The Daily Dirt Chess Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left: Rulebook in hand, not Averbakh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The official announcement will come in next weekend's FIDE Presidential Board meeting. When I spoke with Kasparov on the phone today he mentioned an interesting fact: Carsten Hensel, the representative of both Kramnik and Leko, has been especially invited to the board meeting. FIDE is really starting 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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!

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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."

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!

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.

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."

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?!

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

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.

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...)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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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.

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!!

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?

(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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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.

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/

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).

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

Broadband • high speed • low 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.