topalov to take the #1 spot on the April, 2006 FIDE rating list that was released yesterday. His new rating of 2852 surpasses Topalov by an amazing 48 points and also overtakes Kasparov's record of 2851, achieved in 1999. This unprecedented Elo jump was due entirely to Ilyumzhinov's success in the little-publicized "Kalmykian Savings Bank Jubilee Tournament" held in Elista last November.

Right: A photo from the event. Ilyumzhinov's opponents couldn't handle his sideways approach. Several participants complained on condition of anonymity about the conditions, especially the sofas and the use of the FIDE president's latest idea to popularize the game in America, edible cake boards and sets.

Ilyumzhinov dominated the four player, thirty-round match tournament to take the one million dollar first prize. He easily outpaced opponents Zurab Azmaiparashvili (GEO, 2669) 2nd place, $500,000; Georgios Makropoulos (GRE, 2382) third place, $250,000; and Ignatius Leong (SIN, 2225) fourth place, $100,000. (Prizes do not reflect the 20% FIDE tax.) Games are not yet available.

This outstanding triumph has also made Ilyumzhinov the new frontrunner in the Chess Oscar voting. He now leads Topalov with 2,184,477 first-place votes to 1,388.

April 3, 2006

Dominoes on ESPN

I saw this on the NY Times on Saturday and was really hoping it was an April Fool's joke. No such luck. Poker, Scrabble, and now dominoes. Can ESPN sudoku be far behind?

To the occasional domino player, it is a stretch to even call this quiet game of straight-faced strategy a sport. But anyone who has spent time in a Latino neighborhood in New York City could testify that dominoes played there — with the slammed-down tiles, the verbal sparring, the bragging and bluffing — is no parlor game.The games almost always draw spectators, so perhaps it is no surprise that the ESPN sports network has declared dominoes the next big spectator sport and is promoting it as both a cultural touchstone and a highly competitive game, complete with rankings, formal tournaments, celebrity events and sponsors. ...

Encouraged by the success of televised poker, the network has begun combing New York City for top players and colorful clubs for its coverage and has been taping segments on formal tournaments and casual neighborhood games.

Hourlong domino shows now run Tuesday nights on the network's Spanish-language sports channel ESPN Deportes. Hoping it will be popular with English-speaking viewers, the network plans to show similar programming on ESPN2 starting in June.

Note that, as with poker, the players trash-talking and whining during a game is a part of the television appeal. I haven't seen anyone suggest this as a(nother) reason televised chess won't sell, but why not? Having Washington Square Park-style banter between the players, or from the players to the audience, would be hilarious. Terrible chess, of course, but by now everyone should realize that everything that would make chess more appetizing to television makes it less appetizing as chess. (The "more mistakes makes for more tactics makes for more excitement" argument notwithstanding.)

The Costs of Chess

The NY Times has a sporadically insightful article by Julie Bick on why many parents are happy their kids like chess: it's a lot cheaper than most other activities. [Thanks to Rebecca]

Like many activities for children, chess brings an associated cost, but it can be significantly lower than that of other popular pastimes. Families need not buy expensive protective gear or uniforms or join private clubs, and unless their children are serious players, they do not have to travel out of town. A good-quality chess set can be had for $20 and can last a lifetime. Fees to enter local scholastic tournaments usually run just $15 to $20, and membership in an after-school chess team is usually reasonably priced. Compared with hobbies like ice skating, ballet, squash, golf or the piano, chess can be practically free.

I can see the "yes, but..." forming on your lips, but they do go on...

Of course, parents can spend more so that their children can go beyond the chess basics. Private coaches, who may charge $30 to $200 an hour, can bolster a student's game. High-end digital chess clocks can cost $100. And fancy chess sets, or a collection of them, can cost a king's ransom.

Some families pay travel and hotel costs to play in local, regional, national and — for elite players — international tournaments. A local Saturday tournament season can cost families $250 a month, including entry fees and travel expenses. Larger regional tournaments like the New York State Scholastic Chess Championships charge higher entrance fees — $40 to $65, depending on when players sign up — and may require overnight accommodations. A trip to one of the two annual national scholastic tournaments requires a four-night stay: it could cost $1,500 for a parent and child, including air fare, hotel and meals. Some families use these tournaments as jumping-off points for sightseeing in the area.

And, hot on the heels of the latest episodes of our eternal discussion about chess on television, the article concludes with this tidbit.

This spring, the game may make a bigger splash with the public. Following on the heels of television's "Celebrity Poker" and "Dancing With the Stars," ESPN has signed a deal to produce a televised celebrity chess tournament featuring Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes and others. "This is a charity tournament, but we hope to grow televised chess with sponsors and prize money," said Giovanni James, who is producing the show with Penny Marshall.

There you are. It's not about time controls, hidden cameras, gambling, money, or format. To get chess on TV in America you need celebrities. If anything can succeed at making the game less overtly intellectual, it's adding a heavy dose of celebrity television. I'm sure we can turn the Royal Game into OMG CHESS!!!!1!! in no time. On the other hand, if Uma Thurman is looking for a coach, I'm available. We'll whup Harrelson's ganja-addled butt.

April 2006 Rating List

Responding to legal threats from the League for Truth and Veracity, here is the real new FIDE rating list. ChessBase has an article, TWIC has a handy list with past ratings included.

1 Topalov, Veselin BUL 2804
2 Anand, Viswanathan IND 2803
3 Aronian, Levon ARM 2756
4 Svidler, Peter RUS 2743
5 Leko, Peter HUN 2738
6 Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR 2738
7 Morozevich, Alexander RUS 2730
8 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 2729
9 Gelfand, Boris ISR 2727
10 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 2723
11 Adams, Michael ENG 2720
12 Grischuk, Alexander RUS 2719
13 Radjabov, Teimour AZE 2717
14 Polgar, Judit HUN 2711
15 Bacrot, Etienne FRA 2708
16 Akopian, Vladimir ARM 2706
17 Bareev, Evgeny RUS 2701
18 Shirov, Alexei ESP 2699
19 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar AZE 2699
20 Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter ROM 2695

With four rating lists per year and his obvious hierarchy, the cruel irony of Anand still never having hit the #1 spot won't last forever. It was bizarre to see Kasparov retire, Kramnik fade, and Topalov swoop in to take the #1 so obviously destined to finally be Anand's. The huge gap between them and #3 is reminiscent of the Kasparov-Karpov days, but Linares showed they aren't alone.

Adams is back, as I predicted last year. Shirov will move up after Poikovsky. Viva the 90's. Kasparov is off the list at last, but this has been anticipated for so long it's hardly news. At least we can stop calling Topalov "the #1 active player." Still, for some it must feel like a weight lifted. Topalov gets to be the honest-to-goodness numero uno, the first time the FIDE champion has held that spot since the split in 1993.

April 5, 2006

Kosteniuk in Penthouse

Fully clothed, before I go any further. If you're still reading, there's an article with Alexandra Kosteniuk in the May issue of Penthouse, a famous American porn mag. (If you read Penthouse for the articles I read Foreign Affairs for the pictures.) Creatively titled "All the Right Moves: Chess Hottie Alexandra Kosteniuk," it consists of an interview with such enlightenment as "for mental activity, you need to be in very good shape -- to be able to play chess for five, six hours." Yes, there are pictures. Not naked. She'll be the only woman in the magazine whose only silicon aid is Fritz. [Thanks to Topkfe and others]

There, you now have an excuse to go buy Penthouse for the first time since you were 19. You're welcome. (Bonus: the "Forum" letters are totally made up. Sorry.) You can put it next to your copy of the Playboy magazine with a Topalov interview.

April 6, 2006

Topalov Match

But against Nisipeanu. The four game match started today in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. The first move of the first games was made by the Romanian president. (Of course you know who that is.) The hometown hero, #20 on the rating list, and the world #1 and FIDE champ thrilled the crowd with a 25-move Berlin Defense draw. It was devoid of interest as Nisipeanu's new 11.Nd4 came to naught.

With the Berlin firmly established in Topalov's repertoire the prospect of a Kramnik-Topalov world championship match makes the QGD marathon Alekhine-Capablanca match look like the Texas chainsaw massacre. Not that I think Topalov would or should play the Berlin against Kramnik, but still.

Speaking of, odd non-announcements and comments keep accumulating about this September match in Elista. The latest is by a Russia journalist in an article printed Ilyumzhinov's reelection website, which doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. (That it's listed on the "Around Elections" page may just be an amusing Freudian slip.) Neither player has confirmed anything. Kramnik has said he's willing to play and mentions the match in passing on his website and makes some "ready, but who knows?" remarks in a ChessBase interview from March 13. Nothing has been heard from Topalov. If things are as solid as that Kuznetsov article makes it sound we'd have heard something from the players and on the FIDE website.

Back-channel negotiations have a place. With big egos and many previous statements of honor and blah blah on the record from both players, it's close to impossible to come to an accord in public at this point. Face must be saved and we may never know the fine print. But we've been burned too many times before to get too excited about this yet. (Anyone else have a souvenir plane ticket to Yalta?) Of course I'd be very happy to see such a match, especially if it marks a return to health and form for the recuperating Kramnik. I don't even care if it's an election-time pork-barrel match if it can be that new healthy pork for the chess world.

I'm hoping to hear from either player or their representatives at least to get an update on the status of the negotiations. Are contracts on the table? In the mail? In the word processor? We still have a passle of FIDE candidates matches we've heard nothing more about, remember. The bidding for those was supposed to have closed two weeks ago.

April 8, 2006

New Fischer Documentary

April 9, Sunday night at 8-9pm EDT on GSN. It's part of their "Anything to Win" series. Other subjects include Johnnie Cochrane and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They say there will be never before seen archival footage as well as recent stuff from Iceland. The copy sets up a lot of "mad genius" stuff and it's clear they are looking for scandal.

While few question the destructive and self-destructive energies of Bobby Fischer, the balance among immaturity, tactless honesty, declining mental stability, and crafty psychology can never be known for sure. It has been popular in the West to discard any hint of conscious manipulation by Fischer, but it's ignorant to believe he was unaware the effect his antics had on his opponents, even if he wasn't always in control of them.

I'd never heard of this channel or its previous incarnation "The Game Show Network." It's channel 117 on my NY cable and I've set my DVR to "stun." They have a channel finder here.

April 10, 2006

2006 Euro Championship

Seven of eleven rounds of this powerful event have been played in Kusadasi, Turkey. Top-seeded Vassily Ivanchuk is one of three leaders on 5.5/7 after winning his last four games in a row. Fellow old-schoolers Nikolic and Kozul are the other leaders. The Austrian Wiener-Zeitung page has the best charts and results. Keep an eye on Hans De Lange of the Netherlands, who is making a bid for immortality with 0/7.

16 players will qualify for the next step in the world championship process, whatever and whenever that turns out to be. I'm still wondering what's going on with this year's candidates matches. Ivanchuk should be a rating seed under just about any reasonable format, which is why he's taking no chances and playing here. He was the first player not to make the candidates by rating thanks to the use of ancient lists. The diagram is from his win over Turov. He ended any chance of a perpetual not with the wimpy f3 and Qc2, but with 37.Qxf8+! Kh7 38.Qxg7+! 1-0

April 12, 2006

Rating List Corrections

As pointed out at ChessBase, FIDE has issued a few corrections to the April 2006 rating list. Most relevantly, Ivanchuk moves up from 10 to 7 and Nigel Short moves up ten spots. I don't recall this happening in the past year or so, but for a while before that it was practically expected.

National Championship Beat

Tis the season for national championships. One of two seasons, really, since there is usually another spate in the fall. One trend I've noticed from Vietnam to Cuba is the use of a final match. (Qualifying methods vary.) Two-time former Cuban champs Bruzon and Dominguez are now playing a four-game final match. Of course the recently concluded US championship also went for a final match, but it was two rapid games instead of classical chess. This will likely be corrected next time around with a two-game final match weekend.

Koneru Humpy has been getting press for leading the massive Indian championship, although she fell off the pace today. Judit Polgar won the Hungarian "men's" championship in 1991. Not sure if she was 15 or 16 at the time... Her sister Susan also played. After her win it was rather impossible for the Hungarian federation to keep Judit on the women's Olympiad team despite the nearly automatic gold medals the sisters could produce.

The Indian championship is a 21-round all-play-all with one rest day. They play two games on one day seven times, though they'll get little sympathy from veterans of American swisses. As is lamentable tradition in many countries, the top Indian players don't participate in this marathon championship. It's been great to see the Russians and Americans reclaiming the prestige of their national titles in recent years.

The Danish championship currently underway is using what they call "gladiator chess" rules. A draw results in another game at rapid time controls with colors reversed. If that is drawn it goes to alternating blitz games until someone wins. So each pairing has a decisive result in the end. So far this hasn't done anything to decrease the number of draws in the initial classical games. I believe shogi is often played under similar rules, and the "play again until someone wins" method was used in chess back in the 19th century.

Zap(!?)pa Goes ChessBase

The last world computer chess champion, Zappa, has been released as by ChessBase in the Fritz 9 interface as "Zap!Chess." (What, is the name in Khoi? Is it pronounced "Zap{CLICK}Chess"?) I interviewed the programmer, Anthony Cozzie, last year after he won the title in a surprising upset over usual suspects Junior and Shredder.

This continues the commendable ChessBase practice of picking up the strongest newcomer engines and putting them into their best-of-breed interface. With so many strong new engines out there (Toga is a Fruit flavor and both are very strong) and more appearing all the time, it makes sense for ChessBase to focus on the interface and Playchess.com features, which require far more resources. As I mentioned here not too long ago, new engines get the hobbyists excited, but they have all been so strong for years now that there is nil difference to 99.9% of the potential customers. You can't tell if you're being pummelled by a 2800-level computer or a 2750. The useful advances will come in the area of making them play more strategic, instructive chess so they can be more interesting opponents and better trainers.

This Zappa announcement's thunder was stolen awhile ago by the engine Rybka, which is the current computer-computer top dog by a wide margin and the darling of the computer-chess fans. (Also in the Ninja message boards.) The still rough-around-the-edges program by IM Vasik Rajlich has dominated recent events and is ubiquitous on the servers.

April 14, 2006

FIDE Announces Kramnik-Topalov Match

Good news on the unification front from the FIDE presidential board meeting in Al Ain City in the Arab Emirates. (They go there to pick up tips on how to run things democratically.) After weeks of behind the scenes maneuvers and public rumors, FIDE has made a formal announcement of a world championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov to be held in the Kalmykian capital of Elista. The given dates are Sep. 21-Oct. 13 for a match of just twelve games with a prize fund "guaranteed minimum amount of 1 million US dollars."

Continuing the unfortunate trend of the past dozen years, this will be the shortest world championship match in nearly a century. The 1995 Kasparov-Anand match was 20, Kasparov-Kramnik was 16. I'm not even sure I consider 12 (or 16) to be a long match, but I'm okay calling this a unification expedient. With just six whites per player this is hardly going to be a cauldron of opening interest. But Ilyumzhinov has long since made clear his dislike of long matches. As currently scheduled by FIDE this exception for unification would be the last long match for the world championship in chess history. (An early Russian report adds this line: "The match will consist of 12 games and in the event of a draw will be continued until a decisive game is won.")

Not to be Debbie Doubter, but considering that we have had as many or more details about previously announced events that were eventually never held, it would be good to hear some satisfied remarks from the players asap. (If you find such links, likely from Russian sites, please post below.) [Kramnik's site quotes the press release, which is better than nothing.] It's tragi-comic how the announcement makes this sound like everything has gone according to plan when it comes after years and years of bungling. Then of course there are the concerns that handing Ilyumzhinov and FIDE the unified title so they can debase it with tournaments and rapid games isn't what the game needs. But Kramnik is clearly at the end of his classical rope.

Anyway, we can close our eyes and hold our noses for at least one day and don't worry and be happy. It should be an excellent match and it will leave us with a potentially much more marketable unified champion. At the very least we can answer the question "who is the world champion" without a fifteen-minute explanation. What is then done with the champion and the title we can leave for another day. Like tomorrow.

April 15, 2006

Sport Express on VT-VK

Thanks to Yuriy Kleyner for translating a a Sport Express article that includes some more info about the future of the championship. Mexico wants to host the next final championship "tournament of eight," a la San Luis. I really, really hate the use of a round robin after a qualifier and candidates matches. (Where are those candidates matches?) It's like having mac and cheese after a caviar appetizer.

I'm torn between wanting another fighting event with a dominant winner like San Luis - best of a bad situation - or having the inevitable crash and burn with loads of draws, a tie for first and rapids to get it out of the way. Maybe that would get them to consider matches again. The Topalov-Kramnik match being a hit might also help in that regard.

The next moment is very important. The winner of the Kramnik-Topalov match will play in the next FIDE world championship, which will take place in the capital of Mexico. However, the loser -- even if it's the current title holder, Topalov -- will have to start from "scratch" in the World Cup. The "classical" world champion, Kramnik, in turn, in case of victory, will play in the next "Tournament of Eight" and if he loses -- World Cup.

That's a lot of carts ahead of a lot of horses. So far we haven't seen one step made in front of the other. This unification event could be great, but the MIA candidates matches are symbolic of FIDE's credibility gap. But it's good news if Mexico has lined up sponsorship for the final already.

April 18, 2006

Our Computer Overlord Speaks

Chrilly Donninger's mighty parallel processing chess machine Hydra won the latest PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament. It didn't come in first in the qualifiers but won the final all-play-all with a healthy full point lead. (Aping the FIDE world championship they played a final tournament of eight.) After the first event was largely dominated by humans using computers (aka "centaurs"), and won by a team of amateurs using several computers, the dominance of computer programs, often working alone, was something of a surprise this time around.

As correspondence GM and finalist Arno Nickel points out in the ChessBase report, the change to a much faster time control (45'+5" from 60'+15") was definitely a factor here. The human advantage is to treat these Freestyle games like correspondence chess and play out many lines and positions before each move, something that takes considerable time to do well. Another factor may have been the presence of Rybka, the relatively new engine by Vasik Rajlich. He teamed up with his own program (he's an IM and his significant other is just as strong, I'm told) to also reach the final. Several other finalists were just running Rybka!

I heard from Hydra developer/programmer Chrilly Donninger after the event. His full comments are now below.

"Below is your comment on Adams-Hydra. The Hydra-sponsor might have read your comment. Or, what happens more frequently in history, he had the same idea. There was last weekend the final of the 2nd CSS-Pal Freestyle tournament on Playchess.com. The next is already scheduled for 16-18 June.

I was at the beginning somewhat skeptical to these tournaments and would prefer a "real" match e.g. against Topalov. But in the meantime I really like it. There is a lot of action, the level is extremely high and the opponents want to win against Hydra. Not the boring "I am happy with a draw" matches we have against humans. Its therefore also more motivation for the Hydra team to improve the program further. The final match Ciron (aka corr. GM Arno Nickel) versus zor_champ aka Hydra was Hitchcock pure.

There is a report about the 2nd Freestyle tournament on the German and Spanish CB-Website, but no English report. One can have different theories about this. One hypothesis is: Hydra was winning and the man who makes the English website does not like to write about Hydra victories. Maybe the reason is that Fritz did not even qualify for the final. There were 1 Hydra, 6 Rybkas and 1 real Centaur. Or maybe he had a flu and no time to write. [The report by Nickel linked to above was added later in the week.]

It is really astonishing that Fritz and Shredder have fallen completely from grace in the computer-freak community. It's like they have never existed. E.g. there is a new beta-version of List. I have read comments like: "A little bit disappointing, 100 Elo behind Rybka." 5 months ago the comment would have been: "Sensational improvement of List, only 10 point behind Shredder, but ahead of Fritz." At the moment nobody in the freak-scene cares if another program is better than Fritz.

I have also developed for many years with Shredder and knew more or less everything about this program. E.g. last year Shredder lost very badly against Hydra. I wrote Stefan Meyer-Kahlen a mail: This and that is wrong in Shredder, you have to change it in that way. He wrote back: You are right, but if Shredder looses due to these changes, I will blame you. My old darling Shredder still resides on the hard-disk, but it was not used for some months now. It was replaced by the little fish. ["rybka" means "little fish" in Russian and a few other Slavic languages.] But I hope that the forthcoming Shredder will catch up to Rybka again. Same holds for Fritz. I have still some sentiment for the programs I spent so many pleasant evening with. It would be also more interesting for the Freestyle tournament if it is not just Rybka 1...6 against Hydra.

I've always found the computer-nut forums to be fanatically dedicated to any new program that is A) very strong and/or B) not (yet) commercial (usually meaning "not from ChessBase." In the past few years the forums have gone wild over various flavors of the month, only to dump them for the next new hot engine. E.g. the engine Ruffian got as much talk as Rybka is getting now without being nearly as strong. Zappa and Fruit were the darlings until Rybka came along.

ChessBase's status as the Microsoft of the chess world puts them in line for similar heat, some deserved, some more a reflection of the way insiders and experts usually treat big commercial entities. The parallels to the way the Linux community thinks of Windows and MS and the way Mac-heads view Windows users are obvious. And there is some accuracy in these comparisons, not only perception. But I'd wager that a large majority of people who use Rybka do so in a ChessBase interface!

Meanwhile, along with the longer time control we need some strong GM+computer teams to teach these guys a few things. Please?! We're in deep trouble if we reach the point that GM + computer < computer, although of course this is going to be the case sometimes.

April 27, 2006

Ping

Tap tap tap. Is this thing on? Anyone here? Yah, I'm back. To satisfy your curiousity, feel free to make up your own really wild reason why I've been gone. It might be more interesting than the truth, which is pretty interesting, if I may say. But I may not. Mostly work, if from several rather unexpected locations, neither of which had much in the way of internet availability. Which was part of the point, natch.

This just highlights why I need guest bloggers, or a capable vice-blogger-in-chief, lined up. Problem is, 1) I'm not sure anyone could live up to my low standards and 2) I doubt anyone would want the job.

Cookies from FIDE

Before we get to serious topics, any other privacy nuts out there been to the FIDE website lately? They seem to have gone in very heavily for third-party cookies in the past week, so much so that I wondered if the site had been hacked. [Actually the case, see below.] Every visit receives dozens of attempts to place tracking cookies on your computer. These aren't the usual site traffic monitoring cookies or the handy auto-login cookies (as used by the system that runs the ChessNinja.com message boards). Just a few of the domains that tried to place cookies just the last time, (most with .com or .info): search123, seekmen, phenetidine, revenuepilot, sacredpheonix, mygeek, pornmoviecollection, cnzz, primaldefense, criminalattorney.

I'm assuming the webmaster over there signed up for a package and will make a few bucks for allowing thousands of third-party sites to set (and read) tracking cookies on everyone who visits the FIDE website. Mostly this sort of abusive behavior is limited to hacking, warez, and porn sites. So I hear. This is overall less of a privacy hazard than big cookie tracking networks like 2o7.net, but it's still obnoxious. Especially if you are a tinfoil hat type and have your machine set to alert you to all new cookie attempts. Each visit gets a new set, although I'm sure they'll be exhausted eventually as Firefox permanently bans each domain. Weird.

Followup: This from Gennady Rakhvalov at the FIDE offices via George Mastrokoukos. Good response time, gentlemen! Glad it wasn't on purpose.

FIDE.com was hacked using NTFS Alternative Data Stream vulnerability which is not yet closed by Microsoft. Because of that about once a day one or two pages of the website were injected with a command leading to a script containing banners. It took some time to find out what the problem was. Now we think the problem is fixed, but anyway still constantly monitor web pages.

ADS exploits are a typical Windows server problem, not that you care. (Let's get together for coffee and discuss type commands...) Linux 4 Ever.

April 28, 2006

Kasparov Meets G�del

Garry Kasparov is just about to deliver a speech at the Gödel Centenary in Vienna. His 30 minute address includes a bunch of chess numbers and bits about tablebases and Deep Blue sure to interest this crowd. There is also an interesting affinity in how Gödel believed in a higher truth than the formulas provided by the formalists. You don't expect a logician to stand up for human intuition, which is essentially what he did. (The crux of his famous incompleteness statement is that there are always things that are true that cannot be proven to be true.) Kasparov's professional lectures to business groups often include material on the primacy of intuition over calculation.

I'm not 100% sure I comprehended Gödel in college, back when my brain was relatively unadulterated, but it's been fun rediscovering him and browsing a few of the excellent books that have come out about him in recent years, although these bios mostly stay away from the math. (Why do writers assume that people who read a math biography don't want to read any math? Why not just toss some in for the geeks who do?) Back in the day, all we had was Hofstadter. My friend Paul Hoffman wrote a great bio of the mathematician Paul Erdös. If the name rings a bell (Hoffman, not Erdös) it may be because he's currently helping the US Chess Federation revamp Chess Life and the website. I wonder how that's going.

[Thanks to everyone for the welcome back notes. It was nice to see that the weather in Brooklyn was mostly crappy while I was in the Bahamas working frantically on a book project at a retreat upstate.]

April 30, 2006

2006 WCh Match

ChessBase has an item on the press conference with Topalov and Ilyumzhinov announcing the world championship match between Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik. The first of the twelve games will be played September 23. The shrinkage to 12 games is discussed, if not convincingly. The point of a long match is to be different from tournaments, so I don't think much of Topalov's comparison. Twelve games is *not* serious. But it fits in with the plan to devalue the championship title that Ilyumzhinov put into play in 1997 after he came into power. The winner will be dropped into another championship tournament, a la San Luis, scheduled for Mexico in 2007.

This fact was no doubt part of Topalov's decision to play. As pointed out during the last, failed, negotiations, he needs to strike while his star is high. He has no better than a 25% chance of winning the next tournament, so this guaranteed payday makes sense. He'll make more in this match, win or lose, than he did when he won the title in San Luis ($240K). The players get $400,000 each regardless of the result, which is bizarre on the face of it but is entirely in keeping with the wholly pragmatic nature of the encounter for both players.

As currently planned, the loser will have to wait until the 2009 cycle to get back into the title fight while the winner defends his title in Mexico. It's comical to be discussing 2009 when the 2005 cycle is currently stalled like a traffic jam of three-legged camels. The disappeared candidates matches aren't on the agenda of the upcoming FIDE Congress. All eyes are on the Kramnik-Topalov match instead. I'm happy about the match, but announcing Mexico 2007 without mentioning that the candidates match announcement is over a month overdue is obtuse. I'm sure they'll find a way to get the loser into the 2007 mix, especially if it's Topalov.

An early report said there wouldn't be rapid tiebreaks, but I'm sad to see that was incorrect. There will be rapids and blitz in case of a drawn match. The good news is that no one has draw odds, which would have been a huge advantage in such a short match. (See also: "Brissago")

May 3, 2006

Disappearing Candidates Matches

With all the hoopla around the Topalov-Kramnik match the candidates matches of the 2005 cycle have been entirely ignored by FIDE. It will be great to have a unified world championship title – ingrate to have a championship tournament instead of matches in the future. But the sponsorship and credibility problems of Ilyumzhinov's FIDE are exemplified by the disappearing candidates matches. He's always been able to pull the occasional rabbit out of the hat – Libyan rabbits, Kalmykian cash, etc. But consistency and stability are what we need for serious sponsorship.

A letter from FIDE confirms that as of last week, no offers to host any of the eight planned candidates matches have been received. (Some "expressed interest.") They have apparently given up trying to find sponsors, assuming they were ever trying. The letter says they are urging the players' national federations to speed up the process. Apparently FIDE expects the national federations to find sponsorship for organization and $40,000 minimum prize funds for the six-game matches scheduled for the end of October.

There is some irony here because some potential sponsors were put off by the passing of the March deadline for bids to host the candidates matches. FIDE needs to formally reopen the process, although it's too much to hope they will actually do any of the required business development themselves. I suppose there's always a first time. For the past ten years it's been all politician/crony-to-politician/crony. There is simply no mechanism in Ilyumzhinov's FIDE to find international corporate sponsorship for events like these.

Carlsen-van Wely Match

Norwegian teen Magnus Carlsen drew a four-game match against many-time Dutch champion Loek van Wely. It was sponsored by DSB Bank and held in the Dutch town of Schagen (not Schachen) in the north. Van Wely played the four blitz tiebreak games as if paralyzed and lost 3.5-0.5. After the players exchanged wins with white in the main match, van Wely needed a miraculous save to avoid losing with white in game three.

The relatively new, at least at the top level, 17..Bxe3 in the Sveshnikov, played by Topalov against Karjakin at Corus (and by Fernandez against Kudrin at the US Ch), brought the Dutchman a smooth draw in the final game. If this simple move, long considered inferior (17..g6 is the main line (this can also be move 18 if ..e6 Bf4 ..e5 Bg5 are inserted earlier)), can draw so easily it's yet another annoyance for White in this topical line. Of course ..g6 h4 is stiill much more fun if both sides are looking for a win.

May 4, 2006

2006 US Olympiad Teams

The US Chess Federation has finally announced its Olympiad teams for Turin, 2006. If the silver medal winning 2004 US women's team was worthy of the over-used moniker "dream team," the same could be said about the US men's team this year. The names Onischuk, Nakamura, Kamsky are enough to get Yankee hopes up. Add seasoned pros Kaidanov and Ibragimov and rising star Akobian and it's an impressive array. Of course this won't make them a paper favorite to medal with Russia and Ukraine capable of fielding teams averaging 2700. (2004 gold medal winner Ukraine's board six was Karjakin...) But team USA will be an exciting and balanced group with legit medal chances. The Olympiad starts on May 20.

The women's team is without Susan Polgar, who led the medal run in 2004. The last two US women's champs, Zatonskih and Goletiani, are joined by Krush and Baginskaite. The men's team is captained by John Donaldson. The women get US championship runner-up Yury Shulman. Kudos to the USCF; this is really an all-star cast, other than Polgar's absence. (She wrote about it on her blog here, and scroll down on that page to read USCF exec Bill Goichberg's response and corrections.) The main funding came from my main man, indirectly. The Kasparov Chess Foundation put up $30,000. The Internet Chess Club ponied up $5,000.

Anyone up for a letter and press release campaign to see if we can't get the teams in the news? The local papers of each player's hometown is a good place to start. I don't know if the USCF actually pays to have their press releases sent out on the wires. They certainly wouldn't mind if we sent it, email or mail, along with anything else that might grab attention. Here's a PDF version of it you can download and send. Post below if you send it, or anything else to cut down on duplicates. Spamming won't be appreciated.

May 5, 2006

Sigeman 2006

Jan Timman is a round away from a clear victory in the 14th annual event in Sweden. The official site is here, with handy game summaries. Timman has an impressive +5 undefeated score and a full-point lead over Hillarp Persson. It's always great to see a veteran in good form in a classical time control event. (He took two 14-move draw rest days with white. Repulsive, but less so when the perpetrator is over 50.) Timman's 2800 performance isn't coming against the Wijk aan Zee crowd, but, like most veterans, when on song he can still show why he spent several decades as one of the world's best. No longer being frequently sponsored by Margaux and Burgundy can't hurt. Sure, a couple of his wins came after escaping dangerously inferior positions, but the winner always needs some luck.

Where's the rest of Timman's peer group, you ask? His generation is largely remembered for being relentlessly stomped by Karpov, who, like Timman, was born in 1951. Beliavsky is still hanging on in the top 100. Huebner is also in there, although he doesn't play often. Talk about a young man's game (or woman's, gracias to Polgar), only four players in the top 20 were born in the 60's or earlier. (Anand, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Bareev)

May 6, 2006

2006 Olympiad Bulletin

Speaking of the Turin Olympiad, the official website has a pretty nifty promotional bulletin up (PDF format). There's lots of fun Olympiad trivia about games and players and I'll quibble with one bit. It says that of the world champs, only Steinitz and Lasker didn't play in the Olympiads. (Steinitz with the wholly reasonable excuse of being dead long before the first Olympiad took place in Paris in 1924.) It goes on to say that Lasker retired in 1927, which is true. (Tarrasch, 65 at the time, led the German team in the 1927 London Olympiad. Second board Mieses was 62! Lasker would have fit right in.) But Lasker came back to play professionally a few years later when in need of funds. He was certainly strong enough to play on any Olympiad team, even at 66. But for which team would he have played in, say, Warsaw 1935? He was essentially stateless at the time, having left Nazi Germany for England, then the USSR, then finally the USA. But the USSR didn't send a team until 1952.

The Torinos have squeezed the Chess Olympiad into some of the sponsorship packages of the Winter Olympic Games and the other activities they're doing this year. Organizers say they've also lined up significant direct sponsorship as well, which is good to hear. ChessBase has an intro report with photos of the city and venue. I thought that all this activity was part of some anniversary of the city but I can't find any mention of such so maybe I just made that up. (300th anniversary of the Battle of Turin?! Not likely.) Don't miss Wojtek Bartelski's amazing Olimpbase, by the way. Endless enjoyment.

May 7, 2006

Bosna 2006

Or, the Carlsen Watch continues. The Bosna event has been scaled down year by year. This edition is a six-player double round-robin. Despite the lack of 2700 horseflesh, it's no wimpfest. Three 2690's plus Dortmund winner Naiditsch and the doubtlessly underrated Carlsen. The outsider is Borki Predojević, a local teen hope. He kept his head above water in the last two events, although scoring a win here will be a triumph.

May 8, 2006

Odd Pairings Dept.

The final round of the French League saw a critical final match that contained a curious pairing. NAO beat Monaco to take the title for the fourth year straight, winning two and losing one with the rest drawn. Match board order is always a curious science, but I'm wondering whose idea it was to move Almira Skripchenko up to board seven, and/or Joel Lautier down to board seven. Perhaps Monaco hoped the psychic difficulty of someone playing their ex-wife would overcome a 260-point rating disadvantage? Or that they are still good friends might lead to a peaceful draw? It didn't, and Lautier won with black. Btw, many of the gamescores from the event are a jumble, including that game.

May 9, 2006

Radjabov, Old Salt

Perusing Baku Today, as I am wont to do, turned up this brevity on Teimour Radjabov being named a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for Azerbaijan. His focus will be on universal iodization of salt, still a big issue in many nations. Always good to see a top player getting involved with something outside of the chess world. Karpov has long been affiliated with UNICEF.

I'm always curious about how famous chessplayers are in their home countries, although this is a non-issue in most places. Countries that cover chess results in the sports pages are in a different category. Any time a country not used to the limelight produces a world-class star in any field they usually become a big hero at home, even if there is typically little national interest in what the person does. More rarely this happens in major nations, e.g. Fischer and Anand, who have booms named after them.

Shocked, SHOCKED

Oh, the innocence. While our endless debates (search "Kreiman") tend to circulate around whether or not prearranging results is okay or not, it appears match fixing comes as a surprise in Vietnam.

It happened at the Phuong Trang Cup which wrapped up last Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City when one of the finalists accepted “defeat” though his king was under not threat.

Spectators shouted at Nguyen Vu Quan of Hanoi after he “lost” to Truong A Minh after only 22 moves. There are allegations that the two players had agreed upon the result beforehand and to equally share the top two prizes totaling VND42 million (US$2,650).

Say it ain't so! What won't people do for a few million dong these days? It's sad that many in the chess community have lost this sense of outrage about prearranged games and similar manipulations. Moral and peer pressures are stronger than penalties that are nearly impossible to enforce.

May 11, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 1

The MTel supertournament is underway in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. It runs through May 21. This is the second edition, again a six-player double all-play-all. The world's top two players, Topalov and Anand, are in action together with Svidler, Ponomariov, Bacrot, and the comeback kid himself, Brooklyn's own Gata Kamsky. A repeat of Corus? Fugheddaboudit! Topalov won by a full point last year.

Topalov and Anand are the big favorites, but Linares showed us that anything can happen. (Linares winner Aronian didn't want to play in this event. The event runs into the start of the Olympiad. Some of the players have to run to Turin after missing the first few rounds.) The ceremonial first move was made by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho.

The anti-draw rules are in effect. No direct offers at all, instead they must declare their intent to the arbiter. Draws only in the case of repetition or theoretically drawn endgame. Yay! Ban the draw offer! First tiebreak is most wins, second is head-to-head, third is the Berger system, fourth is higher number of total moves played (!). Don't remember seeing that one before. The regulations go on to say that if there is a first-place tie between just two players, there will be tiebreak rapid-blitz matches. The various formulas will only be used if there is a tie between three or more players.

ChessBase intro article and pairings schedule. Update: Anand beats Bacrot with black in the first round. Pono-Kamsky and Svidler-Topalov drawn.

May 12, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 2

What's a single rating point worth? Not much. World #2 Vishy Anand (2803) beat world #1 and FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov (2804) with black today. Anand moves to 2/2 after "losing" the draw and starting out with two blacks! Anand made tandoori out of Topalov in complications. Kasparov was kibitzing on Playchess.com (full disclosure: and I was on the phone with him part of the time) and he was stunned by "Topalov's failure to calculate." Still, it looked like White would have been worse anyway. Svidler beat Ponomariov and Kamsky is trying to grind Bacrot in a drawn rook endgame with some small chances.

Update: Brooklyn Rocks! Kamsky beat Bacrot in R vs N in mutual time trouble. They aren't using increment in this event and it showed. If you have time to look three moves ahead you can't lose this endgame. Tragic for Bacrot, but fully deserved by Kamsky, who played a very interesting opening novelty, 13.Rb1 in a popular Spanish line. Kasparov was watching and sounded impressed. (He played 13.Bg5 against Adams in Linares, 1999.) Todd reminds below that Kamsky and Bacrot are paired in the candidates matches that are supposed to happen this year.

Tomorrow we have Anand-Kamsky and we'll see if the spell continues. In January, Kamsky crushed Anand at Corus with supernatural ease. One conspiracy theory going around is that the Bulgarians invited Kamsky to MTel because of Anand's problems with him (these go back to the 1990's) and that this might help Topalov's chances! Okay, just a theory. Vishy has two great games in the bag already so just surviving him with black would be an achievement for anyone.

May 13, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 3

When it rains, it pours. Of course I have to do the ChessBase site the day I'm having people over for early dinner. So I'll make this brief. I just put up a quick round three wrap-up. Analysis by GM Marin will follow tomorrow. I just got his round two analysis now, of course.

Anyway, wow! Kamsky beats Anand with black to take the clear lead with 2.5/3! It's all about the Brooklyn, baby. As in his game against Bacrot, Kamsky earned a superior endgame and then converted the point with constant pressure. I doubt that rook endgame was a forced loss, but it was certainly very hard to hold, and impossible after 52.Kg4. 51.Rd5 is a good try, especially since passive defense looks hopeless. I didn't see the game live so I don't know if Anand was blitzing through the endgame as he does too often.

The other games were drawn, but not boringly so. Love the no draw offer rules because I can imagine both of these ending relatively early otherwise and we'd have missed some great chess. So, what to say about the American #1? Perhaps Bacrot and Anand played mediocre endgames to lose, but the point is that he GOT to superior endgames against these guys. Outplaying Anand on the black side of the Ruy is no walk in the (Prospect) park. I was thinking Onischuk should be on board one in Turin because he's so solid, and Kamsky and Nakamura would gobble up points on boards two and three. But Kamsky is making a pretty good case for being back to top-ten status. Okay, it's only round three, but it's exciting.

May 14, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 4

Man did I pick the wrong weekend to get a social life. Gata Kamsky is on a rampage in Sofia, winning his third straight by bashing Peter Svidler in just 24 moves. Svidler blundered with 15...Nd7 and was lost immediately. Just about anything else was better. (It was an unpleasant shock and not just for Svidler. The schedule we have at ChessBase is wrong so I was announcing that Kamsky would be facing Topalov with black today. Oops. I could swear I was looking at the schedule on the official site when I wrote that item though.)

Bacrot played not to lose against Topalov and succeeded. Anand bounced back by beating Ponomariov in a long grind. The Ba5-b6 maneuver gets major cute points. The Indian now has 3/4 with no draws and is a half-point behind Kamsky. Read that again. While long-term consistency will probably still take some time, and while this was basically a one-move loss by Svidler, it seems that Kamsky is back to being the player who had match victories over Kramnik and Anand a decade ago.

90 Degrees of Annoyance

The latest from the dark-square mafia in this poster for the play "The Chess Players" now on sale at Ebay. But I do like the Ilyumzhinov-style sideways approach.

May 15, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 5

Topalov finally picked up his first win of the event and he did it against the leader Kamsky. The world #1 kept an opening cramp and then broke up the black position with a nice exchange sacrifice. He prosecuted the kingside attack with ruthless precision to net the victory. The other games were drawn so Kamsky shares the lead at the half with +2 along with Anand. Topalov and Svidler have even scores while Ponomariov and Bacrot are in the tank at -2. Every player lost a game in the first half.

Cycle? What Cycle?

Kramnik who? We're going to party like it's 1899! As tipped on an Azerbaijani new site a few days ago (more today) and announced today at the MTel Masters website, Teimour Radjabov is now slated to face Veselin Topalov in a world championship match in April 2007. (Azerbaijani oil money, it seems.) Of course contingent on Topalov beating Kramnik in September. If Topalov loses that one maybe Radjabov will try to get a discount to play Kramnik.

This is almost comical considering that FIDE still hasn't done anything with the candidates matches. Players with good financial backing don't need to bother with them anyway, it seems. Perhaps Radjabov will be the Janowsky of the 21st century. Everyone else gets to be Rubinstein. Viva the London Elista Rules! I really don't mind the "match for cash" concept, but the cycle is what really matters and it has bitten the dust.

Evan sagely predicts below that soon FIDE will just put the title up on Ebay. (Is there a Kalmykian Ebay?) Discussion and extra info in this Ninja message board thread.

May 16, 2006

Benoni, SA

Trivial, you want trivial? Watching the mediocre Woody Allen movie "Celebrity", wondering who the familiar woman was playing the supermodel character, checking the IMDB and seeing it's Charlize Theron, noticing she was born in Benoni, South Africa. This just to add another layer to the popular trivia questions about the origin of one of the most unusual names in chess literature. "Which Oscar-winning actress was born in a town with the name of a 1.d4 defense..."

Benoni is the name Rachel gives her son in the Old Testament and means "child of my sorrow" in Hebrew. Genesis 35:18, "And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin." Maybe we should call it the Benjamin Defense? Nah, Joel would get a fat head about it.

According to the ever-essential Oxford Companion to Chess (of which I've accumulated around seven copies): Its association in chess comes from the title of a German manuscript by an Aaron Reinganum published in 1825. It was the title of a book of opening research, mostly on gambits, that included analysis of 1.d4 c5. But the name Benoni didn't refer to any of the lines contained in the book. The author worked on his chess when he was depressed, which led to the title of the book.

Right Move Not for Sale

Not wanting to deluge the Dirt with the political releases coming out from the Ilyumzhinov and Kok campaigns on a daily basis I've skipped most of them here. (Although the Right Move position papers have made for good reading and are recommended even if you don't care about the election. Here's the latest one on sponsorship and a link to all the articles.) While the result of the election will have a huge impact on the sport we love, the only people that really matter are the delegates. In that regard Kok's campaign is hobbled by their unwillingness to pay cash for votes. Beyond that, from my chess fan's perspective it seems so obvious that Ilyumzhinov has been a disaster for the sport that arguing about the election here seems like a waste of space. Not only would anyone this side of Kirsan's friend Saddam Hussein be worth a shot at this point, but we have an eminently qualified and sane individual and team on offer in Bessel Kok.

I'm making an exception here for an open letter from FIDE General Secretary Ignatius Leong, who proposed a Faustian deal to the Right Move team. In it, Kok would abandon his campaign and join the Ilyumzhinov-led FIDE in a role surely possessing no actual authority but a great deal of scapegoatability. This page also contains Kok's reply, which, thank god, is no. Gee, I can't see why he wouldn't want to hand his credibility over for Ilyumzhinov to squander until it's gone.

Leong has experience with such things. In the last FIDE election Leong started out to run against Ilyumzhinov on a reform ticket that published a manifesto for change. He later bailed out and dropped his candidacy in exchange for a vice-president position and is now general secretary. Since Ilyumzhinov has 100% control, Leong may as well be coat-check boy when it comes to institutional reform. Guess how many of the changes he said were needed in 2002 have been made?

The FIDE edifice is hollow and condemned. It needs to be torn down so something decent can be built on the land, not propped up (new names with no power) or given a paint job (matches with no commercial sponsorship instead of a cycle). This isn't a matter of making the right move. For anyone who actually cares about the game it's a forced move.

May 17, 2006

Bozzzna 2006

It isn't really that boring if you look at all the games, at least not if you do so while being chased around the room by a Bengal tiger. 67% of the games at the Bosna 2006 tournament in Sarajevo were drawn, and this from a fighting group of players, at least on paper. Three players shared first on a mere +1: Malakhov, Carlsen, and Nisipeanu. The last of these finished out his event with draws of 13 and 12 moves, the last coming against co-leader Malakhov. What a joke. Perhaps he was ill? If not I hope he catches something. Ban the draw offer.

Young Norwegian Carlsen, a candidate if the candidates matches happen, added another pack of rating points. He won against the local hope and drew his other nine games. Most of these had meat on their bones and he was very close to a loss against that same outsider, Predojević in the last round. He also had to save a bad endgame against Sasikiran.

Naiditsch blundering into a mate against Malakhov provided some sparse entertainment. Carlsen faced the Dragon against Malakhov and then played it himself against Nisipeanu, both drawn. Sasikiran played two games over 100 moves, both drawn. Malakhov gave Zvjaginsev's 2.Na3 against the Sicilian a try against Nisipeanu. Drawn. (But a very interesting game.) You just couldn't buy a win in this event.

MTel 2006 Round 6

Just getting the discussion thread up early this time. Will add the round notes later. Feel free to post results if you're watching live. Leaders face tail-enders today. What are your predictions for the second half? Can Kamsky keep up his amazing level? Will Topalov turn in yet another comeback? Anand, Kamsky, and Topalov all have three whites. Last year the players tired in the second half, perhaps partially due to the no draw offer rules. It's hard to imagine more decisive games than we saw in the first half, although a decline in quality wouldn't surprise. We've seen several tremendous games so far.

Update: Wow. Gata Kamsky turned in perhaps his best game yet, outplaying Ponomariov and then demolishing him when the Ukrainian made an ill-advised attempt to get activity with 35..d4. (I'll toss 29..Rc2 out as a more active defensive try.) Very impressive stuff. If you haven't drunk the Kamsky Kool-Aid yet, it's time to step up to the bar because it's all about Brooklyn, baby! I'm a little surprised Ponomariov didn't play the Sicilian. Kamsky's positional and endgame instincts have always looked fine; it was sharp stuff where he was having trouble during the comeback. On the other hand, tell that to Svidler.

Speaking of, El Svid got just the sort of sharp Grunfeld position he loves against Topalov and made a nice show of it, making Topalov and his novelty look pretty bad. That knocks Topalov, the defending champ in Sofia, out of contention. Bacrot played the Marshall against Anand, or, since White usually avoids it, we can say that Anand allowed the Marshall against Bacrot. A very complicated game along the usual Marshall themes. Black has good attacking pressure, White defends and hopes the initiative will break. It eventually burned out to a tense draw. Very high quality material today.

May 18, 2006

Sleep in Topalov's Bed

Sorry, ladies (or gents, as the case may be), but the man himself will be long gone. One of the more bizarre promotions I've heard of is on the MTel site. Topalov has an apartment at the Grand Hotel in Sofia and you can rent it for 310 Euro per night, presumably when he's not there. According to a web check, a regular room at the Grand Hotel is 130 euros, a "panorama suite" is 320, and a "grand suite" will set you back 442. So the question is, does the Topalov Suite have a jacuzzi, hair dryer, and high speed internet? And what about flower arrangements? I hope they at least change the sheets.

Kasparov's old room in Linares now bears his name. By the way, for just 150 dollars you can sleep on the Brooklyn sofabed that has given discomfort to chess journalism luminaries John Henderson, Malcolm Pein, and Frederic Friedel. Cat hair at no extra charge. 20 meters from subway, two blocks from the park.

MTel 2006 Round 7

Getting the item up early since I hope to get some sleep at some point. Post results as you see'em. Get your pairings here. Anand-Topalov is the heavyweight duel of the day. Anand scorched the FIDE champ in the first half, and Topalov isn't one to lick his wounds and let discretion be the better part of valor when he's out of form. And another loss won't hurt Topalov as much as a win would buoy him, so he might go for it even with black.

Leader Kamsky has black against Bacrot, who showed signs of life against Anand yesterday after playing tamely for a few rounds. Ponomariov will try to get off the mat with white against Svidler, who said yesterday that his win against Topalov was one of his best games.

Update: Another round of rich, fabulous chess. And decisive chess! Topalov played "very well, very imaginatively" (Kasparov) today to beat Anand with black in the Najdorf. As I mentioned in the ChessBase wrap-up (now with many on-site photos), instead of the usual long castle, Vishy played for clarity on the queenside and castled short. Topalov wasn't having it and gave up a pawn for rook penetration. He later sacrificed on f3 and an endgame arose that was very tough to defend. A wonderful game.

Ponomariov's won an impressive game over Svidler. He squeezed the maximum out of his space advantage. I'm not sure how White is going to win if Black declines to take the knight on move 40 though. White gets a passed pawn in a queen endgame but there are checks enough to draw fairly easily. Bacrot got into trouble against Kamsky suprisingly quickly out of an unusual Slav line. Kamsky let him off the hook later by pushing the h-pawn prematurely, but it was still another strong effort.

Kamsky now leads by a full point over Anand and has white against Anand and Topalov yet to come.

May 19, 2006

Kibitz Me Not

More only very vaguely chess-related trivia. Watching the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, best known for being the first feature film with sound. (And for one of the best known of the countless excruciating blackface scenes in Hollywood history, when the star Al Jolson sings "Mammy.") It's still mostly in silent film format, with interstitial dialogue frames. If you didn't know, the film is about a young Jewish boy, a cantor's son, who becomes a famous jazz singer. When he bumps into an old man he knew as a boy, who recognizes him, he says, "Mr. Yudelson, the kibitzer!"

Of course anyone with a Jewish grandma knows that kibitzer is Yiddish for a busybody, a meddler who offers unsolicited advice. But it's mostly it's used only in the chess world today and hasn't really crossed over into mainstream English. A Google News search turns up just 25 hits. Sad for such a great word. At least it's more than "zugzwang."

MTel 2006 Round 8

Only three rounds to go and Kamsky is leading by a full point. Today he has white against Anand, who is in second place. In some tournaments this might be a recipe for a short draw so it's great that's not an option in Sofia. A win by Kamsky basically locks up the tournament for him; a win by Anand and they are tied for first. Hoodoo over Anand aside, it's hard to imagine Kamsky's form breaking at this point. Who needs a hoodoo when you've got Brooklyn mojo?

Not that White has meant all that much here so far. Seven wins versus five for black. Anand can play just about anything against 1.e4. Will he go for it with a Sicilian? He played 1..e5 against Topalov and Svidler. Speaking of those two, they have white against the tail-enders today. Topalov in particular is capable of stringing together wins and he'll need a lot of them to have a chance at catching Kamsky. Last year Topalov finished by winning four of his last five.

Update: It's all Ruy Lopez all the time in Sofia. All the attention goes to the only decisive game, Topalov's sacrificial win over Ponomariov. Yet again he gave up an exchange to generate attacking chances. Yet again his opponent failed to defend under pressure. Ponomariov missed a good chance to play for a win by eliminating White's breakthrough chances with 29..f6. After that it was going to be a fight for survival, although Topalov also missed the best continuation. 30.Kh2 was a superior move order. 31..d5 was a real blunder, missing Topalov's pretty mating combination. (I put a diagram on the ChessBase report.) Pono had to give up his queen and went down slowly.

I talked to Kasparov for a while about this game, although I'm a little skeptical about his opinion of 29..f6. Not that he isn't entirely correct, it's clearly the best move, only that I'm not as convinced that it's so easy to find. (A secondary point is that Black still isn't lost after 29..Rbd8?) Garry is always quick to toss out a "any 2700 should find ..f6 with no trouble." Perhaps, not that I would know what a 2700 should find. I'm more of the opinion that Ponomariov saw White's f6 but entirely missed the brutal Kh2 - Nxf6 - Bb1 mating trick. And if you're not so worried about f6 there is no reason to spend a tempo on ..f6. But after spending 20 minutes on the move Pono definitely should have found it. Anyway, it's hard, or impossible, to judge how easy or hard a move is to find in a game. This isn't a composed puzzle; there are ticking clocks and tournament pressures.

Kamsky played the Exchange variation against Anand and not much came of it. A draw was certainly not a bad result for Kamsky here. Topalov is more likely to play a Sicilian against him tomorrow, however, and there's no exchange variation there. But Gata has played confidently throughout and should be ready to punish Topalov if the Bulgarian pushes his luck. Svidler and Bacrot drew another fighting Spanish game.

Player Hating

Ponomariov's sudden collapse against Topalov today led to the usual conspiracy talk. I've mostly ignored all this piffle as blatant sour grapes and paranoia. All the "Topalov is using a computer" garbage that came up after San Luis (due to oblique chatter from Kasimdzhanov combined with Topalov's amazing first half) is just a way to tear down a good player on a great run of form. Today it was compounded because Ponomariov is affiliated with Silvio Danailov, the Bulgarian IM who manages Topalov's career and is one of the organizers of MTel. (I.e., Ponomariov threw the game, as if this would be necessary were Topalov receiving comp assistance. Don't mix and match your conspiracy theories!)

The myriad scenarios of computer cheating so engage the imagination they are practically irresistible. Signals from a conspirator? Transmitters hidden in the clothes, embedded under the skin? A light or sound in the hall when there is an opportunity? Why not the old yogurt trick? Psychology can work in even more creative ways. If the thought your opponent might have computer assistance is in the back of your head it's really going to screw up your game. Conversely, if you had access to occasional computer assistance, even just a signal once or twice a game, it would have a dramatic effect on your chess and your confidence.

I've heard that a great deal of time was spent on these things during the Kramnik-Topalov match discussions. Expect them to play under Alcatrazian security conditions. And expect fringers to rumormonger anyway. (Especially with the anti-logic "okay, prove he's NOT using a computer. Uh, why?)

May 20, 2006

MTel 2006 Round 9

Topalov wipes out Kamsky with black in the Najdorf to win his third straight and enter a tie for first with Kamsky. Amazing. This is the same Najdorf line that Kamsky has used almost exclusively of late (against Smirin, Sakaev, Vallejo, and Novikov) and while he has done okay (if you consider two wins and two losses okay) it scores very well for black. Being so predictable in such an important game is a little cringe-inducing, but I guess you dance with who brung ya, as the saying goes.

Now it seems so obvious that Topalov would have a strong novelty (14..e5, improving on the Smirin game from the World Cup, although Smirin won that one too) and win almost without a fight. White is so many moves behind by move 20 it's hopeless. (At the press conference Kamsky said he forgot to play 13.Kb1 instead of 13.Qh3. Then after 13..b4 14.Ne2 is playable, probably going into his game with Sakaev.) Tangling with Topalov in the Najdorf is a very high mountain to climb for anyone, no doubt. Very disappointing for Gata after such a tremendous run, but it's not over yet.

Svidler let Anand off the hook in another Ruy Lopez. Even in the final position it looks like Black can play on with the better chances, but there are dangers for both sides. The tail-enders drew a relatively bloodless fight. Topalov has white against Bacrot tomorrow while Kamsky has black against Svidler and a painful loss to recover from. Anand is just a half-point off the lead and has black against Ponomariov. Three more Ruy Lopezes? Ruy Lopi?

May 21, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r1

The Olympiad begins today! The greatest event in chess, this bi-annual celebration is in the Olympic city in Italy. Rounds begin at 1500 local time, that's 1300 GMT, 9am EDT. Rest days are May 26 and June 1. The official site is here. The Weiner Zeitung site has all the team listings and standings and other handy charts. Daily reports at ChessBase and all the other usual suspects, I'm sure. (Preview articles with schedules and more here and here.) Live games at the official site if we're lucky and broadcasts at Playchess with fantastic commentary from GM Yasser Seirawan on Playchess.com. I hope to get occasional reports from a few players and visitors. If that means you, send us some dirt! Feel free to post news links and local team coverage.

There are too many stories to keep track of apart from the team medal hunt. (The individual medals are too often delivered to weak players on very weak teams. What is this, the Chess Special Olympiad?) Kramnik being in action for the first time since his rehab is a big one. His last game was December 30, 2005. Tradition says he'll be playing on board one despite being rated lower than Svidler and Morozevich, although he might not play that many games if he shows any strain. The Russian team is strong enough to not need him to excel to win the gold. It would be great to see him even show flashes of his old form. We remind that his first big international success was his amazing debut at the 1992 Manila Olympiad as a teen. 8.5/9 as a reserve!

Russia is the massive rating favorite. Harikrishna has come up enough to make India a surprising second seed. This is because Ukraine is playing without Ponomariov, which will seriously hamper their chances of duplicating their 2004 gold. Armenia is the third seed and the new-and-improved Aronian now on board one makes them a serious contender for any color medal. Azerbaijan's team, led by Radjabov, is still incredibly young and dangerous.

The clash with MTel is a pity, although a few top players rarely represent their nations at the Olympiad anyway. It's a grueling event and the pay is usually terrible. Leko isn't there again, nor is Topalov, his third miss in a row. Polgar would have to worry about her water breaking in zeitnot. I hate it when that happens. (Need I remind that the Ninja board's very own Inky once played in the Olympiad for the Virgin Islands in an ominously gravid state?) Those are the only players in the top 20 not in Turin. It's great to have Anand back again. Shirov returns for Spain.

Then there is team USA, which is greatly strengthened on paper by the addition of Kamsky and Nakamura. I say on paper because while this team is clearly stronger, Olympiad results often more resemble alchemy than Elo. In 2004 the US team jumped up for a remarkable 4th place finish by stomping Norway 3.5-0.5 in the final round. More impressively, they drew Ukraine, Israel, and Armenia. Surpassing that result will be an achievement, but it's possible. Earlier note on the team here.

Gots to give a shout to my homies on the English team. They could accidentally show up at the Olympic bobsled venue and still do better than last time. They had McShane on board three behind Adams and Short in 2004 and were the sixth seed. They finished 30th. This year he's gone and they're down to 13th. They'll still finish higher.

In the women's event, defending gold medalist China has apparently rotated squads and are only the sixth seed. Wacky. Russia is the top seed in this one too, impressively enough.

So let your jingo flag fly high for the next two weeks and enjoy lots of great chess. The FIDE presidential election also takes place, but it's out of our hands so let's dig into the games. Time control, btw, is 40/100+30, 20/50+30, 20/10+30. That's almost classical, if a bit rough on the endgame.

MTel 2006 Round 10

This is it! The pairings give a big advantage to Topalov, who has white against Bacrot while his co-leader Kamsky has black against Svidler. But this has been a topsy-turvy tournament and anything can happen. Anand popping back up with a win over Ponomariov would really cause havoc. As I mentioned here, two players tied for first will play rapid and blitz tonight to settle the title. If three or more tie for first, it goes to systems. On a karmic level Kamsky simply doesn't deserve less than at least a share of first after his amazing start. Update after the round, post results below.

Quick update: Topalov wins his fourth straight game and the tournament. Unbelievable. Stupendous. Just like last year, if not better. He finishes a half-point ahead of Kamsky, for whom this is still a sensational result. He did his "job" losing only to the host, Topalov! Anand missed a clear win against Ponomariov (37..g2) after playing an excellent game. Tiredness? He was in time trouble again, something almost entirely alien to him. Svidler and Kamsky played a turgid draw. Congratulations to Topalov and Gata. Everyone but Topalov and Ponomariov now race to Turin. Much more later. Lots of good info posted in the comments, don't miss.

2006 Olympiad Coverage & r1

I'll add more here later, but wanted to get at least this one up now since it has some of the first round results. Buddy, former teammate, and erstwhile AP chess reporter Rob Huntington is blogging in Turin: www.allthingshuman.com. From the number of times I've watched his laptop crash over the years it's not going to win any tech or design awards, but hey, it's up and running so far! Actually, I see that WZ has the full board results up now. Check Rob out anyway. (A pic of him beardless at the bottom of this page. He's see no evil.)

The USA barely beat New Zealand, 2.5-1.5. Russia scored the predicted 4-0 over Kazakhstan. In a shocker, Morocco beats India 3-1! Get on that plane, Vishy!

Post links to other sources covering the Olympiad and I'll move the better ones up here.

May 22, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r2

Several people have sent in scattered results from round two. Don't see them posted yet. The official website is, of course, a joke. What would be useful doesn't work and what works isn't useful. Reminds me of the Spanish diplomat who told the press, "What I can tell you isn't interesting and what is interesting I cannot tell you." I wonder how many tens of thousands of dollars were spent on a site and web staff currently serving no demonstrable purpose. I wonder if it will be updated during the event at all. The "go to games" section never works for me until the games are over. How has your luck been? (It's up now, so you can piece together results here. Click the little arrow image on the left to launch the viewing applet.)

Anyway, post'em as you get'em. Wiener-Zeitung should have the full board results up here eventually. USA beat Morocco 3.5-0.5 to get into gear. Russia scored another 4-0 with the same team. Are they saving Kramnik for someone stronger instead of getting him warmed up with weaker opposition?

Update: Other notable results include Azerbaijan getting spanked 3.5-0.5 by Portugal. Quick, name a player from Portugal. Exactly. Radjabov didn't play and Mamedyarov isn't playing (?), but still, yikes. I hope their captain regrets the match strategy of giving a nine-move draw on board three, although maybe that was the only thing preventing a 4-nil score. Maybe all their training money is going to the Radjabov challenge of Topalov... Shirov also took a non-game draw today, on board one against Estonia's Kulaots, whose name is not French. England only edged Turkmenistan thanks to a win by Adams.

Russia is the only team with 8 board points. They play Germany tomorrow. The USA plays the tough Phillipines team. The Phillipine media is, as usual, providing a blizzard of coverage. The 53-year-old Eugenio Torre just set the record for most consecutive Olympiad appearances, 19. More on that record and others in this Manila Bulletin article. Ukraine got back on track and faces Serbia & Montenegro in round 3, probably the last time that nation will participate.

Stop, Thief!

I just heard from someone who heard from someone (Carol Jarecki from Albert Vasse) in Turin that Bessel Kok team advisor and ChessBase online commentator Yasser Seirawan [not Kok himself as given earlier] was supposed to arrive in Turin on Saturday but had his laptop and passport stolen in Amsterdam! I know what you're thinking, but this it's really too much to think that Kirsan could be behind this. When he doesn't like you he doesn't have your passport stolen. Your body just turns up in a ditch.

Other Turin tidbits from uber-arbiter Jarecki (if you've never seen an IA hold a cigarette lighter to a turkey wishbone, click here): At last the time control is confirmed. It was debated up till the last minute and not announced until the captains' meeting. Against the suggestion of the GM Council it's the old 90'+30" FIDE semi-rapid garbage. Tragic. (Opinions mine, not Carol's! She just provided the info.)

I noted in the agenda of this FIDE Congress that the ACP has proposed changing the official FIDE control to this plus an extra 30 minutes at move 40. (This wasn't the original ACP proposal, as explained on their site here.) Why not an at least an hour? Sad. They also mention the possibility of simply dropping the candidates matches. Treacherous bastards.

Also, Kamsky has arrived in Turin and ate dinner on site. No word on what he was eating but we're working on it.

Turin 06 Mystery Solved

I'm just going to add new little notes now and then instead of updating old items. Too confusing. I'll put "Turin 06" in the title for posterity... I was wondering why Ukraine was playing on such a distant board in round one. This led to their result being missed by some places that just showed the results of the the top boards. It was because they were playing the IBCA (International Braille Chess Association) who, like the International Physically Disabled Chess Association (IPCA) team, play on the same board every day for practical access purposes. The Italy A team also plays on the same high board (7) each day, a concession to the fans and media to keep them on the stage.

Some have noted that I'm pretty much ignoring the women's event. Not maliciously, but I have very limited time and would rather put my energy into the event with the better chess. Apart from that, my dim view of women-only events is known to regular readers (hi Mom!). That's more toward professional events, however, and this is more like the Olympics, all are welcome. But chess is chess and time is time and I don't really care if some 2100 hangs a bishop. Even if she's hot. I'll try to add more.

May 23, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r3

Just underway, and for those who don't want to log in to Playchess.com or the ICC, the live games pages on the official site are working right now! (Men - Women) I'm not sure if this is only because much of the US isn't online yet or if they've fixed their server issues.

Kramnik is playing Naiditsch on board one of Russia-Germany. Svidler isn't playing this round, nor is Bacrot for France. Kamsky got right into action and is playing board one for the USA against Paragua of the Philippines. Anand is on board one against Mongolia. His opponent showed no respect and sacrificed a piece against him on move 14. I doubt Vishy is impressed.

I wonder how many times the four MTel players will meet each other in the Olympiad. Quite likely to have at least one or two encounters since Kamsky is playing board one for the US. Bacrot and Anand are also on board one, but Svidler is board two for Russia.

May 24, 2006

Karpov's Worst Moment

I usually skip the birthday routine, but Karpov had some interesting comments in an interview with the hoary Russian paper Trud on his 55th b-day yesterday. Some cuts:

Players today are obsessed only with strategy and have no interest in the overall intellectual formation of the player. ... I'm different from modern players. To reach the top in chess and to stay on top for many years you must have encyclopedic knowledge, an excellent education, and certain notions of philosophy." ...

The most tragic moment of my career was losing game 24 to Kasparov [in Seville, 1987]. I was winning 12-11, but I had only 20 seconds to make the right decision. In the end I lost the title and $600,000. That was the price of those 20 seconds. I don't think you can lose that much money that quickly in any casino.

Karpov is referring to the famous double blunder on move 33. Kasparov missed a win with 33.Qb5 and Karpov, in bad time trouble for several moves already, returned the favor. 33...Nc5 would have drawn with best play.

Turin Olympiad 2006 r4

We're getting to the all-GM matches at last. Live games and results. Russia-China could be interesting despite the massive Russian rating advantage. The Chinese have a grudge to settle from the World Team Championship. Kramnik is in action again, against Bu Xiangzhi on board one. He didn't get much of a warm up yesterday against Naiditsch, who was rolled like a five-cent cigar out of the opening. Accurate finish and all, but hardly testing. Svidler plays his first game today on board two. Wang Yue is 3/3 for China and faces Bareev, who is also 3/3. Quite a few teams have yet to lose a single game.

Kasimdzhanov-Ivanchuk and Almasi-Anand are the the highest-rated match-ups of the day. Azerbaijan will try to recover from their embarrassing start. The out-performing Greek team has a stern pairing with the Netherlands. There appears to have been a meltdown with the Kazakhstan team. Most of their top players from Calvia aren't here, including their #1, former world junior champ Sadvakasov. Anyone know why Norway has played the same four players in the first four rounds? Their top two, Carlsen and Agdestein (also Carlsen's trainer), haven't played. Are they delayed elsewhere?

Rob blogs about an old-fashioned Olympiad tradition, the wrong flag. A particularly poor choice this time, the Japanese Imperial Flag. I wonder if it was the emperor's chyrsanthemum flag or something else. Maybe the military one with the rays of sun? Photos, anyone? Daaim Shabazz at The Chess Drum is on-site and posting reports with a few photos.

May 25, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r5

It's a tight race after four rounds. Only two board points separate the top dozen teams. Leading medal contenders clash today as Russia faces Armenia. That's 2004 silver versus 2004 bronze. Armenia looks a bit overmatched but they usually overachieve in team events and they are always one of the most interesting teams to watch. Kramnik has white against Aronian. Then we have the battle for Asian supremacy as India and China do battle. India has a big rating advantage on the first three boards.

USA continued to move up the table yesterday. They showed their potential by beating the strong Polish team 3-1 with all games decisive – wins on the top three boards. Today they are up against an accomplished young Georgian squad. From a quick glance at the games (now in progress), I see that Kamsky and Nakamura got into the same Slav line on boards one and three. It's a little odd that the board shifting has left Nakamura three blacks to one white so far. You'd think they'd try to get him a few extra whites considering his sharp style, the way they used to do with de Firmian. But things aren't going badly. Team capitain Donaldson might be relying on Nakamura's ability to win with both colors.

Mickey Adams is having a fine event and has the highest performance rating of the Olympiad so far. But they lost to Turkey yesterday despite his win over Gurevich, amazingly enough. Cuba and Brazil are facing off for LatAm honors, but they are playing below my dear Argentina, where Felgaer appears to be coming into his own on board one at last. Dale!

Turin 06 Tu-tu

A day with 2-2 results on the top five pairings left things even tighter. The USA gained a little ground on the pack scoring 2.5 over Georgia with wins by Kamsky and Onischuk while Nakamura lost. The many drawn matches allowed Iran to jump up but the 51st seed faces Ukraine next and a wake-up call is likely. (Not tomorrow, the 26th is a rest day.) The Netherlands will face Russia. (Full pairings here)

Vladimir Kramnik smoothly outplayed Levon Aronian to move to 2.5/3. Either he hasn't been seriously tested yet or he's really in incredible shape! He had a solid plus out of the opening and then exploited what looked like a serious blunder by Aronian, 19..Rc7 missing 20.Rc6 and Black has a lot of trouble stopping the pawn. Kasparov was reminded of a game he lost to Karpov in a Lyon world championship game with the same maneuver. 19..Qb7 was his recommendation, with "still unpleasant for Black". Btw, Aronian played this line with White against... Kramnik last year, all the way up to move 15. (15.g4 instead of Bg5. 1/2 in 85.) I suppose we still need to see Kramnik with black against a top player before jumping completely on the bandwagon. He's looking good and don't think Topalov isn't watching. Playing a match with Kramnik vintage 99 isn't like playing Kramnik 05.

Sargissian leveled the match by beating Morozevich. His personal score is now 4.5/5. Kamsky is continuing his MTel form and won a very complicated game with Jobava. Nakamura played the same line of the Slav with the opposite result. I haven't had time to go over it but as a Benoni player the Onischuk game just looks terrible for Black out of the opening. 8.Qe2 is an Epishin idea that seemed to catch Pantsulaia off guard. 13.Bc7 is a world-class annoying move. It became amazingly complicated but Black's Iron King turned out to be a bit rusty. Game replay here.

We need to start a PGN project so we can get at least some of the top games asap. I'd imagine at least a few of the federations with competent websites are collecting their teams' games. Of course it's good they wait and check the scores to get rid of most of the terrible notation errors, but we should be able to avoid the worst of those. If you post PGN scores to the thread I'll collect them into a file and update. If a few people do a few games from those they are following we could have quite a few. Going to Playchess or the ICC and copying them there also recommended. They are relaying dozens of games. But having them on the web would be nice. TWIC, ChessBase, and the official site usually have them the next day, if not before the next round starts. Don't clutter the main round item with PGN though, thanks.

Sorry for the various server errors when commenting. The increased traffic and posts have brought these back, it seems. But I don't want to stop and rebuild the server with so many visitors. I'll probably reinstall everything after the end of the Olympiad. By the way, I'm going fishing with my dad for a few days on June 1, who would make a good back-up blogmeister?

May 27, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r6

A pleasant day with work not related to chess, believe it or not. But back to this wonderful Olympiad. The official site even seems to be working well now, yay. Round 6 games will be here. Wiener-Zeitung has team pairings up here, board pairings will be here. Quite a few tough match-ups today, although there are plenty of lightweight teams still hanging around at the top that are paired with each other, so the real cull won't come for another few days.

Speaking of, we're still waiting for the heavyweights to really squash somebody. Is today the day Russia or Ukraine puts up 3.5 to break away from the pack? The Netherlands have lost only one game so far. Kasimdzhanov has been a rock for Uzbekistan but the 30th seed is living a dream. Stay tuned...

Turin 06 Russia not Rushing

Russia was lucky to escape the Netherlands with a 1.5-2.5 loss today. Van Wely mangled a winning endgame against Grischuk, but of course this is still a great result against the mighty top seed. Sokolov decided not to find out about Kramnik's form and the game was a short draw. Nijboer turned in the decider by beating Rublevsky, who is looking every bit the sixth board so far. (What was wrong with 30.Rd2?) It's damaging because Russia usually scores big on the lower boards.

Armenia is the sole leader after edging Uzbekistan. Lots of close matches again with none of the blowouts I expected. (Not as bad as my predicting that Topalov was "out of contention" at the MTel, but as a mitigating factor most of my other predictions during that event were pretty good. Not Migstradamus bad at least.)

USA beat China 2.5-1.5 with wins from Onischuk and Kaidanov. Kamsky suffered his first lost, to Bu, when he took a solid position and went pawn crazy on the kingside. There is a downside to trying to win every game. Iran surprised by holding Ukraine to 2.5 points. India showed signs of life, beating Germany 3-1 to move into the pack at 16.5, a point and a half behind Armenia. Round six board results here. Round seven team pairings here.

Quick replay link for a few of the top round six games here. PGN here. Culled from Playchess.com and thanks to the relayers there. (Fixed some errors in early moves of the Shirov score with best guesses.)

May 28, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r7

Round 7 board pairings are up here. Those and live games will be here. Netherlands-Armenia is the top board. Russia gets one of the surviving underdogs, Belarus. India faces Ukraine in a real heavyweight match-up. Anand has white against Ivanchuk. With a big rating advantage the USA needs to put up a good score against the outperforming Swedish squad. Kamsky and Onischuk rest so our own Hikaru Nakamura appears on board one for the second time. Magnus Carlsen is in action for the second day in a row for Norway. He won easily yesterday and now faces Mickey Adams. The English team is trying to prove me wrong and do even worse than in 2004.

If the Russian men have, if briefly, fallen off the pace, the Russian women continue to lead. Katerina Lahno, mysteriously on board two for second-place Ukraine, has 5/5. USA is playing well on all boards and faces India, where star Humpy rests today.

May 29, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r8

Game replay and results here at the official site. Some games still in progress as of this writing. The tidal ebb and flow of the Swiss system and board point tossed some weaker teams into the gaping maws of the favorites today. Cuba's 3.5 victory over Indonesia earned them a shot at Armenia. That one ended 3-1 in favor of the leaders. The amazing performance by the Czech team continues as they held Russia 2-2 thanks to a win by Navara over Svidler on board one. (Morozevich's win on board three looks suspect. Perhaps the position is wrong or at least not the final. Or maybe he lost?!) These aren't (all) the same guys that Kasparov demolished by himself in a clock simul in 2001! (I have incredible photos from that event since I snuck in and grabbed some shots during the games.)

Ukraine beat Sweden 3-1 and the Netherlands continued to collapse, losing to France 1-3. Philippines finally played their rating after a strong run and lost to China 3.5-0.5. USA also acted like the high seed they are, playing their big three and scoring a 3-1 win over Denmark. Kamsky and Onischuk came back from their rest day to notch the wins.

The USA faced Russia on the top board in the women's event and held the favorites to a split thanks to a win by Irina Krush on board two. The USA is two points off the lead but is still is still in good medal position. China moved back into contention with a whitewash of Latvia.

Turin 06 Irish Eyes

Some of the latest tidbits and links from the Olympiad. It's been confirmed by several correspondents in Turin that yes, Aleksandrov really does need his brain dry-cleaned. He mixed up his mental move order and played 18..Bc8 instead of playing ..Kf7 first and resigned immediately. You are excused if you believe this is all part of a Bulgarian conspiracy to push the betting odds on Topalov-Kramnik down so the Topalov supporters can make some money.

Round 9 team pairings are here. It's mostly medal contenders doing battle at this point, with Armenia-Ukraine the headline match-up. That's the 2004 bronze winner against the gold medal winners Ukraine, but this time Armenia is leading by two points. Because it's all about board points, that's hardly an insurmountable lead with five rounds still to play. After the top teams have faced each other they are inevitably paired with weaker squads and big scores can happen. (Russia snatching the gold from the USA with a 4-0 whitewash of Netherlands in the final round in 1998 comes to mind. See below.)

Mark Orr is keeping a fine Olympiad blog page. He's the captain of the Irish team. Are there other pages like this one? Scotland has some daily info here. The USCF site was supposed to have a blog by arbiter Carol Jarecki but if it's up I can't find it. Rob Huntington continues to liveblog from Turin. Daaim Shabazz is back from Turin and has quite a few audio interviews up at The Chess Drum here.

From Orr's Irish team page:

A curious piece in today's bulletin referred to a "serious" incident during yesterday's Ireland-Brazil match. What had actually happened was that the Brazil board 3 decided, half way through the match, that Suzanne was an imposter and complained to the arbiter. The arbiter took a good look at Suzanne's security badge and eventually found another arbiter who knew Suzanne from previous Olympiads and could vouch for her. The whole thing was over in about 5 minutes. Why the Brazilian took that notion, we'll never know.

Who can forget the famous Saleem-Timman imposter scandal at the Olympiad in 1998? See after the jump for that saga if you have. Replay the relevant games.

Continue reading "Turin 06 Irish Eyes" »

Turin 06 r8 Games & Notes

I put a handful of key games up for replay and PGN download. Link here. The official daily Olympiad bulletin "Turin Moves" is available from the FIDE website. (More current than the official site, which is still on issue #5.) All the results plus photos, interviews and more with good production value. Impressive stuff. They've also started adding the news items from that to the official English site at last. List of news links here.

From these we glean that there are three women playing for their national teams in the open section of the Olympiad this year, two of them on top board. (The comments point out Zhu Chen for Qatar, whom I had forgotten -- married to Qatar first board Al-Modiahki -- and Knarik Mouradian of Lebanon, also a national champion.) Hong Kong's national champion is the 15-year-old Anya Corke. The item credits her for being the second-youngest national champion in history since she won it at 14, saying the youngest ever was Capablanca. Sigh. They probably got that from the Wikipedia entry on Corke. Capa's 1901 match against Cuban champion Corzo was not for the national championship, although he could be called, and called himself, the moral champion. He finished 4th in the 1902 championship and never actually held the title.

I suppose we could count months to see if Corke was younger than Fischer when he won the US championship at 14. I believe Paul Truong says he was champion of Vietnam at the age of eight. As with Corke in Hong Kong, I doubt we're talking master opposition. But a record is record. Corke was born in California and recently played in the Susan Polgar girls tournament, where she tied for first.

May 30, 2006

Silicon Dreams

The 14th World Computer Chess Championship is underway in... Turin! Yes, right next to the Olympiad. Defending champ Zappa Zap is there along with relatively new top-dog Rybka and the usual suspects Junior and Shredder. Results, games, and bulletins are at the official site. It's an eleven-round swiss, not exactly what you might expect from such a scientific bunch. After six rounds Shredder and Junior (old skool!) lead with 4.5 with Rybka and Zap right behind. It's a hotly contested prize, but the pros pay more attention to the myriad computer rating lists and epic head-to-head matches of hundreds of games between engines.

Hydra isn't there, but Zap is running on a massive parallel system using 512 processors. All the hardware specs are on the site but I've seen other reports say Rybka (running under its programmer's name, Rajlich) and Shredder are on eight-processor machines, not four. (And then you get into the dual processor processors, oh my.) Shredder programmer Stefan Meyer-Kahlen is blogging daily on his site. They had their own imposter scandal near the start when the Italian engine LION++ was ejected for being a clone of the popular open source program Fruit. (Latest versions aren't open source.) After a complaint was filed, they checked its source code and ejected the program.

That hardware list also says that Zap and Rybka aren't using endgame tablebases, interesting if true. It's been discussed for a while now that the speed hit they cause may actually lead to a practical decrease in strength, at least against other comps where every microsecond counts. The brand new Shredder 10 has new ultra-compressed bases that may partially solve this problem because they can be accessed at vastly faster speeds. More on them here.

Other discussions on computer chess are here, here, and here.

June 1, 2006

Turin 06 Best and Worst

It's never to early to start making silly lists! Best games and worst games (by a player who should know better) so far? Aleksandrov already has the worst move award wrapped up, who's contending for second prize? Aronian's demolition of Sokolov was wildly entertaining. Kasparov admired Akopian's finish against Zhang Zhong yesterday. Most surprising player, biggest disappointment? Get your early nominations in now. As for the best looking players, the competition is already over.

Those are the reigning champions of most of North America right there, Canada's Pascal Charbonneau on the right and the incredibly handsome Alexander Onischuk on the left.

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Election Handicapping

Just tossing up a quick FIDE presidential election item for you pundits before bailing out for a bit. Kirsan's side is claiming over 80 votes but word in the back rooms of Turin say it's not out of the question a Dutch surprise is on tap...

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June 2, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r11

Mig's gone fishin'. Ms. Sterious here to fill in with links and such. Round 11 team pairings here. Board pairings here. Kamsky and Kramnik are on board one of USA-Russia. Live games will be here. Women's live games here.

Any election news will be posted separately, although there is a Moscow Times pre-election assessment posted on Chessbase.

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Kirsan Ilyumzhinov Reelected as President of FIDE

An article by David Levy on the topic is up on Chessbase. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov won 96 votes; Bessel Kok won 54.

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June 3, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r12

Board pairings here. Live games will be here.

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June 4, 2006

Turin Olympiad 2006 r13

This is it, the final round! Board pairings are here. Live games will be here. Women's live games here.

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June 6, 2006

Estoy de Vuelta

Now when will my monitor stop sloshing around? Back from three days of fishing in Baja California Sur, Mexico, same place as last year, a bit later in the year. Not as successful a trip but at least this time I nabbed a small cooler so I could take back some of the dorado (mahi-mahi), tuna, and marlin we caught. The not-so-edible rooster fish my dad caught on the first day is more picturesque, so you are spared another photo of me doing my clean-shaven Hemingway impression.

I'm not feeling too well after too much sun, too much tequila, too little sleep, and too many hours on a plane. Did I mention the sloshing? I'm hoping to be up and around tomorrow. Let us all thank the divine Ms. Terious for giving you a place to keep up with the news while I was south of the border. She clearly has more going for her than just being a left-handed redhead. Hey, wait a minute, does this chart say that the USA...

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June 8, 2006

Swing of Things

I'm feeling much better, thanks. Getting well just in time to resume debauchery for my birthday. I've been spending my chess time on a long Olympiad / election column to run at ChessBase, but some bits of it have been axed. They're putting up an entire item on this tomorrow and didn't want overlap. No doubt it will have plenty of the pictures mentioned below. Sigh.

For the second Olympiad in a row there were fisticuffs on site. In Calvia, FIDE veep Azmaiparashvili was knocked around by Spanish security after trying to get on the stage. (The following info was gleaned from published reports and two emails from people at the party. It seems to be the agreed upon story.) This year English GM Danny Gormally decided he'd try to do at the legendary Bermuda party what he had been largely unable to do at the board: beat somebody. Seeing Armenian team leader dancing with an Austrialian girl he fancied was apparently too much for him and he punched Aronian. It didn't go on long (the Englishman was restrained by perpetual peace-maker Yasser Seirawan, according to Nigel Short), but there were repercussions the next day when some Armenians (alternately described as "chess players," "fans," and in one case "Aronian's teammates" ?) got physical with Gormally before finding out he and the English team captain had apologized for the incident.

Gormally was sent home. Aronian went on to win the team gold with Armenia. Further reports say the girl was there with Naiditsch, so who knows where she ended up, not that I care. Word to the wise: never mess with anyone on a team captained by the nation's defense minister. I don't think the words "forgive and forget" even exist in Armenian. This is getting way too much attention and I'm sure Gormally is sufficiently miserable already. According to this interview item he's apologized to the woman as well.

This story has been picked up by the UK and Aussie press, especially the tabs. The "chessplayers fighting over a girl!" derision is predictable and lame, but the main reason they are running the story is that the dancing woman in question has her own website and it's full of photos, many of the semi-professional model-shot variety. Just about every article on the incident has been accompanied by at least one of these glossy pics. The Sun, of course, took it up a notch and added photos of other "pawn stars" in its coverage. Mothers have been interviewed, a sure sign there's no real story.

Sometimes I wonder if the fastest road to stardom for an attractive woman is to learn to play chess. You certainly don't have to be very good to receive an inordinate amount of attention. 1800 Elo and a bikini pic is enough to earn the dubious, and completely exhausted, "Anna Kournikova of chess" title. Doesn't anyone want to be the Steffi Graf of chess? This inevitably results in women getting more attention as attractive and less respect as chessplayers. Of course it's no fault of chessplayers for wanting to be attractive or for attractive people to want to play chess. A GM punch-up at a dance party is certainly worthy of mention. Turning it into another beauty contest is a bit silly.

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June 9, 2006

O Captain! My Captain!

Included in the Mechanics Chess Club's newsletter, given complete with minor grammar and spelling changes only. My own long Olympiad item will be up at ChessBase in a bit (up now) and I wanted to link back to this nice inside view.

Turin Recap by John Donaldson, American Team Captain

The 2006 Olympiad in Turin will be remembered for many things. First, and rightly so, will be the incredible performance of the small nation of Armenia. A strong contender at all team tournaments since achieving independence in the early 1990s, Armenia was a convincing winner with GM Levon Aronian defending the top board and Gabriel Sargissian taking home a point seemingly every match. It became apparent near round 10 that there would be no stopping the juggernaut from the Caucasus but what other teams were to medal was not determined until the final round. A very dangerous and erratic team Chinese that had lost four matches but beaten a team of 2600 players from Georgia 4-0(!) turned back the Netherlands to take home the silver medals while the US timed its break from the peloton at just the right moment to beat a Magnus Carlsen lead Norwegian team 3.5-.5 and snatch the bronze medals.

A record breaking 150 teams in the Olympiad makes it impossible to cover the event in any comprehensive fashion so I will restrict myself to the impressions I gathered while serving as the US Team Captain for the seventh time, the first since 1996.

The US team of Gata Kamsky, Alex Onischuk, Hikaru Nakamura, Ildar Ibragimov, Gregory Kaidanov and Varuzhan Akobian did not enter the event in an optimal state. A combination of waiting to select the team until after the US Championship, delays in the USCF office, a last minute appeal for eligibility by GM Jaan Ehlvest (who recently changed his federation to the US), visa problems, funding issues and having to make travel arrangements less than a month before the event were not ideal preparations. While several other contending teams were holding formal training camps the US team improvised with some members getting together privately.

Ideally the US team would have arrived in Turin a few days early to adjust to their new surroundings and jet lag but this luxury has never been built into an US Olympiad budget and 2006 was not an exception. As is typical for US teams in this situation we started slowly with a 2.5-1.5 win over New Zealand. Our alertness was not helped by the fact that the accommodations in Turin could best be described as a cross between college dorm and youth hostel. Some readers might remember that some of the athletes in the Winter Olympics, who were housed in the same Village, complained about their accommodations. Well, it's all relative. We had the same Village, but minus the refrigerators, phones, televisions, DVD lounges, Calling Centers, laundry facilities and gyms that were taken out of the complex sometime in the past few months.

Me, I would have just been happy with a table lamp and desk in the room plus a regular supply of hot water. FIDE officials (the Verification Committee!?) said that the organizers had duped them by showing them the facility in February during the Winter Olympics and then changing the agreement. It sounds plausible but FIDE said the same thing about Mr. Touze the organizer of last years World Youth fiasco in Belfort. My impression, having seen the rooms and experienced the food arrangements where portion size was tightly controlled (think Jenny Craig on steroids), was that the city of Turin was probably way over budget after the Winter Olympics and just didn't have the money to do things the way they might have liked. Certainly the many volunteers at the Olympiad did their best to make things run well as possible and one hates to write anything negative after their hard efforts. One question that was not resolved was whether the Turin organizers had to pay FIDE $300,000 for the right to organize the Olympiad. I consulted two influential FIDE insiders, Morton Sand of Norway and Ignatius Leong of Singapore, but received different answers. Sand said the Italians did pay the money and Leong that the fee requirement would first take effect in 2008 in Dresden.

The US followed up it's round one victory over New Zealand with a 3.5 -.5 win over Morocco, which, led by GM Hamdouchi, had defeated second seeded India 3-1 in an opening round stunner. Gata, who had finished second in Sofia, joined us after round two. We had all thought he would want a rest for a few more rounds after battling 2750 opposition in Bulgaria for ten rounds, but this was not the case. The result was some strange color sequences as Alex started with five Whites and Gregory four Whites from five games as Gata, Hikaru, Ildar and Varuzhan did the heavy lifting with Black. This turned out to be a pretty successful strategy for two reasons. One being that Alex and Gregory were winning a lot and two that no one complained. On many teams captains pretty much have to alternate colors to keep players happy but for the US team in Turin the bottom line was what would bring us the most points.

The first free day was after round five and we used the remaining days before it to good effect knocking off the Philippines (2.5-1.5), Poland (3-1) and Georgia (2.5-1.5). The latter two victories looked to be against potential top ten finishing team as both countries players were all under 25 and around 2600. A word about the time control - it was the brutal FIDE special of Game in 90 minutes with a 30 second increment. This is not a time control for those with heart conditions and yes there were a lot of botched endgames in Turin. The organizers had initially listed the time control as 40/90 followed by G/30 with 30 seconds increment from move one, but Chief Arbiter Geurt Gijssen made it emphatically clear at the Captains Meeting that there would be no discussion of changing the time control. Interestingly he was much more flexible when it came to the question of whether to use accelerated pairings. For reasons never made completely clear this Olympiad was only 13 rounds instead of the usual 14 for only the second time in history. Missing the extra round the pairing committee decided to use accelerated pairings and raised the issue two months before the Olympiad with the FIDE Executive Board which rubber stamped the idea. Unfortunately no one bothered to notify the federations of FIDE and the announcement to modify the pairings was a bombshell at the Captains Meeting. Gijssen wisely took note of the strong sentiment against the modification that would have eliminated many of the David versus Goliath pairings that make the Olympiad that much more memorable for some of the smaller members of FIDE.

The first free day was the first opportunity to really see Turin. The Olympic Village was set in the blue-collar Lingotto district of Turin where Fiat once had a giant factory. While the area was not bad there wasn't that much to do in the neighborhood of high rise apartments. Accordingly many of the US team members took advantage of the opportunity to walk along the Po river for a few miles and check out the nice downtown. One couldn't help but wish the Village had been a little closer to civilization.

The second third of the event saw the US continuing a steady move toward the top tables. A victory over China by 2.5-1.5 was typical of the US team at this point in the event in that we were leaving a lot of half points in every match. Fortunately this situation was rectified the last few rounds when we became extremely opportunistic grabbing every draw and win in sight. Going 2-2 in round seven with Sweden was a bit of a disappointment but they turned out to be an over-achieving team in the end, finishing in the top 20. The next day we bounced back with a good 3-1 victory over Denmark and seemed poised to advance to board one with one more match victory but the next two days, playing the Czechs and French, we went 2-2. Knowledgeable chess fans already are familiar with the name of David Navara but also take note of Viktor Laznicka. These two youngsters carried the Czech team which played at the top almost the entire event. The 2-2 score with France was cause for celebration on the US team as we trailed .5-1.5 and seemingly were losing the two remaining games. Miracle number one came from Ildar, who completely outplayed French 2600 Christian Bauer. Miracle number two came when Hikaru drew a two pawn down ending. That evening at a reception arranged by one of the team sponsors, the Internet Chess Club, the US was in good spirits.

Before the final three rounds there was one other free day but the US team couldn't relax entirely because we knew the Russian team would be our next opponent. Kramnik, Svidler, Grischuk, Morozevich, Bareev and Rublevsky were everyone's pick to win going in but by the time we faced them they had lost several matches. Unfortunately for us, the chief cause of the troubles, Rublevsky, had been benched for the event after going 0-0-0. We would not get him in the lineup and the last US victory over Russia was twenty years before. Things were tense throughout with both teams probably able to say at some point in the match they were winning. In the end the US team did the job 2.5 - 1.5 with Hikaru beating Grischuk. Much of the tournament Hikaru had been around 50 percent, getting promising positions but never being able to put away his opponents. This match marked the end of the drought.

Going into the 12th round the US was just outside of the medals. One might have expected more as the team was one of only a handful (France and Armenia the others) that had not lost a single match. Unfortunately there were so many strong teams we had not been able to separate ourselves. Facing the 6th seeded Israeli team (we were seeded 7th) our plan was to try to win the final two matches and hope for the best. Such was not to be as we lost 2.5-1.5. The one bright spot was Hikaru's tough win over the Israeli third board GM Sutovsky. That evening we anxiously awaited our last round pairing. Having lost in round 12 we had our backs to the wall but a big score in the final round could still make things right. Finally it was announced we would play Norway. One hesitates to call a team that can field four GMs, including a 15-year-old kid playing 2800 chess in the Olympiad, a good pairing but relatively speaking it was.

We knew we needed 3.5 from 4 but how to get the points? Clearly the Russian last round defeat of China in the last World Team Championship was cause for study and inspiration. There was no way to "order up" 3.5 points but the team felt that if we could get four complicated games from the opening there was cause for hope. That was actually what happened the next morning (all games were played at 3pm except the last round, which started at 10am). Several hours in Gata, playing White but with nothing in the position and being substantially down on the clock had to make a draw. Now we had to go three for three and that is exactly what happened with first Alex, then Hikaru and finally Varuzhan winning. Just scoring 3.5 was not enough. We also needed Israel to beat Russia or the Netherlands to beat China. Going in the latter seemed a better hope but in the end it was the Israelis who stunned Russia 3-1 winning both bottom boards. This left us in a tie with Israel for third but the comfortable winner on tiebreaks. The Israeli team was seemingly two teams in Turin. Ten rounds into the event they seemed destined for an uneventful placing having lost to the Czech Republic 3-1 and having drawn with Peru 2-2 despite Gelfand beating Granda, but the last three rounds they beat India, USA and Russia by 3-1, 2.5-1.5, and 3-1 - quite impressive but also indication they the first two thirds of the event they had not faced super strong opposition as their final tiebreak was not so good.

The US effort was a total team success. Unlike many of the other top teams we didn't have one massive star like the Chinese with Wang Yue scoring over 1/3 of his teams points. By rating performance our big three of Alex (our only undefeated player), Gata and Hikaru had performances from 2740 to around 2700. Gata was "only" plus one but faced brutally strong opposition on top board - enough so that he actually gained rating points. I am sure after playing ten rounds in Sofia and another ten in Turin in not much more than three weeks that he is sleeping well now! Having Gata not only gave us a first board like no other in recent US Olympiad history but also allowed all the other team members to drop down one notch.

Last Olympiad and in the World Team Championship Alex showed he is a fine first board but in Turin on board two was a steady point scorer and a threat to any board two in the event. Ditto for Hikaru on three. This was Hikaru's first Olympiad and it took him awhile to get used to things but once he did the results speak for themselves. He went 3-0 down he stretch numbering Grischuk and Sutovsky among his victims.

As mentioned before Ildar started with four Black's in his first five games but he never complained. His win over 2600 GM Kempinski in round 4 was one of the smoothest in the Olympiad but it was his defeat of Bauer in round 10 that might have been our most crucial victory in the event.

Gregory has been a standard bearer for US team for over a decade and is the only US player in his 40s still on the team. Two years before in Calvia Gregory was the top scorer for the team and here his "plus three" score and veteran leadership made him again a valuable contributor.

Last but certainly not least Varuzhan was another total team player. Each day we had only 4 spots to fill and six players to fill them with but Varuzhan would prepare for and show up for the matches as if he were playing every day. Varuzhan had not been in the lineup for three rounds before he played the final match but his teammates had total faith he would get the job done and he did!

I have written of my experiences as Captain of the US team but I would be remiss if I did not mention the excellent performance of our women's team of Anna Zatonskih, Irina Krush, Rusa Goletiani and the MI's Camille Baginskaite with Yury Shulman as Captain. Their fourth place finish was the second highest ever by a US team. They were always among the top countries and lost only one match to Ukraine. Good job!

Last and not least I would like to thank the sponsors of he US Olympiad teams that made our participation possible. The Kasparov Chess Foundation was the title sponsor with assistance from the United States Chess Federation, the Internet Chess Club and many individual donors. Thank you.

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June 10, 2006

León Roars

The León rapid tournament is underway. Anand barely survived Bruzon in the first match, eliminating him in a blitz game in a match that took eight games. (Four rapid and then tiebreaks.) The Cuban is no pushover, but Anand's rough patch in Turin seems to be continuing. The other semifinal was today between Topalov and Vallejo Pons. Topalov won the first two games and drew the third to lock up the match. He then lost the worthless fourth game in 20 moves. The final between Anand and Topalov is Sunday. ChessBase has the pictures event press dude Zenon Franco is sending out promptly. Kudos.

From game one, Topalov-Vallejo. Topalov missed a quick forced win with 40.Bxh6!

I rather mourn the loss of what used to be an Advanced Chess event. It was never implemented well, but I thought the idea had potential. A slower time control and the ability to see the players' screens in real time and see their full analysis files later would add a great dimension to the game. It would be like looking into a GM's head a little. Why can't the ChessBase folks build such a viewing ability into Playchess? Skip the wooden pieces entirely. Give them one boad to play on and another board or two to analyze on with an engine and database cranking along. All visible to spectators online. Every variation recorded into the score. Cool.

Thinking about it for another minute, it would be good even without an engine. Just providing an analysis board that can be seen by spectators would be fun. I'm not sure how often they would use it, but in a longer game having an analysis board or two would be helpful. Both would follow the current position. Then when you make moves on the second board, the third one follows. Then you can make moves on that third board for subvariations. Again, all added to the score. At least 60'+30" control, preferably longer. Otherwise they'd just ignore the analysis boards halfway through.

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Kramnik Interview

superfreaky points us to a new long and interesting interview with Vladimir Kramnik, originally for the Spanish Peon de Rey magazine, now in English on his website. Lots of bases covered, from the Olympiad to his recent woes to his upcoming matches with Topalov and Fritz. He also notes the fourth board debacle, something I mentioned after their second loss. The big teams usually rack up big scores there. Always nice to see the liberal use of my photographs from Bahrain. No charge.

I'm sure the match with Fritz will be interesting, but I'm afraid that a match against any machine that's not Hydra will be like a match against anyone who isn't Kasparov used to be. If Kramnik does well, winning or drawing, we'll wonder how it would have been different with Hydra, a machine that beat Michael Adams 5.5-0.5. On the other hand, if Kramnik loses it will just be another nail in the coffin.

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June 11, 2006

Tot Beats Vallejo

Spanish nine year old Jaime Santos Latasa beat GM Paco Vallejo in a 12-player simul in León. All the players were in the 7-10 age group. The same kid beat Magnus Carlsen in a simul last year, although that required a piece-hanging blunder by the GM. This one sounded tougher. Can someone find the game?

Anand beats Topalov in the León Rapid final, 2.5-1.5. He won the second game (PGN below) and the rest were drawn.

[Event "XIX Magistral Ciudad de León"]

[Site "?"]

[Date "2006.06.11"]

[Round "2"]

[White "Anand, Viswanathan"]

[Black "Topalov, Veselin"]

[Result "1-0"]

[ECO "C67"]

[WhiteElo "2803"]

[BlackElo "2804"]

[PlyCount "99"]

[EventDate "2006.06.11"]

[EventType "tourn"]

[EventRounds "4"]

[EventCountry "ESP"]

[SourceDate "2006.06.11"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. dxe5 Nf5

8. Qxd8+ Kxd8 9. Nc3 Ke8 10. h3 Ne7 11. Re1 Ng6 12. Bd2 Be7 13. Rad1 Nf8 14.

Nd4 Bc5 15. Nb3 Bb6 16. Be3 h5 17. Rd2 Ne6 18. Ne4 Bxe3 19. Rxe3 b6 20. Nd4

Nxd4 21. Rxd4 c5 22. Rd2 Bf5 23. Ng5 Ke7 24. Rf3 Be6 25. Nxe6 Kxe6 26. Rfd3

Kxe5 27. Re3+ Kf6 28. Rd7 Rhf8 29. Rxc7 g5 30. Kf1 h4 31. a4 Kg6 32. Ree7 Rad8

33. Ke2 a5 34. Rc6+ f6 35. Rxb6 Rd4 36. b3 c4 37. Ree6 cxb3 38. cxb3 Kf5 39.

Re3 Rc8 40. Rf3+ Ke4 41. Re6+ Kd5 42. Rfxf6 Rc2+ 43. Kf1 Rd1+ 44. Re1 Rdd2 45.

Kg1 Rb2 46. Rf5+ Kd4 47. Rxg5 Rxf2 48. Rg4+ Kd3 49. Re5 Rfc2 50. Rxa5 1-0

Continue reading "Tot Beats Vallejo" »

More Smarter Pills

Long Washington Post article on the increasing use of "smart pills" by students and others looking to improve concentration and memory. Are chessplayers taking these things? Would that be wrong if there aren't negative side-effects? Other items on this topic here, here, and here.

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June 13, 2006

Mitigation Dept.

In MoC #210 I dogged the Hungarian Olympiad team pretty bad for taking four prearranged draws against Armenia in the last round in Turin. They passed up a (slim) chance at a medal for a 2-2 score without playing and finished clear fifth, ahead of Russia. A great result without Leko and Polgar, to be sure, but why not play for a win when the Armenians would be sure to take draws at any moment anyway?

I chatted about this with Garry Kasparov and Michael Khodarkovsky, director of the Kasparov Chess Foundation and coach of the silver medal winning US women's team in 2004. (KCF is still the principal sponsor of the US Olympiad teams and Michael was in Turin.) He pointed out that Hungary, like some other countries, ties results to funding and puts chess in with other sports. The better the results, the more the state sport committee pays out, and Olympiad results determine this for chess. The Hungarians probably get something for a finish as high as this one, individually and/or for chess funding in general. It's still lame, of course. A system that creates an incentive to play four prearranged draws instead of going for a medal must be broken in some way.

The FIDE election and Kasparov's latest KCF master class sessions with America's top juniors were the other hot topics. More on those soon. Eek, it's Tuesday the 13th! Beware!

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June 14, 2006

Pics 08 - Olympiad 2012

If you don't know the name Brian Luo, remember it. The eight-year-old champ from Wisconsin came to San Diego to see the US Championship last March. During the closing ceremony, several competitors took turns playing blitz with him, including Gregory Kaidanov and blitz demon Ben Finegold, pictured below. Put it this way, Brian didn't lose all the games. Luo recently scored 5.5/7 in the US national high school championship, giving up seven or eight years to many of his opponents. Yikes.



Larger version here.

Last weekend Brian and just about every top junior in America came together in New York City for a master class with Garry Kasparov, sponsored by his foundation. The players show Kasparov a pair of their games, a win and a loss. Kasparov is optimistic about the promise shown by several of this week's attendees. Luo is clearly a standout and is coached by GM Dmitry Gurevich, who has an epic list of scholastic champ students. Other names to watch out for, several of whom have already performed for the US internationally: Danny Naroditsky (mom from Baku!), Ray Robson, Parker Zhao, Eric Liao, and Andrew Ng. None have reached their teens yet. The elder set was represented by Mackenzie Molner, Alex Lenderman, and Lev Milman.

The US often hears jokes about how their team looks like a Soviet squad. In six years it might sound more like the Chinese team! Jokes aside, I believe they were all born in the US. (Insert here thoughtful discussion about the educational earnestness of Chinese immigrant families.) Speaking of the Olympiad, Dresden 2008 will be just 11 rounds with five players on both the open and women's teams, four games and one reserve. Equality is nice in theory, but it's more of a bad thing here. Only a handful of teams have a decent fourth or fifth female player. A big advantage for the big powers and more bad chess. Cutting the second reserve from the open event is sad but goes along with fewer rounds.

Continue reading "Pics 08 - Olympiad 2012" »

Once an Armenian...

Trust the Armenian news services to point out that "Armenian Grand Master Varouzhan Hakobyan became the winner of the chess international tournament in San Marino together with Vadim Milov from Switzerland." The report does confess later that Akobian, as we know him, has lived in the US for five years. Both scored 7.5/9; Milov took the title on tiebreaks. There were dozens of GMs as many Olympiad players stuck around to play in this strong event, which appears to have flown under the radar of the eternally reliable TWIC. Check out the official site, if only to confirm for yourself that the top-level domain ".sm" isn't anything kinky.

Continue reading "Once an Armenian..." »

June 16, 2006

UKR Stealth Tourney

Holy stealth supertournament, Batman! Where did the Aerosvit tournament at the Foros spa in Crimea, Yalta, Ukraine come from? Ponomariov, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Shirov, and eight other top players including young Ukrainian Olympians Karjakin and Volokitin. It's a 12-player round-robin and round one is on Saturday. Time control is the odd 120'+30". The lowest-rated player is 2660, making this one of the strongest events of the year. I guess I've been spending too much time watching the World Cup (dale Argentina!), working on this book with Kasparov (final days!), and hanging out with my new girlfriend (hubba-hubba!). I didn't hear anything about this powerful event, sponsored by Ukraine's largest airline, until around ten days ago.

Perhaps Aerosvit got into the game not to be outdone by the massive Aeroflot Open in Moscow that has been very successful by most metrics I'm aware of. Even the diligent folks in the message boards seem to have missed this one. (No poll, peach?!) Well, better late than never. I'll make sure to fly Aerosvit as often as I can. Do they go to the Bahamas? Can I get some of that Foros spa "ecologically pure water from an artesian chink"?

Chessboard Humor

Stumbled upon this subvariation while preparing the latest White Belt. White to move and not resign.

Great stuff. Almost as good as the Cambiasso goal in Argentina's 6-0 demolition of Serbia & Montenegro. (Hendriks-Spanton, Hastings Masters 2006 with 11..Kh8 instead of 11..Rxf7 as played.)

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June 19, 2006

Aerosvit-Foros 06 - r3

The Ukrainian supertournament at the Foros spa is in Yalta producing some odd games of mostly fighting chess. Credit the thermal waters or the strange time control? The official site has analysis and more from former colleague GM Mikhail Golubev. ChessBase is reproducing his reports with pictures. One of them shows FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov chatting on one of those cell phones used by his voting delegates to send photos of their ballots so they could collect their bribes. Hey, it's not my story.

Local favorites Ponomariov and Karjakin are at the bottom of the table with 0.5/3. Karjakin lost to Shirov today after chewing a poison pawn on a2 that even Fritz would eschew. All six games were drawn in round two, several of them in short order, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of them contained considerable fight and interest. Smackdown averted.

Mamedyarov and the ever-unpredictable Bologan lead with 2.5. I'll never figure out how Nisipeanu managed to lose today's oppo-bishop endgame to Bologan. Volokitin and Harikrishna played one out to the bitter end with a logical draw. White made a lot more progress than I thought he'd be able to make though. Grischuk and Ivanchuk have drawn all their games so far. Karjakin's losing 32..c3??? against Bologan in round one is so bad I wonder if he thought White's bishop was on g2.

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June 20, 2006

Defunct Errors Dept

I've been perusing various event sites lately, looking at bad ideas and concocting new ones. Am I the last person to notice Short giving Anand two FIDE KO titles in his capsule bio at the San Luis site? (New Delhi and Tehran were part of the same event.) Admittedly, the site is so riddled with errors that one little one is hardly worth mention. The site itself is clunky and, worst of all, unpredictable.

Many of the event sites I like to look at aren't chess sites at all. I like the non-invasive pop-up nav menu for the US Open golf tournament. Most American pro sport sites are heavily into video, Flash quickly becoming the standard. This isn't as attractive for chess, although I'd definitely get more into video clips for interviews. The proprietary ChessBase video system, shown to great effect during the Olympiad, has the benefit of synchronizing the board with the video feed. Scaling that all down to a single Flash video stream gets blurry. Perhaps a video of the player synced with an independent Flash or Java board?

A big question about event sites is whether or not to spend time and money on making things especially to keep visitors occupied and coming back. Interactive stuff, that is: message boards, contests, polls, vs the world games, etc. It's not worth the expense if the site is only expected to receive traffic for the few weeks of the event. But a building event with qualifiers and such can generate interest. San Luis put up some news on occasion, but nothing interactive. This is typical, if you don't count the increasingly prevalent betting site links, that is, and I don't.

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June 21, 2006

Aerosvit-Foros 06 - r5

Bologan leads with 4/5 after beating Harikrishna today in another sloppy game. The Indian #3 played an ill-advised exchange sac and couldn't back it up. The other decisive game was also very messy. Rublevsky seems to have recovered his game, which must have been lost with his luggage en route to Turin along with all his non-tacky shirts. Today he beat Volokitin thanks to his own speculative exchange sac and a poor spate of defense by the young Ukrainian. The Russian champion is in clear second a half point behind Bologan.

Grischuk-Mamedyarov should have been the third decisive game, though it's hard to say in whose favor. Grischuk was applying pressure and avoided a few draws only to lose his way during the attack. The Azerbaijani #2, who didn't play in Turin after some noisy problems with his federation, then missed several chances to collect the point, failing to find the narrow path to safety with his king. The counterintuitive 41..Kf7 would have done the job. In round 4, Ivanchuk continued this tournament's unofficial opposite-colored bishop theme and ground out a win over Mamedyarov with a nice king walk.

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June 22, 2006

Chess and You

Before boiling off into the usual gasses of idiocy, there were some interesting comments to a recent thread about chess as hobby, sport, profession, and waste of time. There are too many famous and pithy quotes in the "what is chess?" department to trot them all out here. They are widely available on the web and there is a fine compendium of them in the "Chess Addict" books by Fox and James (who, incidentally, must always be named together, like "Lennon and McCartney" and "wine and cheese").

For some reason many people like to play down their love of chess. Often, I suspect, this is because they aren't particularly good at it. Having hundreds of chess books and playing online 20+ hours per week is borderline lunacy for a master, so the logic might go, and acceptable for a GM, but must be a dangerous disease for a 1500, not to mention the many casual players who have never acquired an OTB rating at all. This, of course, is piffle. Many are obsessed with hobbies that have little or no objective measurement of success. People who assemble train sets and visit train museums and buy countless train books aren't worried about being good at it. They like it and that's enough, and it's also enough for chess.

I'll concede it's intriguing the way so many people are fascinated by a game they don't really understand in the same way as the people with whom they are fascinated. I don't agree, however, with the cynics who say a 1400 watching GM chess is like a monkey looking at a watch. It's more like a monkey looking at a television commercial for bananas. With diligence and outside commentary plus computer analysis, they can push their noses right up against the screen, although they don't really get any bananas. (The players, not the monkeys. It's a metaphor.) But they might understand that and learn to enjoy the image. No wait, it's a like a badger looking at a picture of rhubarb...

In the immortal words of EasyFish's sig in the message boards, "What if you just like buying chess books?" That most of them are ostensibly directed toward making you a better chessplayer doesn't mean you can't enjoy them without becoming one. Look at those space-age Nikes you're wearing. When is the last time they were used to run as fast as you could, or for anything other than walking to the fridge for another Coke? Then there are the myriad pleasures of fandom. The arguments, the history, the news and results, the statistics, and the players themselves. We love to follow the new prodigies and the old lions. A fraction of the visitors to the major chess sites and to event websites even bother to look at the games themselves. It's far more than a game. It's a sport and a culture with a rich history - and present - full of fascinating figures.

What part of life is chess for you? I have the blessing/curse of working in chess all the time, if not full-time (which would imply a greater income from it). I play less now than I ever have, but know far more from analysis and writing. I still derive a lot of pleasure from the game itself, playing and looking at games, though I don't buy many new books. There's a considerable list of things I would refuse to give up before chess, however, if you'd like to play a little game of What If...? Certainly reading for pleasure would have to stay. Hmm, wine or chess? Wine. Chocolate? Hmm, tougher there. Writing, designing, music, even photography would probably top chess on my list. Never look at another chessboard versus never take another photograph? Or never read another Rilke poem? Never ride my bike again? Sorry, chess. While it's probably my #1 hobby in terms of hours spent, it also strikes me as being one I could live without. (This is obviously made much easier by the fact I'll never have to make such a choice.) But I'm certainly not ashamed or concerned about the amount of time I spend on it.

Since there are a limited number of hours in the day it's fair to say we also make trade-offs with both baser and more noumenal things, such as sex and, say, mathematics or philosophy. That's getting a little too philosophical itself, and giving up chess for sex isn't an option chessplayers are supposed to have by definition, at least according to much of popular culture.

Chess is no waste of time at all, no more than anything else that brings us pleasure. As with most activities, this enjoyment comes not only from things directly related to the game, such as competition and beauty. There is also the social element, in person, online, and the feeling of being part of a global, and historical, community. You are here.

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June 23, 2006

ESPN Chessboxing

If only so people will STOP SENDING THIS TO ME, ESPN.com has an article on "chessboxing" all over its homepage right now.

This was started as a sort of performance art concept by a nutty Dutchman. We did various items on it at ChessBase. Many thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, it's not. Shows how much ESPN cares about football. "NBA and NHL are over, time to run that chessboxing story. World Cup of what? Nevermind." Speaking of, my brother-in-law Jean-Benoit, who, incidentally, was the first person to send the ESPN link, can rest easy for a few days now that Les Bleus have defeated mighty Togo. AR-GEN-TINA!

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June 27, 2006

NY Mayor's Cup

A busy weekend kept me from covering this event, a rapid double round-robin played Sunday and Monday here in New York. It was held at the New York Athletic Club, which hosted the two X3D sponsored Kasparov matches against Junior and Fritz in 2003. I'd also forgotten about it entirely, never having received any news about it, although I do remember seeing this press release turn up in the usual news trawl over a month ago. Nothing at TWIC either.

The players were Kamsky, Onischuk, Ibragimov, S. Polgar, Gulko, and Stripunsky. Kamsky won the tight event with 6.5/10, Polgar was second a half-point back after losing to Kamsky in the eight round. There are news items and photos up on Polgar's blog, final results at this item. I'm told games will soon be available.

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June 28, 2006

Aerosvit-Foros Concludes

The 11th and final round is today in Ukraine after six draws in the 10th round left the standings unchanged. Sergey Rublevsky leads with an impressive seven points. He has black against Grischuk in the final round and Ivanchuk is a half-point back with white against Shirov, so nothing is certain. Bologan is still in the mix with six.

As the veterans push on the podium, it's been a disastrous event for most of the top young players. Volokitin, Karjakin, and Harikrishna haven't shown endurance after a full Olympiad schedule. Or, somebody has to finish last and it's a very strong event. Play has been combative but spotty, likely due to Olympiad tiredness and the funky single time control (120'+30").

I'm not sure Shirov had great endgame winning chances against Areschenko in round ten, but 52.c5 hanging two pawns is as unlikely a super-GM blunder as you'll likely to see, although he saved the draw when Black apparently missed a forced win:

66..Rc3+ 67.Kd4 Qd2 68.Bd3 (diagram) Rc4+!! 69.Kxc4 Qb4+ 70.Kd5 Qc5# Ouch. Single time control games are not classical chess. Areschenko's attempt to win a drawn pawn endgame were foiled by precise play. Would you have known that 76.Kd4 is the only move to hold the draw? If not, practice your opposition play.

In other tourney news, Sergei Tiviakov is closing in on the Dutch championship title after beating defending and six-time champ Loek van Wely with black.

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June 29, 2006

Tourney Updates

Tiviakov brings home the Dutch championship and Rublevsky took clear first at the Aerosvit-Foros event. The cynical Grischuk disgraced himself by taking a short draw with white against teammate Rublevsky in the final round. (Of Rublevsky's last four games there were draws of 19, 20, and 16 moves. Gee, let's whine about prize funds and lack of sponsorship.) Ivanchuk, needing a win to tie for first, pressed against Shirov but was denied. Rublevsky's Olympiad teammates must be wondering why he couldn't play like this in Turin, where he lost his last three games.

The only decisive game of the final round was between tail-enders Karjakin and Volokitin, and they put on a show. Volokitin's stunning 29..Rd1 wasn't enough to save the game, but it's a hall of fame worthy combination nonetheless. It was Karjakin's only win. Ponomariov's poor -2 result is noteworthy after his recent return to the top ten. Nisipeanu's nice 11.f4!? novelty against Grischuk is worth a look. The principled response 11..gxf4 deserves a test. 12.Qd2 e5 and d5 is a nightmare hole.

Magnus Carlsen and my buddy Sergey Shipov are leading the Midnight Sun event in Tromsø, Norway. They both have 5/6 and will face each other in the next round. Not many GMs made the trip but it looks like a pretty place. ChessBase has a detailed report from a few days ago.

Update: Shipov beats Carlsen to move into clear first with two rounds to play!

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June 30, 2006

2006 World Open

This mighty annual open is underway in Philadelphia. There's a strong Indian contingent in Philly this year, along with the usual host of strong nationals and internationals questing for the giant first prize. $40,000 is the given top, but that's largely based on number of entries. They should know actual prize list by now. I haven't seen a complete participant list either. The early results are only for the extended 7-day schedule and most of the big guns play the accelerated schedules. It would be nice to see a complete participant list.

The event is a qualifier for the 2007 US Championship, with two spots available. (National Open and US Open the same.) What's this, you say, the 2007 championship? Do tell? I know the feeling. The AF4C has, if not dropped the ball, left it spinning in the air for too long. I spoke with AF4C prez Erik Anderson a few weeks ago and as usual he has a lot going on. He's spoken directly with USCF president and major tourney organizer Bill Goichberg to keep the qualifier process going ad hoc, but there doesn't seem to be any concrete plan yet, leaving the players largely in the dark.

This situation has been exacerbated by the departure of John Henderson from Seattle back to Glasgow. John handled championship chess affairs for the AF4C and it's not clear whether or not he'll be back handling those duties. I hope so. I understand that the $75 qualification fee has been abolished, although some players have already paid it for earlier events and one player, Daniel Ludwig, has been told that he didn't qualify because he didn't pay the fee, although he won the US Masters!

I'm hoping for enough basic info to update the official US championship website. As of now, I don't know much more than you and most of that is not officially confirmed so it isn't of much use. There are big plans and at least one very big sponsor on the hook. What does seem clear is that there will be a separate women's event this time.

July 2, 2006

July 2006 Rating List

FIDE has announced the latest rating list, this one including MTel and the Olympiad as well as many other events from one of the busiest calendar segments I can recall. Most of the top players have over 20 rated games, many over 30, and Alexei Shirov 43! (The Bundesliga results were added this month.) I'm happy to see Mickey Adams fulfilling my prediction of exactly one year ago and clawing his way back into the top 10. The elite list is still remarkably similar to that of five years ago, other than Aronian's increasingly solid installation at #3. But youngsters Radjabov, Mamedyarov, and Navara are all knocking on the door and someone will have to go. I talked to Kasparov today about the new list and he said he was impressed with Navara's play at the Olympiad. Unfortunately, his scorching play was overshadowed by his loss to Aronian's spectacular Nf7.

As pointed out by Marky-Mark at TWIC on his handy time-lapse rating list, Karjakin and Carlsen have taken another great leap forward, with all due respect to Bu Xiangzhi and Wang Yue, who have also moved up substantially. Kramnik pipped Svidler for the #4 spot after gaining a dozen points at the Olympiad. Kamsky is nearly back to 2700 after a gain of almost 30 points. Nakamura took a fall of similar size. By the time Leko plays at Dortmund at the end of July he will have been away from the classical board for almost five months. Sargissian jumped into the top 40 out of nowhere. He's only 23 and has ridden Aronian's coattails up the list.

Topalov lifts an arbitrary statistical milestone from around his neck by reaching 2813 and passing Kasparov's final rating by a single point. He's been playing very well and winning events and deserves every accolade. Someone will eventually top Kasparov's 1999 peak of 2851, but it's good to remember that he crossed 2800 when there was only one other active player on the planet (Karpov) who had even crossed 2700! Kasparov had to put up +7 or better to gain any points. Now there are so many 2700+ players that +3 can do it. Anand dropped quite a few points, so Topalov's leading margin is also impressive. (I think Kasparov's biggest ever was a staggering 82 points over Anand in 1999.) Place your bets, will poor Vishy ever be #1 or will younger players surpass him before he can catch Topalov?

Mark reiterates something many of us have been saying for a long time. The minimum Elo for a GM title should be 2600 (more?) and the norms raised correspondingly. It's gotten to the point that fewer than 10% of all GMs ever even reach the top 100. But FIDE has a profit motive and the federations and players have a pride motive, so titles will continue to be churned out. Just as Ilyumzhinov has presided over the demolition of the world championship title, he will watch, smiling, as the Grandmaster title becomes increasingly trivialized.

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July 3, 2006

See the World

The World Open standings are trackable now that the schedules have merged. Switzerland's Vadim Milov, who recently won the San Marino Open, is in the lead with 5/5 after beating Hikaru Nakamura in the fifth round. (Wild Benko Gambit.) Kamsky, Stripunsky, and Hansen are on 4.5 with roughly a bajillion players on 4.0 with four rounds to play. The youth set is there in force and taking scalps. The highly touted Ray Robson has knocked off a few IMs in a row.

Some games are viewable at the official site, but they are also being broadcast by Monroi, the makers of the handheld scorekeepers that finally seem to be gaining some purchase. The moves are transmitted to their central server as the players write them down. I don't know how it's going on site, but the games are nearly real time on the Monroi website. The World Open games are here. You can get PGN from the game list, but not from the Flash viewer itself. It's very spiffy stuff. I wish the viewer displayed time stamps with each move, or counted the clock down. Their "legends speak" page has a nice pic of Kasparov I took in London 2000 and even a video commercial of him endorsing Monroi's gadget.

July 4, 2006

06 World Open Concludes

Final two rounds today. Feel free to post updates if you're watching live. Kamsky squeezed Milov until he popped and now shares the lead on 6/7 with Milov and Joel "Jersey Boyo" Benjamin, who made a bid for an immortal game against Stripunsky. He sacrificed half a box of pieces and although Stripunsky fought back to at least equalize, Benjamin eventually won the day. According to the score at the Monroi site White missed a mate in two on move 24, which seems rather unlikely. 23..Kg8 must have been the move. (?) The rusty steel trap that is my memory coughs up Benjamin-Bartholomew from the 2003 World Open. Joel played the old double bishop sacrifice but there just wasn't a win, something he was lamenting in the halls long after the game. Games below.

The old rivalry Kamsky-Benjamin is a forced pairing in the morning round. A baker's dozen are chasing with 5.5 so as usual it's going to be down to tiebreaks unless one of the leaders wins twice today. Anyone know what the attendance-adjusted first prize is going to be? Ben Finegold is blogging (of course) the participation of the Fightin' Finegolds. Kelly won yesterday is now ahead of GM Rohde. Ben beat Yoshiharu Habu, the famous (well, in some places) Shogi player.

Benjamin - Stripunsky [B22]

34th Annual WORLD OPEN Philadelphia, 2006

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.c3 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.Bc4 d6 6.d4 cxd4 7.cxd4 Be7 8.0-0 0-0 9.Re1 dxe5 10.dxe5 Nb6 11.Bd3 Na6 12.Qe2 Nc5 13.Bc2 Nd5 14.Rd1 Bd7 15.Nbd2 Nb4 16.Bb1 Qa5 17.Ne4 Qa6 18.Qe3 Qc6 19.Nd4 Qc7 20.Nf6+ Bxf6 21.exf6 Nd5 22.Bxh7+ Kxh7 23.Qh3+ Kg6 24.fxg7 Kxg7 25.Qg4+ Kh8 26.Qh4+ Kg8 27.Qg4+ Kh8 28.Qh4+ Kg8 29.Qg5+ Kh8 30.Qh5+ Kg8 31.Qg5+ Kh8 32.Qh6+ Kg8 33.Nf3 Ne4 34.Ng5 Nef6 35.Rxd5 exd5 36.Qxf6 Qc2 37.Be3 Qg6 38.Qd4 Rfe8 39.h3 Bc6 40.Rc1 f6 41.Nf3 Re4 42.Qd3 d4 43.Bf4 Rae8 44.Kh2 Qf5 45.Bg3 Kg7 46.Qa3 Rf4 47.Nh4 Rxh4 48.Bxh4 d3 49.Qd6 d2 50.Qxd2 Qe4 51.f4 Qe2 52.Rc2 Qe4 53.Rc3 Kf7 54.Qf2 Rh8 55.Bg3 Qf5 56.Re3 a5 57.a3 a4 58.Qe2 Rd8 59.Re7+ Kf8 60.Rc7 Re8 61.Qd2 Kg8 62.Bh4 Bd5 63.Qf2 Qg6 64.f5 Qh6 65.Qd4 Re5 66.Rd7 Bf7 67.Rd8+ Kh7 68.Rd7 Kg8 69.Qg4+ Kf8 70.Rxb7 Bd5 71.Rb8+ Ke7 72.Qb4+ Kf7 73.Qg4 Ke7 74.Bf2 Re4 75.Qg3 Qf4 76.Bc5+ Kd7 77.Qxf4 Rxf4 78.g4 Rc4 79.Be3 Kd6 80.Kg3 Rc2 81.Rd8+ Kc6 82.Rc8+ 1-0

Benjamin,Joel (2589) - Bartholomew,J (2300) [B01]

31st World Open Philadelphia USA (2), 01.07.2003

1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.d3 c6 6.Bd2 Qc7 7.Qe2 Nbd7 8.a4 e6 9.Nf3 Bb4 10.0-0 0-0 11.d4 b6 12.Bd3 a5 13.Rfe1 Bb7 14.Ne5 Bxc3 15.Bxc3 c5 16.Nxd7 Nxd7 17.dxc5 Nxc5 18.Bxh7+ Kxh7 19.Qh5+ Kg8 20.Bxg7 Kxg7 21.Qg5+ Kh8 22.Qh5+ Kg7 23.Qg5+ Kh8 24.Qh6+ Kg8 25.Ra3 f5 26.Rg3+ Qxg3 27.hxg3 Rad8 28.Qg6+ Kh8 29.Qh6+ Kg8 30.Qg6+ Kh8 31.g4 Rd7 32.Re3 Rg7 33.Qh6+ Kg8 34.g5 f4 35.Re5 Rh7 36.Qg6+ Rg7 37.Qh6 Rh7 38.Qg6+ Rg7 39.Qh6 Rh7 40.Qg6+ Rg7 ½-½

Continue reading "06 World Open Concludes" »

July 7, 2006

Cheating Hearts Redux

You may have noticed that the 2006 World Open thread has turned into an informative and interesting look into several cheating allegations made during the tournament. Many players who were there have posted and from what I can tell two players were ejected when they proved uncooperative with the investigation into the claims. (Transmitting devices were suspected.)

You can never absolutely prevent or prove or disprove cheating. What you can do is create a deterrent of sufficiently catastrophic kilotonnage to make it too much of a risk. But what's the point if you can't be 100% sure? Right now the organizers and tournament directors have a great deal of discretion to act because the penalties they can apply are relatively feeble. You get kicked out, basically. Increasing the penalty while still relying on great discretion is tricky.

For example, one idea I kicked around was having the players sign contracts prohibiting cheating, or making such language part of signing up. But prosecuting someone for fraud with less than 100% proof isn't going to work. Nor is banning them for a year or life or whatever. This is one of the reasons why, for purposes of exaggeration and not to start a discussion about it, the death penalty is so horrid. The greater the punishment the greater the certainty must be. The ultimate punishment requires omnescience. So, getting back to chess, we now have great discretion in applying weak penalties. Would you sign a contract that said a TD could ban you for life if he/she judged you were cheating? The alternative is developing a court system to handle these cases, or, with contracts, allowing them to be handled by the judicial system. Reasonable doubt, evidence, witnesses, etc. Of course this would change from state to state and create endless headaches, as well as a perfect job opportunity for lawyer/super-GM Gata Kamsky.

Using metal detectors, banning headgear, employing electronic countermeasures, none of these are practical options. (Remember the old anecdote about the player, after resigning, being asked by his opponent why he hadn't accepted a draw offer? He hadn't heard it because his hearing aid was off. Or something like that. Petrosian used to turn his down or off if conditions were noisy.) The good news is that the threat is stronger than the execution. Put some language into the rules that says that at the request of a TD and organizer a review panel can be convened and severe punishment meted out. Make sure everyone knows. Previous items on this topic here, here, and here.

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July 8, 2006

Software Endorsement

Junior with Junior? My 17-month-old nephew Roman, in Brooklyn with my sister for a visit, up from their home in the Bahamas. Apart from terrifying the cats and demolishing my bookshelves with studious industry he's also shown an interest in chess software. Apparently Junior wins the taste test as well as the world computer championship.

Speaking of juniors, Parimarjan Negi just became the second-youngest Grandmaster elect in history. Story at ChessBase. Much as I felt about tot Bu Xiangzhi, I'm not terribly impressed after an admittedly cursory look through his games, other than for his age, obviously. (Bu's norms were rather dubious when compared to the almost effortless collection amassed by Judit Polgar, for example.) In quite a few games against GMs Negi lost rather helplessly. He has a single win over a 2600+ player and needs to surpass 2500 to get his title, which looks imminent.

I'm sure he's a very talented kid, and most of these prodigies turn into top 20 players sooner or later. (Leko and Ponomariov sooner, Bacrot later. Bu waiting but still making progress.) But with the recent rating list coming out I'm in my usual funk about the depreciation of the GM title. Thanks to FIDE, Negi and Anand will have the same title. 2700 performance for a GM norm and 2600 for the title or bust! India already has three players in the top 30. Negi will be a hot favorite to make their 2008 Olympiad team. Will Anand still be in the top ten if and when Negi reaches the top 20? I'd say he could stay in the top 10 for another decade if he wants to, but that's a big "wants to." Indian politics has always had a soft spot for celebrities!

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July 10, 2006

Kasparov in NY Times

Though a long-time contributing editor to the Wall St. Journal, Garry Kasparov has regularly branched out in the op-ed world. In the past few week's he's had articles in the Financial Times and now, the liberal bastion that is the New York Times op-ed page. Ironic for someone as basically conservative as Garry, but the topic isn't US domestic policy and it won't surprise. Kasparov goes after the Bush administration and European leaders for largely ignoring Russia's "slide into dictatorship" under Putin. The timing is not an accident either. The G7 meeting takes place in St. Petersburg in a few days and Kasparov and opposition groups have organized a sort of counter-summit in Moscow that begins tomorrow.

Just days ago, dozens of activists en route to Moscow to attend the conference were arrested, some beaten. Possession of opposition literature is being defined as an attempt to "overthrow constitutional order." Will the Western delegations sit silently? Will the American president say nothing?

Perhaps silence is the best option if the most Mr. Bush has to offer are weak expressions of concern and remarks about his personal relationship with Mr. Putin. President Ronald Reagan's hard public line on the Soviet Union let us know that someone out there was aware of our predicament and was fighting for us. Now this American president seems to be saying that Iraqis and Afghans are deserving of democracy, but Russians are not.

The darkest days of Communist rule are now a generation behind us. Between the end of the Communist dictatorship and the crackdown under President Putin, there was a period of freedom. It was brief and it was flawed, but it could have served as a foundation for a democratic Russia. Since 2000, however, Mr. Putin has done everything possible to dismantle that fragile edifice. In dealing with Russia, please don't confuse what's good for the Putin regime with what's best for the Russian people.

These editorials and the conference will see Kasparov's national and international profile as a politician continue to rise. Unsurprisingly, this is easier done outside of Russia, where opposition members are basically ignored by television, which is state controlled. The NY Times piece has already resulted in a burst of international media contact.

I'll make a desperate run for on-topic by suggesting that the more penetration Kasparov has in politics, the less likely it is he'll return to chess. On the other hand, I bet if he came out with an annotated collection of his online blitz games in 2010 it would outsell most chess books by a wide margin!

Continue reading "Kasparov in NY Times" »

Cheating Did You Say?

From Hanoi comes this tale, with obvious connections to the recent World Open cheating scandal/s.

More than 20 desperate students in Vietnam paid up to 50 million dong ($3,125) to don elaborately wired wigs and shirts that allowed them to cheat on their college entrance exams, police said Monday. During a weekend raid, Hanoi police confiscated 50 mobile phones, 60 earphones, 150 SIM cards, eight shirts and five wigs.

I hear IM Ben Finegold was seen fleeing the scene.

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July 11, 2006

Women's World Cup Chess

German chip manufacturer ZMD sponsored a creative event in Dresden, Germany, home of the 2008 chess Olympiad. Held on the weekend of the conclusion of the World Cup, a Women's World Cup of chess rapid event invited top female players from all the nations participating in the football (soccer) event. There were a few substitutions for countries that couldn't provide a player, but mostly it was a strong field. With most of these PR events there is more fan attention paid to cup size than World Cup, and few of the games are worth the time. Report at ChessBase and more at Polgar's blog.

With Russia and China not present it would have been a wide open competition, but the participation of Susan Polgar of the USA changed that in a hurry. She handily outclassed the field to hoist the trophy, never losing a game and beating hometown hope Elizabeth Pähtz in the final. Small consolation for US soccer fans who watched their vastly overrated side play like an American football team, bumbling and tackling their way to an embarrassing exit. And don't get me started on the arbiter who failed to call the penalty in Argentina-Germany. But I digress. Kudos to Polgar and U-S-A, U-S-A! On another positive note, no reports of anyone being head-butted during the final. (An even better version here.)

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Taiyuan Scheveningen

Gasundheit! TWIC reports the start of an interesting tournament in China. The large-by-any-but-Chinese-standards city of Taiyuan (not Taiwan) in north-east China is hosting this Scheveningen format event. (One of Buddhism's most sacred mountains is located there, dontcha know.) A Scheveningen isn't about the Sicilian variation named for the same unpronounceable Dutch town. It is where everyone on one team places everyone on the other team/s. Here they play each other twice, so it's twelve rounds total.

A squad of the top Chinese players faces an international team made up of Jakovenko, Timofeev, Jobava, Asrian, Vescovi, and Berkes. The visitors are fractionally higher rated, but after what the Chinese accomplished on the road at the Turin Olympiad (silver medal), the home team has to be the heavy favorite here. Yet another strong Chinese junior, Wang Hao, is the only change from the Turin team, replacing Zhao Jun. No official site or live game link yet, but they are promised.

It's great to see the Chinese supporting their medal winners with strong events. The $18,000 prize fund wouldn't make much of a dent in Western Europe or the US, however. I'm a big fan of team events for a variety of reasons and a place like the US with sparse chess tradition could certainly benefit from a little more of the nationalism that comes to the fore in such events. But representing the flag shouldn't be a hardship either, so sponsorship is still the name of the game.

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July 14, 2006

July Tourney Updates

The grasshopper beat the master in the Norwegian championship. Magnus Carlsen (15) defeated his old trainer Simen Agdestein (39) to take the clear lead on 6/7 with two rounds to play. Last year the championship required a playoff and then a rapid playoff between these two and age and treachery overcame youthful energy after six games. It's great to see the two greats of Norwegian chess battling it out this way - playing in the championship and playing hard against each other. Karpov and his old trainer Furman played three short draws on the rare occasions they met over the board. When you think about it this was a bad deal for Karpov.

The Chinese team has a three-point lead in the Taiyuan tournament, mostly thanks to Vescovi's collapse for the visiting team. The Brazilian has a half point after five rounds. Jobava and Ni Hua stand out with 3.5/5. 50% of the games have been drawn so far with no short draws at all. 24.c4! in Wang Hao-Vescovi is worth a look.

Like everyone else, TWIC is having trouble getting info from the Tomsk rapid tournament. Karjakin and Rublevsky lead a powerful field that includes Morozevich, Bologan, Kasimdzhanov, and Ponomariov. The day's games can usually be found here. Crosstable (Russian) here. This is the 10th Izmailov Memorial and the Tomsk chess club bears his name. (Petr, Peter, Pyotr...) I believe he was the first Russian Federation champion in 1928 and was executed in the mid-30's along with, well, just about everyone. He beat Botvinnik in a few games (bad career move) but was never allowed to play in the USSR finals. There was a short article on him in a German chess magazine in 1998. Anyone with more on him?

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Friday Cat Blogging 8

Look at the pretty kitties and let your rancor melt away... Open thread, happy thoughts, topic suggestions, questions, conundrums.

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July 16, 2006

Chess, Ha Ha Ha

Oddly enough I find myself in Montreal this weekend on a spontaneous dash north of the border with my girlfriend. Of course - and doesn't it always happen this way, if you think not, ask your girlfriend - we stumble by a local chess shop on day one. There's a pamphlet for the Quebec Open Championship and so we stop by and see Moiseenko in the lead in the final round. Talked to the organizer Richard Berube about the MonRoi system for a bit. He's quite happy about it and most of the players seem to like it. (They decided not to pester a 93-year-old participant with it. Good call.)

It took a bit of wandering to find the tournament hall, which is right in the middle of where the giant Montreal "Just For Laughs" ("Juste Pour Rire") Comedy Festival is in full swing. If you've ever wondered who has hahaha.com, wonder no longer. The chess tournament is considered part of the festivities, believe it or not. The logo is a bouncing jester with chess pieces in his hands. Of course we know all about chess jokes around here.

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July 18, 2006

Kasparov the Magician?

I'm sure the columnist isn't aware that Tal already claims that mantle among chessplayers. But for those who have been quick to doom Garry Kasparov's political career - many even before it started - this might be of interest. The "Other Russia" conference he organized received a great deal of international coverage and was a topic of conversation and contention in the Kremlin and during the G-8 meeting that just finished in St. Petersburg. (Bush even met with NGO leaders - albeit ones apparently hand-picked by the Kremlin since few others had ever heard of them - before attending the G-7 meeting.)

From Daniel Johnson's article in the New York Sun, a conservative broadsheet.

Yet there is one national figure who refuses to bend the knee to Vlad the Imperial - Garry Kasparov. The former world chess champion, together with other courageous opponents of the regime, has done something of unprecedented audacity. This week, on the eve of the G8, he organized a rival summit, entitled "Different Russia." [sic] Despite the warning issued by the Kremlin that attendance at this alternative summit would be regarded as an "unfriendly act," Mr. Kasparov persuaded the State Department to send two senior American officials and the Foreign Office to send the British ambassador to attend.

This was a diplomatic and political coup for the Russian opposition such as it has not enjoyed in years. The G8 summit is hugely important to Mr. Putin's prestige, and he will not lightly forgive anybody who rains on his parade. Yet Mr. Kasparov and his friends have stolen the show. The rest of the world has chosen to listen, not only to the regime, but to its critics too. /.../

Moscow today is eerily reminiscent of the surreal world depicted by Mikhail Bulgakov in his great satire on Stalinism, "The Master and Maragarita." [sic] In the novel, which was written during the purges of the 1930s but only published posthumously in 1967, the Devil appears in Moscow in the guise of Woland, a suave magician who exposes the twisted morality of a totalitarian society, and especially of its intellectual apologists. Amid the suffocating atmosphere created by Stalin's Great Terror, Woland's black magic represents an unfamiliar, anarchical freedom.

Mr. Kasparov has a touch of Woland about him. In a society that has reverted to a state of fear, conformity, and moral cowardice, he is fearless, impish, and outspoken. He lives dangerously, defying Mr. Putin's fellow spooks to come and get him. He might as well be the Devil incarnate, anyway, for all the difference it makes to the Kremlin. His Jewish father and Armenian mother are enough to demonize him in the eyes of the anti-Semitic "patriots" who insinuate that he is a tool of mysterious foreign interests.

And of course Mr. Kasparov is a kind of magician - on the chessboard, probably the greatest that has ever lived. Whether he can apply his genius to the messier world of politics, so much less calculable and so much more brutal, remains to be seen. But he is a true heir to the dissidents of the past. If Messrs. Bush and Blair are wise, they will give as much encouragement to Mr. Kasparov today as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did to Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky two decades ago.

Well, let's hope Garry doesn't try to walk on water until the rivers freeze over, but it's nice to see some appreciation. Trivia alert: Sharansky beat Kasparov in a simul in Israel in 1996.... As it seems to be with many Russian chessplayers, The Master and Margarita is one of Garry's favorite books, so he's pretty chuffed about this despite himself. Hard to keep such things from going to your head, but we're trying. When The Scotsman newspaper recently called him, in separate articles, "broodingly handsome" and "youthful and good looking" I was quick to point out that this was by Scottish standards and that Sean Connery is still considered their sexiest man alive.

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More Tourney Updates

The visiting team has moved to within a point of the Chinese squad in the Taiyuan Scheveningen event after seven rounds. Vescovi continued to implode by losing a not-worse endgame in terrible fashion. Jobava is the standout so far and won with a nice exchange sacrifice in the seventh round after the pawn-pushingest opening you'll likely to see in a while. There's a nice photo gallery at the official site here; just click the numbers under the photo on the right. Unfortunately it's all in Chinese so it's hard to say who is Hu.

Magnus Carlsen is getting both praise and scorn for losing his last-round game to a lower-rated opponent at the Norwegian championship. Agdestein won and so the two again tied for first and will again meet in a playoff for the title later this year. Some people in the comments here were under the misconception that Carlsen played aggressively to win with black (he needed only a draw to guarantee the title), some mistaking the opening for a Budapest Gambit. (Black played ..e5 before White played d4.) All I see is that he got a clearly worse position, tried a dubious sacrifice and lost. I didn't see any point at which he could have gone for a clear drawing line instead. Black's position before 23..Nxf2 is quite bad already.

Dortmund 2006 begins on July 29: Arkadij Naiditsch, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Peter Svidler, Peter Leko, Boris Gelfand, Michael Adams and Baadur Jobava.

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July 22, 2006

Quickly Quickly

Busy week and day with a wedding (not my own) and meetings (GK in town; book finished!) but I'll be back with lots of updates. My inbox overfloweth with items on tourney cheats and the USCF special election, which looks to have been more like a special olympics election. At least the psychos who win FIDE elections are rich psychos... China collapsed in the final round of the Taiyuan tournament but still held on to beat the "world" team by a single point. The recent successes of the Chinese team should continue considering the average age of the team is around 21. But who will break out of the pack to put a Chinese player in the top 10? Karjakin won the Tomsk rapid event convincingly. Games seem scarce though Marky-mark grabbed most. I have a few more from one of the players and will keep lobbying for the rest. Weird... The Biel festival begins today but the big GM tournament doesn't start until Monday. Morozevich, Radjabov, and Carlsen are the top attractions.

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July 23, 2006

Kasparov (Chess This Time)

Well, the cat is out of the bag somewhat so I'll go with more. (The lamest part about having to keep these secrets is that half the time I'm not even the first to break the news.) Kasparov will return to the chessboard on August 22 in Zurich at Lichthof Chess Champions Day along with Anatoly Karpov, Judit Polgar, and Viktor Korchnoi. This is Garry's first serious chess(ish) event since his retirement after Linares, 2005. Of course it's only rapid and mostly an exhibition, something he never ruled out. However, it's odd the Credit-Suisse site doesn't mention this is supposed to be a rapid Fischerandom Chess event!

The discussions Kasparov had many months ago with his friends at Credit-Suisse focused primarily on how to make this event fit in with the conference's theme of innovation. (Kasparov is also lecturing at this 150th corporate jubilee event. A brief Q&A with him that mentions the event is also on the site. See excerpt below.) The plan was to have fans vote at ChessBase.com on the position or positions to be used. Interactive, innovative, good PR, etc. So I'm not sure what's up with the item on the Credit-Suisse page. There's no chess info at all there so perhaps they just wanted to make a general announcement to their magazine's readers - who would be unlikely to know or care about the type of chess anyway. I expect this to be sorted out asap. Garry liked the idea of shuffle chess and fans picking the positions. "Just another rapid tournament" is a much less jazzy return.

Well, I must say that retiring from serious play before Viktor Korchnoi made me a little uneasy. When I first faced "Viktor the Terrible" in a serious game it was back in 1982 in Lucerne; I was 19 and he was 51. Now I'm a retiree and Korchnoi is still out there playing teenagers!

Of course overall it will bring back pleasant memories from the great old days. World championship matches, bright lights, great chess and great competition. In our own ways, all four of us have made huge contributions to our sport. But despite the festive occasion and the surplus of gentlemanly gray hair on the stage, I don't expect young Judit will be the only one with fighting spirit at the board.

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July 25, 2006

Feel the Biel

The supertournament part of the Biel chess festival is underway with two rounds in the books. Two exciting rounds. 5/6 of the games have been decisive so far. Carlsen and Radjabov lead on 2/2. Morozevich, Bruzon, Volokitin, and Pelletier are the other participants. It's a double round-robin.

Kasparov sounded very impressed with Magnus Carlsen's "brilliant game" over Morozevich today. Especially since White played the opening a tempo down! White has often reached the same King's Indian position by playing the usual Bayonette 9.b4 instead of doing it in two moves like Carlsen did. It's supposed to be White to play on move 14 (usually 14.a5 or 14.Nd2). Either a bit cocky or, more likely, a bit of a whoops by the 15-year-old Norwegian. Moro is famously dangerous with black, so maybe this was some psychological warfare.

The ACCENTUS women's tournament runs alongside with Pia Cramling as the top seed.

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July 26, 2006

Shuffle Off

Sorry to keep changing the story but there are new developments and I feel obliged to keep up instead of waiting for all the smoke to clear. Apparently the Zurich exhibition event with Kasparov, Polgar, Karpov, and Korchnoi will be straight rapids after all. (15+10 most likely.) Kasparov is disappointed and annoyed because he was taken by surprise (apparently a message was sent to Moscow but he was in NY and London).

This turns out to be a problem for him for another reason: it's immediately been used against him in the Russian press. Several stories have already appeared saying he's "running" back to chess, going back on his word to retire, etc. Of course the Putin regime is doing anything it can to discredit Kasparov's political activities. Having the games be shuffle chess would have helped his case that it's just a casual exhibition. State-controlled news sources that have assiduously ignored him are already proving quick to plaster this "big return" all over the place, saying it shows he's not a serious politician, etc. Since his political opponents will shout whenever he gets near a chessboard, I'm hoping he won't let them pressure him into staying away from exhibitions like this one. Next he wouldn't be able to give charity simuls with kids. It's been a year and a half since he went into politics full time, but apparently it will never be enough.

So, good news bad news. Bad for fans of shuffle chess, good for fans of chess chess, but with the potential for very bad news if Kasparov feels obliged to back out to preserve the political standing he's worked so hard to achieve since March 2005. But if he can't play three rapid games in the middle of a plaza in Zurich 16 months after he retired, when would he play? I've encouraged him to play with this argument, but of course it's up to him and his political guys in Russia to evaluate the damage. Really annoying. (Kommersant even interviewed Garry's old trainer Nikitin and the whole thing makes it sound like there's a big comeback going. There's not.)

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Biel GM 2006 r3

An interesting round in the Biel GM event despite Bruzon and Pelletier taking an 18-move nap. Leaders Carlsen and Radjabov waged battle in a funky Benko Gambit line, the Boy from Baku II on the white side. (Black left his king's rook on f8 instead of playing it to b8, rather unusual in my experience. It worked out fine for Carlsen after he used the e-file to swap a pair of rooks.) Radjabov clung on to the extra pawn like it was a copy of Playboy and the teens went into a difficult minor piece endgame. It looks like a dead draw by move 50 but Radja kept trying and they went down to bare kings. Kudos to both players for a fighting game.

Favorite Alexander Morozevich has never failed to win in Biel. He's 2/2 with very impressive scores. (8/10 in 2003; 7.5/10 in 2004.) He got back on track after yesterday's amazing loss to Carlsen by stuffing Volokitin today. Moro played a spectacular queen sacrifice in the Najdorf, but as usual this was played before. Leko used it against Karjakin at Corus this year, at which point we discovered it had been played in a correspondence world championship game a few years earlier. Those games were drawn but Moro went to work with a passed a-pawn assisted by his rook and knight vs queen. With a draw in hand Moro decided he was winning and played the cute 32.Rb6 to enter the endgame. The rest is a nice technical achievement.

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July 27, 2006

Biel 06 r4

Morozevich moved into a tie for first with Carlsen by beating Radjabov in an extraordinarily complicated game. Moro has yet to draw a game. All three games were good fights today. The endgame from Morozevich-Radjabov should have rung a few bells.

The first is from Carlsen-Radjabov in the second round. On the right is Morozevich-Radjabov. An amusing anti-matter coincidence. The first diag is drawn. The second is very hard for Black to defend, but I haven't had time to figure out or look up if it's a forced win. It looks like it should be but there are tricky blockades in here in which White can't make progress if he pushes his pawns too soon. In the diagram Black played 81.Kf7 and lost quickly after 82.Kf5. Even after 81..Ke5 you can't keep the white king off f5 forever and that should win for White. [Update: We're 99% sure this ending it's a forced draw. See lines below.]

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July 28, 2006

Biel 06 r5

All three games decisive in the Biel GM tournament. Carlsen loses to Volokitin with white while Morozevich beats Pelletier with black to move into clear first after three straight wins. Radjabov defeated Bruzon to move into second place. Pelletier is already in the cellar alone. Tomorrow, the 29th, is a rest day. Daily live games here, which serves as a replay page until the next round starts.

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July 29, 2006

Bishop Filtrations

From the doomed romantic department. Came upon this position while preparing tonight's Black Belt. It's from Sadvakasov-Zaikov, round 5 of the 2006 World Open. Black to play. White has consolidated and the Black king has nowhere to go in the long run.

Black resigned a few moves after trying 21..Qh3 22.Bd4 Kf8 23.fxe6. In the diagram Black has a wittier move, although it's also insufficient. It's a pretty sequence though. Check out 21..Be1?! luring the queen into a pin on the rook. 22.Qxe1 Bxg2 with some desperate counterplay. White has better, leading to another amusing bishop plunge. 21..Be1 22.Rfe2 sez Fritz 22..Bf3 cute, but White is still winning after 23.Qb3. The White king is surrounded by black pieces but is safe while the black king is far from the action but can't be defended.

Dortmund 2006 Begins

It's a very short sprint so get your popcorn and find your seat quickly. The official site was down during the round but is back up now. Eight players meet in a single round-robin so it's a mere seven rounds. A pity, really. Last year there were ten players and Arkady Naiditsch won a shock upset clear first place with just +2. In just seven rounds +2 practically guarantees a share of first. Players: Aronian, Leko, Svidler, Kramnik, Adams, Gelfand, Jobava, Naiditsch.

In the first round Gelfand and Kramnik played a disgraceful 19 move draw after exchanging a handshake and two pawns. What a joke. Not that you're going to have Sofia rules in a tournament organized on the fragile Kramnik's home turf, but 19 moves in the first round with a board full of pieces? I hope Gelfand gives some of his paycheck back to the sponsors.

Leko beat Naiditsch in a smooth central control game. He denied every attempt to complicate and finally pushed his pawns forward. Adams won a pawn against Aronian but the rook endgame was drawn. The game of the round was Baadur Jobava's loss to Svidler, and I put it that way because the young Georgian - who qualified to play here by winning Aeroflot - had several opportunities to force repetitions but he kept pressing. Eventually he lost control and went too far and couldn't hold the endgame against Svidler. As Kasparov has often said, what separates the top ten is their resistance.

A tough loss after a very creative effort by Jobava. Kasparov poked his head in to watch a few times at Playchess.com and sounded quite impressed with White's aggressive play. I can just see Gelfand looking at it and smirking, "Nice game, but I got a free day and a half point and what did you get?" Ban the draw offer! And thank god for qualifiers with some fire in the belly.

Leko hasn't played since March and it was important for him to get off to a good start. Apparently there is a side match between Germany's Elizabeth Paetz and America's Irina Krush. Get your NY rally caps on. The first game was drawn.

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July 31, 2006

Moro on a Mission

Something about the air in Biel does something for Alexander Morozevich. Yesterday he won his fourth game in a row to move to a full-point lead in the GM tournament with 5/6. Yes, he's clearly the class of the event and has a habit of putting up outrageous scores when he's a top seed. Still, when he's on a roll it's something special. In round six he played a speculative piece sac against Bruzon and finished things off nicely when the Cuban couldn't find the best defense. (Both 35..Bf5 and 35..Qb5 look like wild king hunts.) Radjabov is in second and Carlsen is third. Today is round seven. Live games.

[Update: Yipes! Carlsen beats Morozevich in the 7th round to tighten up the event considerably. Moro ruined a fascinating game with 27.Bg7??]

Things are considerably cooler in Dortmund, where all the games were drawn, most of them tamely. Aronian was held rather easily by Kramnik, failing to get revenge for the drubbing Vlady gave him at the Olympiad, although I'm sure his gold medal salved that wound nicely. Kramnik "lost" the draw this year and started with two blacks. Today is an off day, oddly, so we have to wait till August 1 to see the "white Kramnik" who was so deadly in Turin. It another Olympiad rematch with an opponent he stomped there, last year's Dortmund winner Naiditsch.

Kramnik-Aronian was actually the longest game of the day, an accurate sequence of exchanges not without interest. 23.Bxh7+ was an eye-catching possibility that looks like it only leads to a repetition draw. The other three games totaled maybe 20 moves out of theory. Svidler-Leko contributed five moves to human knowledge in the Najdorf. 21..Qa5!? looked interesting. Naiditsch-Gelfand did similarly in the ultra-theoretical b5 sac line of the Najdorf. Black had no interest in playing on in a very precarious position with 23..Rf8. Jobava's clever exchanges left Adams with little to play for in the endgame.

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August 1, 2006

Drawish in Dortmund

It's getting hard tell the difference between the rest days and the game days in Dortmund. For the second straight round all four games were drawn, three of them in fewer than 30 moves. Leko and Svidler still lead with +1 after three rounds. Jobava and Aronian took just 21 moves, but at least it was a repetition after many exchanges. Black is down a pawn and White has to accept repetition or give it back with annoyingly weak light squares. Not guilty.

Adams played a Shabalov idea in a crazy opening line that has been known for years. Black gives up three minors for the queen with four rooks still on the board. (Shaba played this in a Playchess online blitz tournament in 2004!) Not finding any way to break through against Leko (surprise, not), Adams acquiesced to a repetition on move 23 instead of playing on with, say, 23..Rd6 when 24.Nc6 Rxc6 25.Bxc6 Qb6 is good for Black. Just 24.e3 looks unbreakable, however. Guilty with mitigating factors since it looks pretty clear there's no way to make progress for Black and if White tries to go forward he'll be eaten by rabid beavers.

Grunfeld maven Svidler took on Grunfeld basher Gelfand in an accurate draw that swapped down to bones. Not guilty. That leaves Kramnik-Naiditsch, which very early on looked like it would fulfill its billing as a one-sided way for Big Vlad to get on track. As in their Turin game, Naiditsch played over-friskily and got into serious trouble early on. They followed two recent Naiditsch games until 10.Qd3 instead of Qc2. Black threw caution and good sense to the wind with 10..c5, allowing a fork on g7 and it looked like Kramnik was going to get away with a clean pawn after some calculation.

Instead White swapped queens instead of taking the rook on move 14. The game eventually ended in a draw, although it wasn't without interest the rest of the way. According to Kasparov, Black could have played for a significant advantage with 20...Rc2. I'll let Kramnik off the hook on this one because it's simply not his style to get into such messes. The position after 14.Qxh8 Rxc1+ 15.Kd2 Rxh1 16.Bxh1 looks quite unpleasant, although the computer shows White can get out fine with his pawn with precision. Kramnik quite likely would have won had he gone for it, so he gets a slap on the wrist. They also played down to kings, which is always nice.

An honest but cautious day, excepting Naiditsch. So far there have been any number of Morozevich games from Biel with more excitement than the entire Dortmund tournament has produced unless they are playing in the nude and nobody told me.

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August 2, 2006

The Expert Mind

Several people have sent in this link to a long Scientific American article about chess and cognition. It's by science writer Phil Ross, father of Laura Ross, one of the top female players in the US. There's not much new material for this crowd, but it's a well put together compendium of the psychological and scientific research that has gone into how the mind – the chess mind in particular – does what it does. The usual suspects and quotes are enlisted – de Groot, Capablanca, Mozart, Goethe – to good effect. There are a few updates and the sidebar graphics are nice. One of the researchers interviewed attributes the cumbersome phrase "effortful study" to what makes the difference between excellence and mediocrity, as opposed to innate talent.

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

This addresses one of our favorite topics: why we plateau where we plateau. That it's a matter of desire isn't exactly a revelation. There is also a time factor. Unless you are particularly dedicated you simply keep spending the same amount of time (or less) on the game. The law of diminishing returns sets in and you don't get any better. Most people stop improving when it become too much like work – unless they have a serious passion for it.

Of course the Polgars are invoked in addressing the prodigy discussion.

The Polgár experiment proved two things: that grandmasters can be reared and that women can be grandmasters. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier.

Thus, motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise. It is no accident that in music, chess and sports--all domains in which expertise is defined by competitive performance rather than academic credentialing--professionalism has been emerging at ever younger ages, under the ministrations of increasingly dedicated parents and even extended families.

I agree that work and dedication is more important than magic beans in just about any cognitive exercise. But just because we can't (as yet) quantify it that doesn't mean an innate talent for chess aptitude doesn't exist. It's just that like with about everything it's a combination (ha ha) and not a single element that produces tremendous skill. Our instruments and studies are still incredibly primitive compared to the brain. Much of this dovetails with material in the book I spent the last year working on with Garry Kasparov. He argues that the capacity for work is an intrinsic part of talent and can't really be separated.

I'm increasingly more interested in the improving brain scan technologies than psych experiments. The sidebar image showing chess players use the frontal and parietal cortices more the stronger they get is a good start. I remember when that Nature article came out in 2001. Malcolm Gladwell's pop-science writings in the New Yorker and the books The Tipping Point and Blink provide edible overviews but can be blithe and frustrating if you are looking for answers. Related read on "genius" at his site.

August 3, 2006

Morozevich Wins Biel 06

No, the tournament's not over, but the race for first is. By winning his seventh (!) game of the tournament the amazing Russian sealed his third Biel victory in three attempts. He lost twice to Carlsen but won every other game, including today's pretty demolition of Pelletier. Radjabov failed to keep pace, accepting a 16 move draw offer from Bruzon, who is already in the cellar and you'd think would play with nothing to lose. Maybe he's in mourning for Fidel? It's a turgid opening to be sure, but I'm a little surprised Radja didn't play to win with black. He'll have white against Morozevich tomorrow

Meanwhile, Volokitin completed a sweep of Magnus Carlsen, who is in third place with five points, a half-point behind Radjabov. I always thought 6..g6 was simply wrong here because of 7.Bxf6 and never knew it had actually been played by a few GMs before. This game isn't going to change my mind. Looks horrible. Carlsen scrambled about for compensation but never got it and lost rather humbly. He has white against Bruzon in tomorrow's final round.

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August 4, 2006

Biel Wrapup

If only so we have a shiny new Biel thread so we can keep on talking about one of the most enjoyable tournaments of the year, the Biel Grandmaster tournament. Morozevich won with a round to spare and saw no reason not to accept Radjabov's draw offer in the final round after ten moves of theory. Less explicable is Radjabov's decision to offer it. Karma took the express train, however, when Carlsen beat Bruzon to tie Radjabov for =2-3. (Carlsen took second on tiebreaks.) Ban the draw offer.

A typically stellar Morozevich explosion in a category 17 tournament, despite the two losses to Carlsen (one a brilliant win for the 15-year-old, the other a blunder by Moro). He failed the match the 8/10 he scored in Biel in 2003. In 2004 he also won with 7.5/10 in a slightly stronger event. It continues to astound that he can only occasionally manage a plus score in supertournaments. But he's always a one-man circus at the board and is devastating with both colors to just about anyone outside the top 10. (Inconsistently devastating to his fellows in it.)

Radjabov looked quite professional in both the good and bad meanings of that word in chess. He beat each member of the second half of the table 1.5-0.5 but took two miniature draws in the final two rounds. Unless he was ill this was ridiculous. Pelletier and Volokitin showed that chess is to be played even when there is little to play for. Local boy Pelletier got off the mat toward the end, scoring his only wins of the event in rounds eight and ten. Bruzon rarely showed signs of life in Biel and finished without a win 1.5 points behind Volo and Pelletier. In the past few years Bruzon has wins over Ivanchuk and Morozevich and he battled Anand to a standstill in rapids and blitz at Leon a few months ago. So chalk it up to someone having to have a bad tournament.

Sweden's Pia Cramling dominated the concurrent women's event in Biel, tha Accentus tournament. The veteran finished 1.5 points ahead of Poland's Monika Socko.

Friday Cat Blogging - Hot Edition

Actually it wasn't too hot today, but this was taken the other day when it was 40+ and 100% humidity here in New York. Argh. The kitties get even lazier but they still like the sun.

Open thread, topic suggestions, happy thoughts.

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