Yesterday we published a column which was quite critical about the plans that Veselin Topalov “will not talk” to Vishy Anand during the match, which was stated by Silvio Danailov in an interview in Rijeka a few days ago. Today Danailov responds to our column. “Of course, this does’t mean that he will not speak to Anand at all, only during the game.”

In our column “Not again!?” of yesterday, by co-editor Arne Moll, Silvio Danailov’s statements from this Europe-Echecs interview was described as “provocative” and “destructive madness”.

This morning we asked Silvio Danailov whether he would like to comment on our column, and perhaps clarify matters, and that we would be happy to publish it. We received the following reply:

I never said that Veselin will not talk to Anand. What I said was that he will not offer a draw, and won’t accept draws from him. That’s different.

The long story is like this: during the negotiations we fulfilled all the wishes of Anand’s team (and there were many, trust me). Also, we provided the largest prize fund in the last 15 years (in crisis time!) of two million Euros (which is double the prize money of the previous match in Bonn). FIDE asked Anand to do only one small thing for the organizers: to play under the Sofia rules in Sofia. The reason was that this way the match would be more exciting and the city of Sofia would get extra publicity worldwide.

They refused, because like Aruna [Anand's wife and manager - PD] said, it was very difficult to choose arbiters, an Appeal Committee, a GM adviser, et cetera. Then we offered them to choose personally everything what they needed: arbiters, Appeal Committee, GM adviser, et cetera, only to accept the Sofia rules. They refused again, this time without any reason or explanation.

Of course they have a legal right to refuse, but in our personal opinion they show no respect to the organizers, the sponsors and the city of Sofia.

Then Veselin decided to not offer and accept draws from Anand during the games. He also has this legal right. He will not comunicate with Anand during the game, only through the arbiter.

Of course, this does’t mean that he will not speak to Anand at all, only during the game. Veselin in general doesn’t like to be disturbed by talks and draw offers during the game.

What is the problem here?

Why you call this provocation?

This is all the story, you can judge yourself.

Perhaps it was because I’m currently reading The Age of Empathy – Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, Frans de Waal’s latest book on how and why humans (and other primates) are capable of showing empathy and solving moral problems – that I found myself shocked by the recent Europe Echecs interview with Topalov’s manager Silvio Danailov. Topalov’s match against Anand hasn’t even started yet, but the first provocations are already in the air again.

Photo: Europe-Echecs

Frans de Waal is one of the world’s leading primatologists and has written an impressive body of work about the similarities between apes and humans. In his latest work, he hands us a toolkit on how to improve our society by looking at (human) nature. Empathy and morality are not only human affairs, but also play an very important role in other species, such as chimpansees and dolphins. De Waal argues that the election of president Obama is a clear sign that the ‘nightmare’ days of Reagan and Thatcher are over and that perhaps it is time to transform society into a more empathic place. Well, I think it’s time to end the ‘nightmare’ of Toiletgate and start a new era where chess professionals actually show some empathy and respect for each other instead of constantly trying to provoke the opponent.

In the video of the interview, Danailov talks about whether the ‘Sofia rules’ apply in the upcoming Topalov-Anand match, to be held in Sofia next month. They will not be applied – at least not officially. But that’s no problem for Danailov:

If one player doesn’t offer or accept draws they will apply. Vishy [Anand] doesn’t agree but he will be forced, because Topalov will not offer him a draw and he will not speak to him. So, what to do? He will be forced. This is the best. This is the best, otherwise… I don’t know, there’s people who are absolutely conservative, they are against these rules, but this is the future of chess. This is for sure. Everybody now understands this. Of course, I understand there are some players, old players, who don’t want to work… they like short draws and whatever. They like to offer them, but this is finished. Chess … we need a professional sport, and in professional sport, we cannot do this.

It’s a remarkable statement: Anand – forced against his will to comply to rules that are not official; this is the future of chess, no matter what ‘old’ chess players say – their opinion clearly is unimportant and shouldn’t be respected. But the most remarkable is that Danailov says that Topalov will not only refuse to offer any draws but also will ignore his opponent altogether: “He will not speak to him.” In other words, he will drop all courtesy and normal etiquette and create a ‘non-speaking terms’ atmosphere in a match in his home country, against one of the most relaxed and friendly chess players in the professional chess scene.

And why? Because of ‘professionalism’, that vacuous word all too often misused by people who refuse to acknowledge that most if not all work requires empathy and social skills – in other words, people who haven’t the slightest idea what ‘professionalism’ really means. (Here’s how one competency library actually defines ‘professionalism’: “Thinking carefully about the likely effects on others of one’s words, actions, appearance, and mode of behavior.”) To exclude all social elements from a profession is in fact the ultimate un-professional thing imaginable.

It’s a fallacy Frans de Waal convincingly demolishes in his book, showing how cooperation and social interaction are absolutely crucial to succeed in any job and society, and are in fact measures by which we judge people and choose them as colleagues, friends or mates. Not so for the Bulgarians, who’ve created their own rules and apparently don’t mind to be social isolates in the chess world, as long as the results speak for themselves. What an utterly unprofessional attitude!

In a similar vein, we’ve argued before on this site that shaking hands before and after a game shouldn’t actually be incorporated in the rules of chess, but instead should be respected even though they’re not in the rules – because, as De Waal shows, that’s how empathy and social skills work: intuitively, without explicit rules, automatically. And that’s why apes and other animals are capable of displaying them, too, without being able to read lawbooks or guides on ethical behaviour. It’s a thing of nature. It’s in our genes.

The sad thing is that we’ve seen this all before, four years ago in Elista. There, the Bulgarian team made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of world by accusing Vladimir Kramnik – without a shred of hard evidence – of cheating. They even published a childish book on it – still lacking any solid evidence – to prove their point, which I reviewed back in 2007. Perhaps it’s worth recalling how Topalov accused Kramnik of unfairly using his ‘home advantage’ up till the Kremlin in order to “keep the title at any cost” and that he (Kramnik) “will not balk at violating ethical principles.”

In his book, Topalov wrote that it was naive of him to agree to the match against Kramnik being played on Russian (well, kind of) ground, because such a match obviously couldn’t be fair. Well, it’s four years later and look who’s playing on home ground this time. Will Topalov and Danailov return the compliment and agree if Anand claimed a match in Bulgaria couldn’t ever be fair because of some kind of home advantage? Frans de Waal devotes an entire chapter on the ‘walking in other man’s ’shoes’ concept, but looking at the interview of Europe Echecs, I have my doubts if Danailov has read it. Note how he laughs during the entire interview, routinely dismissing dissenting views and announcing how the reigning World Champion will be ‘forced’ to do this and that. Does that sound like someone showing any kind of empathy or ‘ethical principles’ at all?

Silvio Danailov has recently announced his candidacy for president of the European Chess Union. Heaven forbid someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about ‘professionalism’, baselessly accuses some world class players of unethical behaviour and laughingly tells others what to do, ever gets to play such an important role in European chess, even if he did show some good initiatives like the exciting M-Tel tournament and his passion for more fighting chess. This kind of destructive madness really can’t be tolerated in our beautiful chess world. Frans de Waal ends his book The Age of Empathy (I am quoting from the Dutch version) with the following words:

We must rely on our intellect to figure out how to balance individual and collective interests. One instrument we have and which enriches our thinking enormously, has been selected over ages, meaning its survival value has been proven time and again. It is our capacity to show a sense of oneness with others, to understand them, and to place ourselves in their situation.

We can only hope this message will reach the Bulgarian team before the Topalov-Anand match starts.

If one player doesn’t offer or accept draws they will apply. Vishy [Anand] doesn’t agree but he will be forced, because Topalov will not offer him a draw and he will not speak to him. So, what to do? He will be forced. This is the best. This is the best, otherwise… I don’t know, there’s people who are absolutely conservative, they are against these rules, but this is the future of chess. This is for sure.

Shastri hits the ball towards the 12th man in the game and looks for a single. The Aussie guy gets the ball in and says,

Aussie: "If you leave the crease I'll break your f***ing head".

Shastri: "If you could bat as well as you can talk you wouldn't be the f***ing 12th man."

A couple of months ago and two years after the previous version ChessX has released a new version. This is version 0.6, which can be downloaded for Windows and Mac on the download section of the ChessX site.
I decided to try this version and I started by saving the games of the IJ105 database as a PGN file, which is currently the format that is needed for ChessX, but a Native Database Format is planned for the next release. I also made a PGN file that contained the first 1000 games of this Database.

As you can see the PGN file uses a lot of memory when compared to the SCID or ChessDB database files.

I was unable to use the large database. It started to load the games, but after waiting for more than an hour it was still busy loading.
Loading the file with the first 1000 games went rather smooth and I like the way it looks and how you can position everyting as you wish.

If you only need something like this for your own games (with a rather small database) than this may be a very interesting multi platform alternative, but for large databases it will probably not be usable. However, the next release promises to add a Native Database Format, which may solve these problems.

I have upgraded to WordPress 2.8.4, because yesterday a vulnerability was discovered by the WordPress team: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

Version 2.8.4 seems to fix all known problems and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.

Chess playing by Malkolm – Bust it Away Photography

Robert William Kearns (Gary, 10 marzo 1927 – Baltimora, 9 febbraio 2005) inventore statunitense; noto soprattutto per l’invenzione del tergicristallo a intermittenza usato su molte automobili dal 1969 ad oggi.

Kearns vinse una delle più conosciute cause sulla violazione dei brevetti contro la Ford Motor Company. Avendo inventato e brevettato il meccanismo di tergicristallo a intermittenza, utile durante una pioggia leggera o in presenza di umidità, cercò di interessare le 3 fabbriche di automobili più conosciute del Nord America, dette anche The Big Three, ad utilizzare la sua tecnologia. Essi rifiutarono la sua proposta, eppure iniziarono a installare il tergicristallo a intermittenza sulle loro auto a partire dal 1969.

È riportato che l’ispirazione di questa invenzione sia dovuta a un incidente durante la notte di nozze nel 1953, mentre stappava una bottiglia di champagne il turacciolo gli finì sul suo occhio sinistro, che quasi lo rese cieco. Circa un decennio dopo, nel 1963, Kearns stava guidando la sua autovettura, una Ford Galaxie, c’era una pioggia leggera e il costante movimento del tergicristallo irritava la sua vista già problematica. Modellò il meccanismo del suo tergicristallo sulla base dell’occhio umano, che batte ogni pochi secondi invece che battere continuamente. Il suo primo brevetto per l’invenzione fu presentato il 1° dicembre 1964.

Kearns citò la Ford Motor Company nel 1978 e la Chrysler nel 1982 per violazione di brevetti. Il caso Ford ebbe il processo nel 1990. Ford perse, sebbene la Corte ritenne che la violazione del brevetto non era intenzionale. Ford si accordò con Kearns pagando 10.1 milioni di dollari e il patto di non proseguire la causa con ulteriori appelli. Dopo l’accordo con Ford, Kearns ebbe il processo contro la Chrysler e agì come avvocato di se stesso, ponendosi domande al banco dei testimoni. Il verdetto del caso Chrysler fu deciso nel 1992, e fu una vittoria per Kearns. Alla Chrysler fu imposto il pagamento di 18.7 milioni di dollari con gli interessi. Chrysler si appellò ma la Corte d’Appello Federale degli Stati Uniti lasciò il giudizio immutato.

Entro il 1995, dopo aver speso 10 milioni di dollari in spese legali, Kearns ricevette approssimativamente 30 milioni di dollari in compenso per la violazione di brevetti da parte della Chrysler.

Kearns morì il 9 febbraio 2005 di cancro al cervello, con complicazione dovuta al Morbo di Alzheimer, a Baltimora, Maryland. La storia della sua invenzione e della querela contro la Ford formano le basi del film Flash of Genius. Robert Kearns e sua moglie Phyllis erano divorziati. Ebbero due figlie, quattro figli e al momento della sua morte sette nipoti.

Un’altra storia, simile, racconta…:

Verso la metà dell’800 in tutti gli ospedali europei la mortalità tra le partorienti era elevatissima. Il sintomo caratteristico era una febbre altissima e per questo la patologia venne chiamata febbre delle puerpere. I medici dell’epoca brancolavano nel buio e non riuscivano a determinarne le cause.

Nel 1847 il dottor  Ignác Semmelweis, un giovane medico ungherese, fu assunto nel reparto maternità del Policlinico di Vienna. Egli notò che nella prima divisione, dove operavano medici e studenti, la mortalità era dieci volte superiore rispetto alla seconda divisione, affidata a ostetriche e infermiere.

Semmelweis ebbe l’intuizione giusta quando un collega, il professor Jakob Kolletschka, morì di febbre puerperale dopo che uno studente lo aveva ferito accidentalmente con un bisturi durante un’autopsia.  Medici e studenti visitavano le degenti dopo aver toccato i cadaveri delle donne morte di febbre puerperale, così dedusse che l’infezione si trasmetteva attraverso le mani sporche. E propose la soluzione ovvia: lavarsi le mani prima di visitare le degenti. La sua idea venne respinta: il lavaggio delle mani fu considerato una novità offensiva e l’incarico non gli viene rinnovato.

Semmelweis tornò a lavorare in Ungheria ma anche qui la sua teoria incontrò forti resistenze e nel 1857 gli venne revocata la cattedra di ostetricia che gli era stata assegnata nell’Università di Pest.

Nel 1865 Semmelweis iniziò a mostrare segni di squilibrio mentale e fu ricoverato in una casa di cura per alienati dove morì il 13 agosto.

La verità scientifica della sua teoria verrà confermata più avanti, grazie alla scoperta dei batteri da parte di Pasteur.  La febbre puerperale era causata da uno streptococco e l’infezione si poteva evitare con normali procedure antisettiche: lavandosi le mani.

Oggi basta Topo Gigio che compare in televisione perché la cosa sia accettata!!

Morale delle storie…:

Tanti concetti che oggi ci appaiono scontati hanno faticato parecchio per affermarsi e molte persone hanno pagato un duro prezzo perché la verità venisse a galla. E così molti concetti che domani saranno ovvi ancora oggi sono incompresi o osteggiati, perché le verità per affermarsi deve combattere contro gruppi di potere, di interesse o semplicemente contro la stupidità dilagante.

Storie e scacchi…:

Come nella vita anche negli scacchi le novità sono sempre osteggiate soprattutto quando il silicio non dà parere positivo… Una novità che i programmi informatici scacchistici non danno vantaggio di +0.80 sarà scartata a priori!! Dovranno faticare parecchio questi nuovi concetti per affermarsi…

Mi piace soffermarmi su alcune aperture per niente contemplate ma che possono anche raccogliere discreti risultati in tornei di media forza… è la storia di un’idea!!!

[B01] : Difesa Scandinava 1.e4 d5 2.Cf3 … può essere una possibilità 2… dxe4

E’ chiaro che si può rientrare nella posizione anche partendo con 1.Cf3 d5 2.e4 …

Pronti via e il silicio dà vantaggio al nero (0.43), ma è un’idea che porta con sé grandi insidie e alcuni Maestri anche a tempo lungo hanno deciso di provare!!

… è la storia di un’idea!!!

Kozii,Yuri (2280) – Sutorikhin,Vladimir (2350)

Szeged TT10 IM Szeged, 18.10.1998

[B01]: Difesa Scandinava 1.e4 d5 2.Cf3 dxe4 3.Cg5 Cf6 4.Cc3 Cbd7 5.Ac4 e6 6.Axe6 fxe6 7.Cxe6 De7 8.Cxc7+ Rd8 9.Cxa8 Ce5 10.d4 exd3 11.0–0 b6 12.Te1 Ag4 13.f3 Axf3 14.gxf3 Cxf3+ 15.Dxf3 Dxe1+ 16.Rg2 dxc2 17.Cd5 Ac5 18.Cxf6 gxf6 19.Dxf6+ Rd7 20.Df5+ Rc6 21.Df3+ Rd7 22.Dd5+ Re8 23.Cc7+ 1–0

Buergi,Oswald (1972) – Schuettig,Ruediger (2234) [B01]

Rail 4 countries 22nd Arosa, 26.06.2006

[B01]: Difesa Scandinava 1.e4 d5 2.Cf3 dxe4 3.Cg5 Cf6 4.Cc3 e6 5.Cgxe4 Cxe4 6.Cxe4 c5 7.g3 Cc6 8.Ag2 Ae7 9.d3 e5 10.Ae3 Cd4 11.0–0 0–0 12.Rh1 f5 13.Cc3 f4 14.Axd4 exd4 15.Cd5 Ad6 16.Ae4 Dg5 17.gxf4 Axf4 18.Tg1 Dh4 19.Cxf4 Txf4 20.f3 Tb8 21.De2 Df6 22.Ad5+ Rf8 23.Tae1 Ad7 24.Dg2 g6 25.Dg3 Dd6 26.Te4 Tf6 27.Dg5 Rg7 28.Tge1 Tbf8 29.Te7+ T6f7 30.Axf7 Txf7 31.Txf7+ Rxf7 32.Dh6 Rg8 33.Dh4 Ac6 34.Rg2 Dd5 35.Df6 1–0

Ivan Sokolov

Vediamo come il bianco giochi in maniera aggressiva prendendo molti rischi, fino a quando Fabiano decide di restituire il pezzo con 28…Cxd7 che probabilmente è la mossa perdente, anche se non appare facile trovare un’altro piano. A questo punto Sokolov diventa implacabile e conclude con precisione.

After beating Sergey Karjakin 1.5-0.5, Vasily Ivanchuk leads the combined standings of the Amber tournament with a score of 4.5/6. Magnus Carlsen again won 2-0, this time against Peter Svidler, who resigned in a probably drawn position in the blindfold game.

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament takes place at the Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice, France, from March 12 to 25, 2010. The event is organized by the Association Max Euwe of chess maecenas Joop van Oosterom, which is based in Monaco. The total prize-fund is € 216,000.

The following twelve grandmasters take part: Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2813), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2790), Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2782), Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 2756), Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2750), Peter Svidler (Russia, 2750), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2737), Sergey Karjakin (Russia, 2725), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba, 2713) and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands, 2651).

Games round 3

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 3 report

Vasily Ivanchuk in sole lead
Magnus Carlsen back in business with two more wins
After three rounds of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament, Vasily Ivanchuk is in the sole lead in the overall standings with 4½ points from 6 games. The Ukrainian grandmaster, the only GM to play in all 19 Amber tournaments, defeated Sergey Karjakin 1½-½. Defending champion Levon Aronian scored his first full points at the cost of Jan Smeets. Magnus Carlsen also won 2-0, the victim being Peter Svidler. Despite his dramatic start, the Norwegian is now only half a point behind the leading Ivanchuk. And he optimistically faces the future: ‘I am hoping for two more tomorrow.’

Vasily Ivanchuk immersed in thought at the start of his blindfold game against Sergey Karjakin. Following a 1½-½ win over his former compatriot the Ukrainian grandmaster is in the sole lead.

Alexander Grischuk and Boris Gelfand played a blindfold game that at first sight may have looked lively and entertaining for the spectators. However, they were following a theoretical line and after the game Grischuk summed up his assessment of what had happened as ‘very boring’. White had a small advantage in the ending that appeared on the board, but it never took on serious proportions and the games petered out to a draw. For Gelfand the line evoked old memories: ‘The last time I played this line was in 1988 in Vilnius. Against Goldin at the Soviet Young Masters.’ Certainly an interesting footnote to this game.
The rapid game was anything but boring. Playing adventurously Gelfand sacrificed two pawns to develop an attack against the black king and was awarded for his courage with a winning position. But just when everyone expected Grischuk to resign soon, Gelfand faltered and failed to deal the final blow. With 32.Bh7+ he let Black back into the game, where he could have decided the issue with 32.axb5 cxb5 33.Nd5 exd6 34.Bxd5+. In raging time-trouble for both, Gelfand again got a winning position, and might just as well have lost if Black had found 42…Kh6 instead of 42…Kg6, but in the end it was a draw and that was a result that definitely felt deeply unsatisfactory for Gelfand.

When Leinier Dominguez arrived at the board for his blindfold game against Ruslan Ponomariov, the Ukrainian grandmaster already sat waiting impatiently. As he laughingly told the arbiter: ‘I am nervous, let’s start!’ Once he was allowed to start the game, Ponomariov went for 4…g6 against the Ruy Lopez, a set-up that is sometimes considered slightly suspect, but mostly leads to satisfactory play for Black. Dominguez certainly obtained an edge, but with precise and active play Ponomariov comfortably equalized and once they reached a rook endgame with three pawns on each side, there were few reasons left not to draw the game.
The blindfold game presented Ponomariov with a problem that every grandmaster faces from time to time: he had to play against an opening variation that he also has played himself. A tense struggle developed in which both sides were fighting for their chances, and although those of White looked slightly more promising in the middlegame, the game ended in a draw when most pieces and pawns had left the board on move 47.

The blindfold game between Vugar Gashimov and Vladimir Kramnik saw the Russian grandmaster play another Pirc. However, this time it didn’t bring him much pleasure, as his mix of set-ups landed him in a risky position. Things looked threatening for Kramnik, especially when on move 26 Gashimov got a golden opportunity. With 26.Rxd6 he could have been a healthy pawn up, as 26…Ne8 is answered by 27.Rxh6, but instead of all this the Azeri grandmaster played 26.Nxd6 and a few moves later he agreed on a draw.
In the rapid game Kramnik emphatically wanted to be at the wheel from the word go. With gritty play he put his opponent under pressure and obtained a sizable advantage. But Gashimov had no wish to knuckle under and fought back with determination and his 37…Bg5 came as a rude awaking for Kramnik. Now suddenly the win was far off, objectively speaking no longer there, and a messy phase followed in which White kept looking for a win. And found it, because Gashimov didn’t grab his chances. The final mistake came on move 51, when the Azeri grandmaster played the right idea in the wrong order. Had he gone 51…Qf1+ 52.Kh2 Ne1, White would have had to resign himself to a draw. When he played 51…Ne1 immediately, Kramnik had 52.Qb5 and now 52…Nf3 doesn’t work because of 53.Qf8 mate.

The blindfold game between Peter Svidler and Magnus Carlsen started with a comic prologue when, once they were seated behind their laptops, the Norwegian discovered much to his dismay that he wasn’t White is this game, as he had believed, but Black. The comedy of errors was continued in the game and even after the Russian had resigned, when the spectators in the hospitality lounge switched on some engines. In the game Carlsen invited Svidler to play a full-fledged Dragon, but instead White opted for a more quiet approach. For some time there was nothing new under the sun until White played a new move, 19.Qf4 (19.Qe2 had been seen). The comedy of errors came back to life on move 20, when Svidler suddenly had second thoughts about the intended 20.Rxd7 because of 20…Qc6 21.Rxb7 Rxf4 22.Bd5 and now 22…Qf6 wins for Black. However, both players had missed 22.Rb6 with an edge for White. On move, 22 Svidler refrained from 22.Qh3 because he didn’t like 22…Nf4, but after the move he played, 22.Qe1, he was unpleasantly surprised by 22…Bxg2. Now Black developed a raging attack, but was it was deadly as Svidler acknowledged when, after 25…Nd4, he resigned? Indeed it would have been if Black had played 24…Nh4+ (instead of 24…Nf4+). But now things were different, as in the final position the engines immediately showed the amazing 26.Nd7!, attacking the rook on f8, and there is no immediate win and the position looks drawish.
At that point the players had already left for their rooms, Carlsen happily laughing off the fact that he had prepared for the wrong colour: ‘In any case it seems to be clear that in the blindfold I do better when I play the black pieces.’ Yes, but this time he needed a helping hand from his opponent. In his room he obviously also found 26.Nd7, but to his mind Black could nevertheless have kept on playing for a win with 26…Nh3+ 27.Kg2 Qc6+ 28.Bd5 Qxd7 29.Rxd4 e6.
The rapid game saw a rare sideline of the Qb3 Grünfeld, which, according to Carlsen, both players were not too familiar with. He himself seemed to suffer the least from this relative ignorance as he obtained a pleasant position. ‘And then it just got better and better’, he summed up the game. One moment he pointed out to illustrate the strength of his position was the moment when he played 22.Nd3, planning g5, pushing away the knight on d5 with e4, and then playing Nf4 threatening Nxg6 mate. To prevent such plans Svidler played 22…g5 himself, but his troubles remained and after 34 moves he had had enough and resigned.

When Sergey Karjakin, who is now playing for Russia, sat down to play his former compatriot Vasily Ivanchuk there was little doubt that a fierce clash would follow. In the blindfold game Ivanchuk gradually managed to took over the initiative and when he pushed 19…c4! it was clear that Karjakin faced a difficult defence. The final mistake White made on move 32, when playing his bishop to a3, he allowed Black to invade his position and force his surrender.
In the blindfold game Ivanchuk got promising play and tried various ways to improve the position of his pieces. But Karjakin defended tenaciously and when his opponent failed to make any headway a draw was the result after 44 moves.

Jan Smeets was happy with the outcome of the opening of his blindfold game against Levon Aronian. After all he was allowed to play the improvement he had suggested after his game against Karjakin in Round 2, 17.Be4 instead of 17.Ne4. White got an edge, but failed to exploit it. His first inaccuracy was 24.Rac1 where 24.a4 was called for, but the real mistake was 26.Bxd8?, an exchange that was prompted by his fear that Black’s knight would come to e6 and White’s bishop on f6 would end up out of play. Now Smeets suddenly found himself in an unpleasant rook endgame, which Aronian first converted in a winning pawn endgame and then into a winning queen endgame.
The rapid game was a tumultuous affair that started out with an opening that was popular at the start of the 20th century (the rather unusual 4…Nc6 followed by 5.e4). Aronian was pleased with his position but commented afterwards that he should have played 13.Qa4+ instead of 13.Bxf4, as he had underestimated 15…Qd7. Further on he had planned the imaginative 19.Kf1 until he saw 19…0-0 20.Rd6 Bc4!. Black’s troubles started with 24…Qh1, where he could have secured a level position with 24…Qxf2+ 25.Kf2 Ne4+ 26.Kg2 Nxd6 27.Bxa7. His final mistake was 25…Qh5, when he should have gone 25…Qxh6 26.Nd5 Qh4. Now his king was too vulnerable and as Smeets was also in time-trouble it didn’t come as a surprise that Aronian quickly hauled in the point.

Report & photos © official website, more here

Videos

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Blindfold | Rapid, via TWIC

C'est bien connu, rien de tel que l'exercice régulier pour garder la forme échiquéenne!

Pour cela, nous vous proposons chaque jour 3 problèmes d'échecs tactiques avec Shredder pour démarrer en douceur. Ensuite, vous pourrez choisir des positions réelles, selon 3 niveaux de difficulté croissante.

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Magnus Carlsen today recovered completely from his bad start in Nice. The Norwegian defeated Levon Aronian, the winner in 2008 and 2009, in both the blindfold and the rapid game. Ukrainians Ivanchuk and Ponomariov lead the combined standings after two rounds.

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament takes place at the Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice, France, from March 12 to 25, 2010. The event is organized by the Association Max Euwe of chess maecenas Joop van Oosterom, which is based in Monaco. The total prize-fund is € 216,000.

The following twelve grandmasters take part: Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2813), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2790), Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2782), Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 2756), Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2750), Peter Svidler (Russia, 2750), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2737), Sergey Karjakin (Russia, 2725), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba, 2713) and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands, 2651).

Games round 2

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Round 2 report

Carlsen bounces back with 2-0 win over defending champion Aronian
After two rounds of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament, Vasily Ivanchuk and Ruslan Ponomariov are in the lead in the overall standings with 3 points from 4 games, followed at half a point’s distance by Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Svidler. Top-seed Magnus Carlsen recovered from his poor start with a 2-0 win over defending Amber champion Levon Aronian. The Norwegian admitted that he had been upset about his 2-0 loss on the first day (particularly the rapid game, where he believed he was in no danger of losing), but said that he certainly had not despaired: ‘With twenty rounds to go there is always time to recover.’ The first two of those twenty rounds were certainly encouraging for him.

Magnus Carlsen fared excellently in Round 2 with two wins over Levon Aronian. After the round the Norwegian was happy to comment on his blindfold game for the tournament website.

Just like last year the second round of the Amber tournament clashed with the final stage of Paris-Nice, the 8-stage cycling race that started in Paris (you had guessed that much) a week ago. For many hours the Promenade des Anglais was crowded with people waiting for the denouement of the 68th edition of this legendary race and we can tell you that quite a number of chess fans mingled among these spectators. But after, early in the afternoon, Alberto Contador had won his second Paris-Nice, three years after his first victory, they could concentrate on chess again. Right they were. After the drama in Round 1 there was every reason to look forward to the developments in Round 2.

The final stage of the cycling course Paris-Nice finished today, about two hundred metres from the venue and about two minutes after the second round started | Photo Nadja Wittmann

Alberto Contador after winning the final stage of Paris-Nice | Photo Nadja Wittmann

Magnus Carlsen was obviously eager to fight back after yesterday’s dramatic 2-0 loss, but with Levon Aronian as opponent this was easier said than done. Moreover the Norwegian had the black pieces in the blindfold game and one would think that his first concern should be not to lose again. Already before the tournament Carlsen had prepared the King’s Indian and his ambition to steer for a highly complicated struggle worked out beyond expectation. To begin with he got the chance to implement an idea he had seen in a game Eljanov-Radjabov; a quick counter-push on the queenside to undermine White’s centre followed by a piece sacrifice (20…Nxd5) to break up that same centre. The tactical complications that ensued demanded a lot from both players and it was soon clear that Carlsen felt more at ease. Aronian missed the push 22…e4, a seemingly contradictory move that seems to contribute little to Black’s wish to open up lines and files, but which in fact is the right move to keep his initiative going. White could still have put up some resistance with 25.Bg5 (instead of 25.Nxf2), but Aronian had also missed 25…Qh4, which in case of 26.Be1 is followed by the deadly 26…Be5. Three moves later Aronian threw the towel. Carlsen found it easy to smile again when a couple of minutes later he spoke to the press.
Aronian’s worries were compounded when he also lost the rapid game. And perhaps this loss hurt even more as it was completely unnecessary. From a Four Knights’ Defence the players ended up in a totally drawish rook endgame. Probably the main factor that kept the game going was that neither of the players were willing to offer a draw. And as they plodded on Aronian got himself into trouble. A first moment where he was inaccurate was when he played 42…Ra2, when he could have thwarted all White’s further tries with 42…g5. He further pleased Carlsen with 50…h5 when he should have played 50…Kh7. Now his position became very unpleasant, and when he missed a last chance to stir up complications with 59…d5 he was inexorably counted out.

Blindfold: Carlsen beats Aronian with Black in a spectacular King's Indian

Jan Smeets had no trouble acknowledging that he had been completely lost in his blindfold game against Sergey Karjakin, as he was happy enough with the half point that he had saved miraculously. In a Ruy Lopez with 3…Nge7 and 4…g6, White drifted into trouble when he played his knight to e4 on move 17 (better 17.Be4) and followed this up with 20.Nf6+. Things quickly went from bad to worse and with 35…Kf8 Black could have forced his resignation. But even the pawn ending that Karjakin allowed his opponent, was lost for Black if only he had found 46…h5. Now the Dutch grandmaster could save the draw, even if, as usually, he was very short of time for the greater part of the game.
The blindfold game was another eventful affair and again the surprising outcome was a draw. In a Ruy Lopez Smeets lost his c-pawn after a heavy manoeuvring phase. Things looked bleak, but it wasn’t too easy for White to make further progress and when Karjakin made the move Smeets had been waiting and hoping for (58.h4), the vulnerability of his king suddenly became a source of sorrow. In fact, White would have been totally lost had Smeets played 59…Qg1. But being short of time (just like Karjakin) he failed to see this opportunity and the game ended in a repetition of moves. Ironically, Smeets could still play Qg1 in the final position, but he didn’t complain that the threefold repetition had ‘only’ brought him a draw.

Dutchman Jan Smeets managed to draw twice with Sergey Karjakin

The blindfold game between Vasily Ivanchuk and Peter Svidler not surprisingly saw a Grünfeld Defence, an opening in which the Russian is one of today’s greatest specialists. Afterwards he called the opening phase of ‘mild theoretical importance’, as Ivanchuk deviated on move 11 from an earlier game Gelfand-Svidler. In that game White played 11.Be2, Ivanchuk preferred to first play 11.Nf3. Almost forced the players ended up in an ending that Svidler had (of course) looked at before and although Black’s play is not entirely carefree he felt that it should be a draw objectively speaking. As a possible improvement for White he indicated 21.Bc6, the way it went now the point was quickly shared.
In the blindfold game Svidler felt he had missed a good chance when he played 13.Qd2 instead of 13.Qc1. ‘The idea is essentially the same, but it would have saved me a tempo in almost any variation’, as he explained afterwards. He even got into slight problems when Black played 22…Qe7, effectively stopping Ng5, the move White had hoped to make. In the final phase of the game the Russian had to be careful not to lose any material, but when he managed this task the game was drawn.

Boris Gelfand recovered from his poor performance in the first round with a win in the blindfold game against Vugar Gashimov. Nevertheless he called it ‘a stupid game’, as he had spoiled an excellent opening position to end up in a problematic situation. The last trick he wanted to try in order to extricate himself from this situation was 20.Nxd5. Now he was lucky as Gashimov could have played 22…Qb4 and White might as well resign. After 22…Qc7, White’s problems were not over yet, but when Black blundered with 23…Qxc4?, he suddenly was presented with a winning position. For the rest of the game Gelfand kept his eyes on the ball and converted his advantage without further problems.
The blindfold game started slowly. White got a slight edge but nothing for Black to get worried about. The game turned around when Gelfand opened the position and Gashimov snatched a pawn, that his opponent called ‘poisoned’. Soon White was totally lost, but the game was far from over yet. Gelfand spoiled his advantage and in the end he had to win an opposite-coloured bishop ending in a study-like manner (although the Israeli grandmaster was the first to say that he was not sure if this win was waterproof). Gelfand was certainly pleased with his two wins, but he didn’t forget how he obtained them: ‘Two points with bad play’.

The blindfold game between Vladimir Kramnik and Leinier Dominguez was a fascinating fight. Obviously Kramnik emphatically played for a win, but Dominguez fought back in his customary razor-sharp style. The game was decided when in a highly complicated position the Cuban grandmaster continued 36…Kh7 where his only chance was 36…Bf8. With the text-move he invited a forced mate and a couple of moves before this mate would become reality, Dominguez resigned.
In the blindfold game Kramnik played the Pirc Defence, the opening with which he surprised (and beat) Smeets in the recent Corus tournament. Again it looked as if this rather offbeat opening would give him easy and pleasant play, particularly after he bagged a point. But White had compensation for his material deficit and although Kramnik remained better for the rest of the game, Dominguez hung in tenaciously and was rewarded with a draw after 88 moves.

Deep concentration: Leinier Dominguez and Vladimir Kramnik

The blindfold game between Ruslan Ponomariov and Alexander Grischuk saw a Catalan Opening, similar to a game Ponomariov had played with colours reversed against Gelfand in the final of the recent World Cup. Instead of 10…Bb7, as Ponomariov had played, Grischuk went 10…Ba6. White obtained the bishop pair, but with a symmetrical pawn-structure it was difficult to exploit that slight advantage. Both players invested a lot of time as there were always tactics to be considered with opposing rooks on the c-file, but when Grischuk offered the opportunity to repeat moves and agree to a draw, Ponomariov saw no good reason to play on.
At the end of the rapid game Ponomariov walked into the hospitality lounge and wondered what people had thought of his rapid game. He himself wasn’t too happy as he had hoped to play something active, but somehow his Grünfeld ended up in a static position in which he had to suffer for a draw. When on move 32 the queens left the board, Grischuk offered that draw and Ponomariov didn’t have to think long before he accepted.

Report & photos © official website, more here

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“The 40-year old Ukrainian has a reputation of being an unpredictable genius, capable of producing absolutely brlliant games, as well as amateur-like losses from time to time,” Magnus Carlsen wrote on his blog yesterday. Today, at the Amber tournament in Nice, he met with a Chuky in excellent shape, and lost 2-0.

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament takes place at the Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice, France, from March 12 to 25, 2010. The event is organized by the Association Max Euwe of chess maecenas Joop van Oosterom, which is based in Monaco. The total prize-fund is € 216,000.

The following twelve grandmasters take part: Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2813), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2790), Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2782), Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 2756), Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2750), Peter Svidler (Russia, 2750), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2737), Sergey Karjakin (Russia, 2725), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba, 2713) and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands, 2651).

Games round 1

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Round 1 report

First day sensation: top-seed Carlsen loses 2-0 to ‘Mr Amber’
Last night the opening ceremony of the 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament took place at the Chateau de Cremat, a stylish wine chateau perched on a hill overlooking Nice at a half and hour’s drive from the Palais de la Mediterranée, the five-star luxury hotel on the Promenade des Anglais where the grandmasters are staying and playing. The evening started with a degustation of various wines of the house and then the guests of the Van Oosterom family and the players sat down for a delicious dinner. In the opening speech there was special attention for the totally unique place that the Amber tournament occupies in chess history. There have been chess benefactors who sponsored one tournament, two or even three. But no one ever came even close to the astounding 19th edition that the Amber tournament reaches this year.

There were also references to Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen, Joe Jackson’s Nineteen Forever and Chanel 19 (by some strange coincidence Coco Chanel was presented the famous Chanel logo – two C’s elegantly locked together – by the owner of the Chateau de Cremat about a century ago!) and of course the twelve grandmasters were welcomed, with a special mention for Vasily Ivanchuk, ‘Mr Amber’, who participated in all 19 tournaments. Once the drawing of lots had taken place, we could start to think about the pairings for the first round and the overall chances of the participants. Who is the top-favourite for first place? Vladimir Kramnik, who won a record of six Amber tournaments? Levon Aronian, who won the last two editions? Or Magnus Carlsen, the world’s number one, who very appropriately celebrated his 19th birthday a couple of months ago? In any case the opening round didn’t go as they may have hoped. Not at all.

Today at 14.30 the first round started of a blindfold and rapid spectacle that will keep us entertained for the coming fortnight (the 11th and last round is on March 25). As always the players started with two blindfold sessions (in each of which six GMs played) followed by two rapid sessions and immediately there were some intriguing pairings.

When Ruslan Ponomariov saw at the drawing of lots that he had to play Boris Gelfand in the first round, he wondered aloud if he had to play Gelfand for the rest of his life. What he meant to say was that this was his first official competition since the dramatic final Gelfand and he played in the World Cup last December, a lengthy final that was only decided in the blitz games. Ponomariov’s second remark was that he wanted to have his revenge for that lost final. The only problem was that the first game was a blindfold game and his experience in that discipline was almost zero. In fact he had asked to play a training game on the day of his arrival in Nice. To avoid any complications he decided to play fast and to remain fully concentrated, not even considering the option of going to the toilet if needed. The approach worked well, as with the help of Gelfand his opening was a great success and after 15.Ng5 he felt that he was spoiled for choice when looking for a way to exploit his advantage. The game was practically decided when Ponomariov captured Black’s h-pawn. The rest was simple and he converted without any problems. After the game he was greatly relieved that this game for which he had been so nervous had gone so well. ‘Perhaps it turns out that I am not so bad at blindfold chess.’ He also shared his impression of playing chess on a screen that only shows an empty chess board: ‘It’s just like a computer game!’
Ponomariov completed his ‘revenge’ (to avoid any misunderstanding, he was the first to point out that, of course, these two games cannot be compared to the World Cup final) in the rapid game. Spoiling for a fight he came up with an interesting plan in the Grünfeld, sacrificing an exchange for promising play. He indeed got wonderful compensation when Gelfand played 14.f3? where he should have tried 14.Qe3. Suddenly it was a delight to sit behind the black pieces and Ponomariov fully enjoyed the next phase. White still managed to get into an ending with opposite-coloured bishops, but the two extra black pawns quickly carried the day.

Russian champion Alexander Grischuk had his work cut out for him when he immediately had to play Vladimir Kramnik. There could be no misunderstanding about Kramnik’s intentions as he played almost all his moves instantly. ‘He wanted to trick me’, smiled Grischuk after the game. Playing with white he had to leave the initiative to Black, but to his mind Kramnik went too far in his winning attempt. But even if Black ended up in a difficult position, the situation was still far from lost and things only got hopeless when he reverted to the desperate 38…Nxg4, where it seemed that Black could have stayed in the game with 38…Nf3. Now things were easy for Grischuk and the handful of seconds he still had on the clock proved enough to win an important scalp.
Kramnik struck back in the rapid game. After a strongly played opening he obtained a clear advantage and looking back he concluded that Black’s position was difficult after 34.Rd4. But Kramnik praised his opponent for his inventive defence in the next phase and expressed his doubts whether the position was really winning for White (‘That has to be checked with the computer’). However, Grischuk was once again low on time and after 40…Nc3 (he should have played 40…Nb6) Black certainly was lost. The rest wasn’t difficult anymore and Kramnik wrapped up fairly effortlessly.

The encounter between debutants Dominguez and Gashimov took a relatively quiet course, although the grandmaster from Azerbaijan offered to play a sharp Benoni, an invitation that was quietly turned down with Rodriguez. They ended up in a rook endgame that was slightly better for Black, but it was his lavish use of time that did Dominguez in. With more than ten minutes less on the clock he committed a few inaccuracies and when Gashimov stormed down the board with two passed pawns it was clear that the fight was over. After the game Gashimov was congratulated on his blindfold debut and confessed that he had not especially prepared for this unusual type of chess. ‘I played one training game two days ago against Ruslan (Ponomariov), this was my second game.’
The rapid game was a variation of the Italian Game ‘in which many games have been played’, as the database experts call it these days. The key question was if the knight that Gashimov managed to post on e7, was an asset or a weakness. Frantically he calculated variations, considering sacrifices here and there, but there was nothing that worked. In the meantime, Dominguez just stayed put and maintained his position. After some further manoeuvring it was clear that this balance was not going to be upset and a draw was agreed.

Magnus Carlsen openend his blindfold game against Vasily Ivanchuk with 1.a3, aiming for an open battle, unburdened by theory and steering clear of any possible preparation of his opponent. The plan wasn’t a success, even if he managed to win a pawn, but Black got such good compensation that the Norwegian top-seed must have regretted his unorthodox approach. He kept looking for his chances, but Ivanchuk remained fully concentrated and his advantage was such that at some point the white position should collapse. An oversight on move 31 sped up the end of the game and floored another top-favourite.
In the rapid game Carlsen tried to fight back with the Poisoned Pawn of the Najdorf Defence. Afterwards Ivanchuk felt that he again had had sufficient compensation for the sacrificed pawn, but was reluctant to give a concrete assessment of the game as it had been so ‘very complicated’. One move he criticized was 25…Kf7, which allowed him to increase the pressure. They ended up in a rook endgame of three pawns versus two, which Black failed to defend, leading to a sensational 2-0 defeat of the top-seed.

‘It’s been a while, clearly’, Peter Svidler commented after he had beaten Jan Smeets in his first Amber blindfold game in three years. Svidler had an edge from the opening, but Smeets should have been able to hold a draw. Things got funny when Svidler, played his 39th move thinking Black’s bishop was on e6 (it was on d7). That it was not, he found out when Black played 39…Ne6+ and picked up the pawn on g5. This was not a problem in itself as now White can go 40.Nd5+ and pick up the b6 pawn, but not knowing where the black bishop was, Svidler now reasoned that it was on c6, which ‘prevented’ this knight jump. Smeets on his part got confused by White’s 44.Bxg6 and panicked with 45…Be6 when 45…Kg5 was still a draw. Well, in fact he would have even won, as (still thinking the black bishop was on c6) Svidler had planned to answer 45…Kg5 with 46.Be4 Kxh6 47.Bc6, thinking he would capture a bishop but in fact giving one away. After this comedy of errors had ended, Smeets was left with a lost position and had to resign soon.
The rapid game ended in a draw. In a classical Ruy Lopez Black got good play and when he started piling up on White’s a pawn, Smeets decided that instead of defending a pawn that will drop off anyway at some point, he better hand it over immediately for some activity. This turned out to be an excellent exchange and at a certain point his compensation even seemed to turn into more. But his advantage got never concrete and both players could live with the draw that materialized.

Sergey Karjakin obtained a winning position in the blindfold game when in a sharp opening tussle Levon Aronian committed a serious error. Instead of 19…Bg5?, the Armenian grandmaster should have played 19…Bh4 or 19…Rb4. Things looked bleak for Aronian, but then he didn’t win himself a reputation for ‘slow-motion’ swindling for nothing last year. And this time, too, he almost escaped when Karjakin allowed a repetition of moves. But Aronian was going for the whole hog and thinking he was winning he didn’t repeat moves, but played 36…Nxc3, which turned out to be a losing move.
In the rapid game Levon Aronian showed a different face and put his opponent under pressure right from the opening. Perhaps this permanent pressure also explained the mistake Karjakin made at the end of the game. Instead of hanging on in a dubious ending he blundered and even got mated.

Report & photos © official website, more here

Videos

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Blindfold | Rapid, via TWIC

The first round was on Saturday. The Official site seems very well put together with live games, video and commentaries. However on day one they did have problems coping with the level of traffic, but there has been a steady improvement since then. It marks a trend this year which seems to indicate traffic to official sites has been increasing.

Play starts at 2:30pm UK time. All the live games and their results are now up along with previous rounds complete. chess-results.com has the full official results and standings and the latest pairings.

• Beginner's Repertoire at Chessgames.com
  The link presents a game collection from Chessgames.com with great classic games showing you how to crush people with the Moeller and other Giuoco lines.  It's essentially a complete repertoire in games -- just click your way through them and you get the basic theoretical ideas and tactics.
• "Don't Shoot the Piano Player!" by Leviathan at Chessgames.com
  Another great games collection that serves as an excellent introduction to Giuoco Piano themes and ideas.
• Exeter Chess Club's The Italian Game for Beginners by Dr. Dave (e-book in PDF)
  Tricks, traps and tactical ideas in the Italian lines, including the Evans, Moeller Attack, and others.  This little e-book makes a great beginner's introduction to Giuoco Piano themes.
• Swansong of the Giuoco Piano, Part 1 (Kibitzer #64 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano, Part 2: The Case for the Defence (Kibitzer #65 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano on Trial, Part 3: The Summing Up (Kibitzer #69 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano on Trial: White Wins the Case (Kibitzer #70 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano Revisited (Kibitzer #118 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
  This five part series of articles on the Giuoco Piano lines with c3 and d4 for White -- mostly focused on the Moeller Attack and Rossolimo's Bd2 line with only some discussion of others -- gives a great overview to the Giuoco Piano theory and is remarkably pro-White in the final analysis.  In the last article, Harding returns to the Giuoco by way of reviewing Pinski's book, focusing on the critical lines vs the Moeller Attack and the Rossolimo Variation.

• The Lolli Attack by Michael Goeller 
• The Lolli Attack at Chess Teaching and Lessons 
• Back to Basics (Opening Lanes #121 at ChessCafe, January 2009) by Gary Lane
  Covers the Lolli and Fried Liver attacks.
• Giuoco Piano, Two Knights, Fried Liver (C57) by Richard Westbrook (Farragut Chess Club 2006) -- see also Paul Morphy Fried Liver Attack.
  A useful article on how to win the Fried Liver Attack.
• Fried Liver Attack, Pratt-Wolford 1976 by John Pratt
  A useful introduction to the Fried Liver for beginners.
• The Fegatello Attack (Unorthodox Openings Newsletter #2) by Paul Valle
  Available in the archive or download the issue of UON.  Offers some deep analysis showing how Black might survive the traditional Fried Liver with 6.Nxf7.
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part One by Boris Alterman (June 1, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Two by Boris Alterman (June 6, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Three by Boris Alterman (June 13, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Four by Boris Alterman (June 16, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Five by Boris Alterman (June 19, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Six by Boris Alterman (June 29, 2008)
  A useful presentation for amateur players focused mostly on the 6.Nxf7 lines, culminating in the annotated game Morphy - NN, New Orleans simul 1858 which features the Lolli Attack.

• The Fritz and Ulvestad Variations by Steven Craig Miller for the Renaissance Knights Club
  A very useful quick-start guide on these critical lines.
• Open Games Revisited: The Two Knights (November 2005, Kibitzer #114) by Tim Harding
  Covers both the Fritz/Ulvestadt and main lines after Ng5.
  
• Charbonneau - Schneider, USCL 2009 without notes -- I hope to find some material on the web analyzing this game.
• Death of the Main-Line Ulvestad by Mark Ginsburg
  A very pro-White analysis refuting the Ulvestad.  See also his comments on Zierk - Friedel, embedded.
• Vallejo-Pons vs Naiditsch, European Teams 2007
• New Investigations in the Two Knights Defense (September 2008, Kibitzer #148) by Tim Harding
• Friedel's Fritz-Ulvestad Wins Again by Michael Goeller 
• GM Josh Friedel Plays the Ulvestad by Michael Goeller
• Two Knights Defense, Fritz-Ulvestad Variation by Michael Goeller
• Two Knights, Ulvestad by Katar at Chessvideos  
• Two Knights Fritz Notes by Pete Tamburro (forum only requires free registration to access).

An interesting development is taking place at the European Individual Championships in Rijeka, Croatia. Participants in the tournament have shown their aversion to the “zero tolerance” rule which states that a player must be present when the round starts or suffer a forfeit. It was a matter of time before a protest would put an end to the policy. There would be nothing else to do if players held fast to the protest.

This issue became the focal point of a controversy at the 2008 Olympiad where FIDE instituted the rule change without testing it. There were about 20 forfeitures at the Olympiad and inconsistent rulings on the matter. A good percentage of the forfeits involved African and Caribbean teams.

There have been other high profile cases such as the Chinese Championship where Zhou Jianchao forfeited to Ding Liren, the eventual champion. Hou Yifan also forfeited despite being in the hall, but not at the board. Discussion on this issue has not abated since it had been imposed. The other getting a lot of attention was the policy on cell phones ringing. That rule has been widely accepted an automatic infraction and loss of game.

A petition was circulated and 110 players (more than 25% of total) signed in support of a 30-minute grace period. Organizer Damir Vrhovnik had this to say,

The organizers are trying to do their best for the sake of our players. In accordance to that, on the behalf of Organizing committee and myself, I support the participants’ request. However, this question is under the European Chess Union’s jurisdiction and therefore, they are the ones who must make the decision.

What does this mean? It probably means that the organizers will capitulate and make the allowance. FIDE rules do allow for flexibility and leave it to the discretion of the organizers. However, this is the first protest of the rule which is said to be draconian. At the 2008 Olympiad, there was a vote and the players voted overwhelmingly for a grace period.

One of the main problems with imposing this rule in Dresden, Germany was the fact that all federations were not housed in a village. In some cases, teams had to take an hour tram ride while others were within walking distance. Of course, there may be no such exception made at the 2010 Olympiad. However, the following regulation is still in the rulebook,

7.4 Start and finish of the session

Five minutes before play commences, the Tournament Director must announce the approaching start of the session by a double acoustic signal.

The beginning of the playing session shall be announced by a single acoustic signal. Once the signal for the start of the round has been given, the clock of the player with the white pieces shall be started by his opponent. If the player of the black pieces is not present at the appointed time, his clock shall be started by the player with white, but without any move being made by the latter. Then, when the player of the black pieces arrives, he shall start his opponents clock and the latter shall make his first move. If both players are absent, whites clock shall be started by the Match Arbiter. Any player arriving at the chessboard more than one hour late shall forfeit the game. If both players arrive more than one hour late, the game shall be declared lost for both of them.

FIDE: http://www.fide.com/fide/handbook?id=94&view=article
Main Site: http://www.eurorijeka2010.com/home
ChessBase: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6171

Black has taken White's f-pawn, leaving White exposed. Is there a way to deal with it?

Stefansson-Djurhuus, Munkebo 1998. White to play.

RB Over the last few columns we have been looking at the f-pawn as battering ram – an early, bullish advance to break open the enemy king's position with sheer aggression. But here the f-pawn has been exchanged very early – on the seventh move! There is no ram with which to batter, and the rook on f1, the usual beneficiary of any successful f-pawn push, is staring down at a solid phalanx of enemy pawns. Manoeuvring rather than force seems to be called for. But manoeuvre what where?

Looking at White's own setup, there's an obvious target for Black in the e3 pawn. Can I advance it to e4 and, with exchanges, try to rid myself of the weakness? 1 e4 Nxe4 (not 1…fxe4 because of 2 Bg5) 2 Nxe4 – oh, oh, I can already see this is not going to work out well – 2…fxe4 3 Bxe4 and now 3…Rxf1+ 4 Kxf1 (4 Qxf1 loses the knight) Qf6+ and it's horrible for White.

One way to protect the e-pawn would be to plant a knight on e6, the only problem being that e6 is covered by Black's light-squared bishop. This is as far as my thinking goes. I'm in a hole – I'll let the grandmaster dig me out.

DK Black has made an early f-pawn advance but White has it under control: it cannot move on, and that means the bishop on c8 and rook on f8 have limited scope. That's why I would not consider 1 e4 at all – why free those pieces?

As Ronan mentions, the e6 square is weak, and that's where I would focus my thoughts. The knight on d4 is perfectly placed, so why not bring a second knight into play? White can do that with 1 Nce2, threatening to pirouette via f4 into e6, and from there a knight would paralyse Black's entire position. If only Black could retreat his pawn back to f7. Now we are seeing the downside to kick-and-run chess: you leave yourself exposed at the back if the attack peters out. I hope the England football team are taking note.

chess@guardian.co.uk

Having read mostly chess improvement books and opening manuals lately, I was delighted to see a new publication in the best tradition of chess writing: a serious tournament book. Strangely, it’s a tradition that seems rather unpopular these days – a very unfortunate development indeed.

The tournament book tradition has given us many classics, e.g. Bronstein on Zürich 1953, Alekhine on Nottingham 1936 and, more recently, Jan Timman on Curacao 1962. Nowadays, tournament books are a rare guest among the countless opening guides, chess tutorials and personal game collections. Still, a serious tournament report has many advantages over these other genres.

If a single game is like a newspaper column, and a game collection is like a short story, a collection of all games from one tournament is, in my view, like a full-grown novel, with different story-lines and intricate plots, small personal dramas and highlights, seemingly trivial details and an intricate plot leading up to a satisfying or thought-provoking finish. I would like you to see Mihail Marin and Yuri Garrett’s Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, published by Quality Chess, as an intriguing and well-written novel, rather than ‘just another’ chess book on the market.

On of the characteristics of a good tournament book is that all games are seriously analysed. As Garrett, the tournament’s technical director, writes in the introduction, in the current book, 25 out of the total of 45 games are analysed by at least one of the combatants, 3 of them present the views of both players and the remaining 20 have been annotated by GM Mihail Marin.

One of the very nice things is of this is that quick, ‘boring’ draws are also seriously analysed. This is something you don’t see in regular game collections or in New in Chess magazine, but I’ve always found it very instructive to see how the big guys make these draws, especially with such an outstanding explicator as Marin commenting them:

Korchnoi-Almasi
Reggio Emilia (2) 2007

How realistic are White’s chances of retaining even a tiny edge? In the absence of knights, there is no way to take advantage of the relative weakness of the d6-square. Speaking about “ifs”, under certain circumstances a knight jump to f6 would have been devastating. The way it is, I see only one (highly unrealistic) possibility: exchange all the rooks in order to avoid any form of counterplay, install the queen on e4 to dominate both wings, and advance (by some miracle) the b-pawn to b5, in order to put the black pawns placed on dark squares in potential danger. Admittedly, there is no way all this could happen.

16.Bxb7 Maybe Korchnoi’s initial intention was to keep control of the long diagonal with 16.Qf3. However, in this case he would have lost control of another important avenue, the d-file, after 16…Bxe4 17.Qxe4 Rad8 18.Rad1 Rd7! followed by …Rfd8. This would also have led to plain equality.

16…Qxb7 17.Qe2 Rfd8 18.Rad1 Qc6 19.f4 g6 20.Qg2 This is the only way to try to activate his position, but the almost complete simplifications that follow lead to a dead draw.

20…Qxg2+ 21.Kxg2 h5 22.Kf3 Kf8 23.Ke4 Rxd1 24.Rxd1 Rd8 25.Rxd8+ Bxd8 26.h3 Ke8 27.g4 hxg4 28.hxg4 Kd7 When this position was reached, Korchnoi said in a loud voice, “What can I do?” A draw was agreed.

Of course, the tournament not only consisted of solid draws, but also of some very spectacular and beautiful chess. And again, Marin takes us by the hand towards a crystal-clear understanding of the games.

Almasi-Marin
Reggio Emilia (5), 2008

28.e6! White sacrifices his central pawn to clear the e5-square for his knight and make the e-file available for his rook. Black’s contorted piece coordination, which was quite functional in the closed position before Almasi’s breakthrough, will soon lead me to defeat. (…)

28….Qxe6 29.Ne5 c6 To tell the truth, I was still optimistic at this point, especially since, judging from his physical reaction, I knew Almasi had overlooked this defensive resource. My pleasant state of mind was not altered by his next strong move.

30.Bd2!! I would have enjoyed playing one of my favourite type of defensive positions – an exchange down – after 30.Nxg6 hxg6. Then Black has practically no weaknesses and his structure is much better than White’s. Moreover, if the black knight reaches the e4-square, White would be in trouble.

In this fragment, we see Marin at his best. He honestly describes his emotions yet manages to stay objective all the time, enabling him to explain the technical details without ever becoming boring or repetitive. He also shows a constant concern for the reader trying to make assessments of the arising positions. Marin even comes to the rescue in annotations by the other participants, when they have not been explicit enough to Marin’s satisfaction. The very first game of the book is a good example: Zoltan Almasi analyses his victory over Pentala Harikrishna in a solid, but rather clinical fashion, so Marin jumps in at several points in the analysis to add useful comments like “It may seem that Black has regrouped his forces harmoniously and his kingside counterplay is developing without problems. However, White’s space advantage in the centre and on the queenside should not be underestimated.”

Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 (it started on December 29, 2007) was in many ways perfect for a tournament book. Not only were there a number of world-class players such as Vugar Gashimov and David Navara, but also the legendary Viktor Korchnoi was present, as well as two rising stars from Asia (Pentala Harakrishna and Ni Hua), and of course Mihail Marin himself. As is good practice in a literary review, I won’t give away the ending of the ‘novel’, nor any other spoilers. In the end, however, it’s the moves and the games that tell the story of this tournament, not the results.

I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself into this tournament (even though I had never seen a single game from it before), identifying with the players and the problems they were facing during the games, and I suddenly felt it as a real loss that such books are hardly ever written anymore these days. I think a tournament book is the closest a chessplayer can come to identifying with fictional characters, and it’s a true pleasure to be able to enjoy the excitement of chess for once without having to think about improving my own game or updating my opening or endgame knowledge. This is simply top level chess entertainment.

Apart from the tournament itself (the heart of the book) there are numerous interesting extras in Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, such as excellent interviews with the players, a history of the Reggio Emilia tournament (including some memorable games from past editions) and a sympathetic description by Garrett of how this particular tournament was organised. Garrett is a keep observer who not only loves to watch the games but also the players themselves:

It was also interesting to witness the cultural differences between the players, ranging from Almasi’s assertive comments to the hesitant and modest ones by the Chinese warrior, Ni Hua (…). Gashimov whispered his fascinating comments, which were charcterized by a wildly tactical approach (albeit with that raw touch so typical of the young player who has yet to fully exploit his potential).

I hope readers will consider buying this very charming book; perhaps it will energize publishers to publish more serious tournament reports. It’s too beautiful a tradition to be written off already.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Reggio Emilia 2007/2008
• Read more book reviews

We were surprised to find that the previous Lubbock Chess Club had disbanded several years ago. In our online search we found a newsletter generated by the TTU Knight Raiders that led us to a “chess game night” at Barnes & Noble on a Friday night. There, we met several members of the Knight Raiders and the idea of reviving the Lubbock Chess Club was born.

2. What is the relationship of the Lubbock Chess Club with SPICE and/or the TTU Knight Raider Chess Club?

Once we began playing routinely several nights a week with members of the Knight Raiders, it was brought to Susan Polgar’s attention that we were interested in starting Lubbock Chess Club.

She immediately jumped in and helped us to initially organize our efforts and to locate a weekly meeting place. Combined with the ongoing support and participation of the Knight Raiders, we have had very successful club attendance to date.

3. Who is welcome to come and play with the Lubbock Chess Club? Are novice chess players and kids welcome to play?

All are welcome. Male or female, any age or skill level. Chess is a game for people of all ages and you can learn to play at any time. So come play even if you have never seen a chess board or if you are a highly advanced player.

4. How many players typically come and play at the Lubbock Chess Club, and what is the typical strength of those players?

It varies. We have an average of 18 to 20 regular players. Some nights we have as many as 30 plus players and 12 to 14 on others.

5. Is there a fee to join the Lubbock Chess Club?

At this time there is not a fee to join the club. However, in order to provide for the membership in the future we are in the process of formalizing the club with officers, by-laws, constitution and, of course, fees. Preliminary discussion on fees has been $20 per year for an adult membership, $15 per year for college students, and $10 per year for persons younger than 18.

6. What are some upcoming events that the Lubbock Chess Club is planning?

Since we are still getting off the ground we don’t have any events on the current schedule. We plan on sponsoring tournaments, leagues, chess ladders, and blitz tournaments in the future.

7. Why do you like playing chess?

In my opinion, chess is the ultimate game having a positive effect on a player’s attitude toward learning and cognitive achievement.

Chess play engages the human brain and employs new ways of thinking, imaginative processes, and creativity. Chess also develops your critical and analytical thinking ability and contributes to the increase of intelligence, problem solving skills, memorization and concentration. A little competition is also great for mental alertness, patience, sportsmanship, as well as challenging your sense of accomplishment.

8. How do you like playing chess at Lin’s Buffet on Mondays?

Lin’s provides us with a large, open, comfortable area to meet and play along with a wide variety of delicious food items to choose from. They offer a 10 percent discount to all members and, while we encourage dining, it is completely optional.

8. Where do you see the Lubbock Chess Club six months from now, and one year from now?

The current version of the Lubbock Chess Club is in its infancy. In the future we hope to offer chess instruction for any age and a comprehensive chess library available to all members.

Our primary purpose is to have fun and to promote the popularity of chess. We hope to eventually conduct tournaments and other forms of chess competition.

I feel that our membership will increase with time and advertising. As for the community, we hope to reach out to the school districts in the Lubbock area and promote the subject of chess and hopefully integrate it into their scholastic curriculum.

Source: http://www.lubbockonline.com

Chess daily news from Susan Polgar

Chess players love wooden chess sets for their massive, easy-playing pieces, their obvious superiority over cheap plastic stuff and their distinguished classical look. But what about their sustainability?

I got interested in this question after seeing an advertisement for a truly magnificent chess set called the ‘Endangered Parrots of the World Chess Set’. Created by Grant Dawson Collections in the United States, it is “hand made from certified sustainable North American hardwoods (walnut and maple), food safe natural finishes with recycled glass ball feet, and features 32 lead-free pewter playing pieces finished in 24k gold or sterling silver.”

The set is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, but it’s not exactly cheap: if you’re interested, you can buy it here for the nice sum of $5000. It’ll buy you this:

Endangered Parrots of the World Chess Set

That’s much more expensive, for instance, than the slightly less serious Freshwater vs. Saltwater Fish Chess Set or the various Animal Chess Sets that are sold on the internet. (”Endangered species will live on, healthy and free, in your own controlled temperature living room. Beware if you lose a piece or you could be in trouble with the Feds.”)

This is all good fun, of course (in fact, I can’t help mentioning a marvellous – if not really environmentally ‘correct’ – Through the Looking-Glass chess set, with pieces vanishing as soon as they are captured!) – but what about regular, Staunton-style chess sets?

I personally became interested in deforestation and sustainability issues after a visit a few years ago to Easter Island (which was completely deforested by its original people) and after reading Jared Diamond’s influential book Collapse (2005) about the collapse of great civilizations in the past and present, which deals about deforestation in great detail. As Diamond writes:

More than half of the world’s original area of forest has already been converted to other uses, and at present conversion rates one-quarter of the forests that remain will become converted within the next half-century. Those losses of forests represent losses for us humans, especially because forests provide us with timber and other raw materials, and because they provide us with so-called ecosystem services such as protecting our watersheds, protecting soil against erosion, constituting essential steps in the water cycle that generates much of our rainfall, and providing habitat for most terrestial plant and animal species. Deforestation was a or the major factor in all the collapses of past societies described in this book.

I tried searching for the word ’sustainable’ on a couple of well-known chess vendor sites such as The House of Staunton and the online shop of the London Chess Centre, but got a No products matched your search criteria in all cases. (One of the very few hits I got at all on Google was for a recyced chess set on Cool Gadgets.com. Pretty cool indeed, but hardly useful for even the smallest-sized chess tournament.)

I looked for more information online on the type of wood that’s used in chess sets. Again, it’s not easy finding out about this. On one site, I learned that “rosewood is a very popular type of wood used for chess men.” This would be bad news, since rosewood is in fact a tropical hardwood which is hugely overexploited. Still, a quick look at some retailer’s sites show that this is indeed one of the most commonly used wood for chess sets. According to the BBC,

The most reliable way to choose environmentally friendly timber and wooden products is to look out for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) logo. The FSC is a charity which certifies wood, paper and other tree products that have come from sustainability managed forests. (…) Wood from trees native to Europe, such as pine, oak, beech and birch, pose lower environment risks than those from tropical and subtropical trees such as mahogany, teak, rosewood and ebony.

The widely-used Digital DGT wooden boards are made of rosewood. On the website of the USCF Shop, too, most chess sets (both pieces and boards, and both ‘tournament’ and ‘luxury’ sets) seem to be made from rosewood, ebony or mahogany. And on this site, too, the word ’sustainable’ doesn’t return any pages. (There are ecologically sustainable types of rosewood, such as Santos Palisander, but again it is unclear (at best) whether this palisander type is used for the chess boards advertised on these websites.) In fact, one of the very few websites that explicity features ’sustainable chess sets’ is the English ShopWiki, which links the so-called Negiel Decorative Staunton Wooden Chess Set:

Folding wooden chess set by Negiel, comprising of an ornate stained wooden chess board and traditional Staunton style weighted chess pieces. Quality product made in Europe from carefully selected high quality sustainable wood.

The sustainable Negiel Staunton chess set doesn't look so bad, does it? (Apart from the wrongly placed king and queen, that is.)

It’s also quite cheap (certainly compared to the Endangered Parrots one!): £44.99, and it will be in stock from April this year on. But again, on the above-mentioned online shops, you’ll search in vain for the Negiel chess set, as far as I can tell.

I phoned Joris van Vuure of Chess and Go Shop Het Paard in Amsterdam, one of the largest chess equipment sellers in The Netherlands, to ask him what, if anything, he knew about sustainable chess sets. “Well, to be honest I’ve never thought about it,” Joris van Vuure told me. “Our customers – including the Dutch Chess Federation – simply never ask for it. They are obviously interested in the price and quality of the chess sets, but not their sustainability. Our top-selling chess sets are mostly made of mahogany, palissander or boxwood. Boxwood pieces are usually painted, which you can easily recognize because the black pieces are really black, whereas the others have a natural dark wood colour. I personally thought boxwood is sustainable, but I’m not sure.”

In fact, the sustainability of boxwood (or buxus as it says on the chess sets) is questionable. It’s an extremely hard type of wood which makes it very suitable for many things, including chess pieces, but it’s often overexploited and its sustainability really depends on where the plant was cultivated. Even if some boxwood would deserve to get the benefit of the doubt (Het Paard sells a lot of them, which is a good thing!), rosewood, mahogany and other tropical hardwoods wouldn’t.

Van Vuure says their shop would be interested in marketing explicitly sustainable chess sets, possibly even with an FSC logo, but he doubts whether customers would want to pay more for them. “In fact, many of our customers explicitly say they want nice wooden products rather than plastic ones, which obviously look cheap and actually have a bad image environmentally speaking. It’s a complicated issue, but if we could market it in a good way, without confusing customers, why not?”

Exactly how bad is it that we chess players mostly use unsustainable wooden chess sets, and what can be done about it? To quickly answer the first question: I have no idea – but it certainly doesn’t help. As often with these things, it’s clearly better in any case to be part of the solution, instead of the problem. Besides, I’m pretty sure more chess sets are being sold each day than expensive musical instruments made of the same materials, so there’s another clue. Finally, while unsustainble furniture at least looks really nice, I really wouldn’t be able to spot the difference between a maple chess set and a boxwood one. Nor would I much care: as long are the pieces are heavy (which can be achieved in other ways as well) and they don’t look too distracting, it’s all perfectly fine by me.

The second question seems tougher. I can advice you to buy a sustainable chess set next time, and you can tell your chess-playing friends, but even if you’d be willing to follow my advice, when will that be? And how effective will that be in the grand scheme of things anyway? It’ll also look decidedly pedantic to complain with your local club staff about the nice sets they just bought to please their club members: gee, thanks for the support!

This is an example of what marine scientist Jennifer Jacquet, who studies the overfishing problem, calls horizontal agitation:

Horizontal agitation is peer pressure combined with a pejorative element of what is socially or environmentally unacceptable. One friend lambasts me if she sees me with a disposable coffee cup. Another one does when I drive instead of walk. A British colleague in fisheries told me he could no longer bear dinner with his “middle-class friends” because they would pester him about the hypocrisy of his seafood consumption.

Although horizontal agitation can be beneficial, as studies have shown, Jacquet thinks there’s a better way: vertical agitation.

Choosing a MSC-certified fish over another is not going to relieve overfishing — not when one trawler today can remove 60 tonnes of fish from the ocean in a single haul. The way to get big changes quickly and maximize the effect of our scrutiny is with vertical agitation.

Vertical agitation means working higher in the demand chain. Rather than consumers hassling consumers, vertical agitation implies consumers hassle mega-consumers (chefs, managers, retailers, universities) or government. Today’s conservation movement, like the industries it seeks to revolutionize, must make big changes quickly. It can do this best with vertical agitation. (…) [A] colleague, Claire Nouvian, managed to arrange a meeting with President Sarkozy and vertically agitated him into supporting a CITES listing of bluefin tuna.

In terms of chess sets, the problem is obviously not as big as, say, slavery or the extinction of the bluefish tuna. Nor will buying sustainable chess sets alone save the world’s rainforests. But, as Joris van Vuure says, why not give it a try? At least unsustainable chess sets are not subsidized by FIDE! Chess organizers and federations could use nicely made plastic chess sets only (there are nice plastic sets, I’ve seen them myself!) or they could ask retailers about sustainable wooden sets. They might even be subsidized because of it!

Retailers, especially small ones already offering that little ’something extra’ to customers, should in my view seriously consider importing (and marketing) more sustainable wooden chess sets made of, for instance, oak or beech, even if perhaps they don’t always look as posh as some of the tropical of subtropical hardwood products. After all, in no-nonsense tournament chess, nobody ever really looks at the pieces for their beauty, do they? As long as they’re not distracting, surely it’s the chess that matters, not the board and pieces?

Finally, FIDE (Gens una sumus) itself should also be listening closely. Since they seem to have a liking for introducing weird new rules, here’s a suggestion for them: order all FIDE-rated tournaments to play with plastic or sustainable wooden chess sets. And they shouldn’t just do it because they like new rules, either. Like most ’sustainability’ initiatives, it could actually save them real money in the long run. What with all the financial troubles of our dear World Chess Federation, might this not be music to their ears?

Peter Doggers relayed a report from a Russian website that 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov will seek to win the FIDE Presidency. This comment comes after much grumbling about FIDE temperamental policies. “It is necessary to restore order,” said a resolute Karpov. He continued to strengthen his argument, “The problems with the World Championship, the calendar, changes of decisions, changes during a cycle, this didn’t happen before. Besides, the prestige of the World Champion should return to its old level.”

The current President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov ran in 2006 on the platform of unifying the World Championship and providing more visibility for professional chess. While the championship cycle had been mended with the ascendancy of Viswanathan Anand, the process was fraught with a number of midstream changes. Ilyumzhinov and his cabinet are also responsible for a number of unpopular changes including the “no tolerance” rule.

It is not clear what Karpov’s platform will be, but leading up to the 2010 Olympiad in Siberia, he will certainly have one laid out. It is ironic that an interesting interview can be found on the Chess Fidelity site that Ilyumzhinov used for his campaign. Karpov predicted that Ilymuzhinov’s chances were 100%. In this interview Karpov talked about his championship days, Bobby Fischer, his FIDE candidacy in 2005. In that view he made some interesting comments about the FIDE elections.

Source: http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/karpov-candidate-for-fide-president/#more-22636

Interview: http://www.chessfidelity.com/elections.php?txt_id=75

For the year 2010, the Sacramento Chess Club will need to pay $3,432 in rent to the City of Sacramento for the use of the Redwood Room. ... In a recent informal discussion with the staff of the Hart Senior Center, it appears likely that the rental rates for the Redwood Room will increase during the course of the year. This puts the Sacramento Chess Club in an untenable financial position.

During the last several months, an unsuccessful search has been on-going to find a new location for the Club to meet. Although there are still some possibilities being investigated, the outlook appears bleak for staying in the downtown Sacramento area. ... The Sacramento Chess Club has a long, rich chess history in the community and state of California. Your help is vital to the continuation of the Sacramento Chess Club and its place in the community.

Ajedrez y ansiedad

Por la Lic. María Enriqueta Granero – Psicóloga

¿como podríamos hacer para mantener la ansiedad en niveles óptimos?

Nota Previa: En las búsquedas que uno hace por Internet suele encontrarse con muchas cosas. Está en cada uno saber aprovecharlas y distinguir lo importante de lo accesorio.

Para ser breve, encontré el muy buen sitio ajedrezconmaestros.com y en él las magníficas notas sobre “Ajedrez y Psicología" de la Lic. Granero. He pedido permiso para reproducirlas y cortésmente, tanto el MI Fernando Braga como la Lic. Granero han permitido la reproducción de los artículos; así como también nos han ofrecido el espacio para que nuestros lectores ”puedan también integrarse a realizar preguntas que consideren importantes y ella no tendrá problemas en contestarlas.”

My first reaction when I learned about the book Improve Your Chess at any Age was one of sheer jealousy: some club player writing a book about chess improvement?! How unfair! There must be thousands of club players around the world who’d want the exact same thing – including me.

This is the last part of a ‘triptych’ on recent chess improvement books – you can find the other two reviews here. I’ve written before that in my view there are really too much ‘improve your chess’ books on the market; fortunately, some of them are very good and you may be surprised to hear that I like Andres Hortillosa’s Improve Your Chess at any Age as well.

Actually, the book is every patzer’s childhood dream: an entire book (170 pages, beautifully published by Everyman Chess) dedicated to your own games, where you get to write about your thoughts on chess in general and during the games; your favourite style and your ideas on chess development theory! Too good to be true, right? Well, as we say in Dutch, chess publishers may be good, but they’re not crazy, and Hortillosa has a little more up his sleeve than just patzer analyses and ditto philosophies.

Yes, it’s true: Andres D. Hortillosa is a ‘mere’ 2199 FIDE player who just wrote a book on how he improved over the years at a, shall we say, riper age than most of us start to play chess. And yes, most of the games and game fragments are from Hortillosa’s own games. But why is that necessarily a bad thing? On the very first pages of the book, the author presents himself as a modest guy with good intentions, wisely anticipating some of his future critics but not bending over backwards to please them. He also says some pretty sensible, if not terribly spectacular, things about chess improvement targeting an audience of players with a rating below 2000. My first impression after reading the introduction was that perhaps this somewhat oddly-titled (and marketed) book deserved the benefit of the doubt.

This feeling was confirmed by some of the stuff in Chapter One, where Hortillosa paves the way for his theories on chess improvement and shows some of his past games. Again, note that his commentary, though not exactly grandmasterly, is certainly sensible, down-to-earth, and will definitely evoke a pang of recognition with most club players:

Hortillosa-Hartsook
Denver 1994
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 h6 4.Bxf6 Qxf6 5.e4 Nc6 6.c3 g5
To my mind this move is a little committal, although a number of strong players have used this advance. Karpov played …g6 in one of his games, although that was without …Nc6.

Amateurs including myself tend to make inflexible moves. We tend to forget that pawns do not move backwards. And once they are fixed on a square, they are subject to attack and they tend to leave you with limited options.

This may not be a huge shocker to advanced chess players, but anyone who’s ever trained weaker players knows what it feels like to constantly have to remind your pupils to ‘keep your hands off these pawns already!’ It’s a very good point and one that shows Hortillosa may actually have something to offer club players that truly strong players often don’t: to speak to them in their own languages and with examples from their own level of play. I myself have often been frustrated by how strong players often take stuff like this ‘for granted’. Hortillosa, you can be sure, never does. Here’s another example from the same game after Black has played 13…e5 (and before White played 14.d5):

Amateurs, when confronted with situations like this one, tend to resolve tensions rather hastily. I guess amateur thinking dislikes complexity so there is a strong tendency to simplify at the first opportunity. So, it is either capture on e5 or advance to d5. I can opt to maintain the pawn on d4 with Ndb3, but it will invite Black to harass the knight on b3 with …a6-a5-a4. (…) In general, however, one must learn to play comfortably with contact-tension on the board. Keep the tension as long as tolerable. See if you can force your opponent to waste a tempo in resolving the tension. For example, avoid capturing defenceless pawns right away. Often, a developing or centralizing move is the better choice.

Again, I was impressed by how well Hortillosa points to something weak players often struggle with. I could quote countless examples from my own games where I incorrectly resolved the tension in the game (as well as, fortunately, examples where I successfully put the pressure on by increasing pawn tension!). This is good, useful stuff.

In Chapter Two, Hortillosa elaborates on his ideas on chess improvement and thinking, the sum of which he calls, with a clear undertone of self-mocking (thank God!), ‘The System’. His approach here is more theoretical, but fortunately, he never becomes too vague (or too pretentious) for comfort. Again, what Hortillosa writes won’t sound too novel to people who’ve already read their Rowson, Watson and other chess philosophers, but one of the charms of Improve Your Chess at any Age is that there’s a real sense of personal involvement of the author in much of what he claims:

After this reflection, I concluded that my chess was totally devoid of any semblance of a thinking process. (…) I am passionately drawn to fixing things including those that work to make them even better. It was not hard to see my chess requiring more than just cosmetic repair; it needed total replacement. Disgusted with the status quo, I formulated a chess thinking process inspired by the combined philosophies of Cleanroom Software Engineering and Six-Sigma, which are known for their strong emphasis on error prevention.

To be honest, I didn’t always find Hortillosa’s opinions on thinking processes too convincing. For instance, one of the things he claims is that chess tactics puzzles often miss their mark because they focus on the finding of the solution instead of creating a practical game-situation where a (tactical) resolution can be created (’Anyone can solve a puzzle, but can anyone play the moves leading to the puzzle?’). I think this is only partly true: sure, it’s important to know the ‘context’ of a tactic, but solving puzzles does sharpen the mind and it definitely creates a reservoir of ‘chess tactics knowledge’ in the brain which may be extremely useful in later games, as many chess prodigies have clearly demonstrated.

In a chapter called ‘Are Openings Really Important?’, Hortillosa makes some valid points on studying opening theory (’stronger players are better in confusing us with sidelines than we are at confusing them’) and he gives a couple of great (and often quite hilarious) examples of why having your opponent fall for an opening trap doesn’t always guarantee victory. The main part, however, is explained in ‘The System’, the author’s answer to the question ‘how we prevent these errors from cropping up?’ Hortillosa gives a checklist of eight points you should always be aware of during play. These include things like ‘2. Search for specific threats’ and ‘5. Search for candidate moves’ – good advice, to be sure, but surely Hortillosa doesn’t expect players to answer these eight questions at every move?

Indeed he doesn’t, and here again is the book’s charm: the author shows modesty and self-knowledge by condeding that, of course, ‘the system has some implicit assumptions. One such assumption is knowing when to invoke the system.’ He follows up naming the exceptions, and especially the moments in a game when it does make sense to invoke ‘the system’. (He also gets kudos for questioning ‘the viability of the system’ altogether, ’since evidence is severely lacking’.) The points he makes are useful all the same, and I liked the two examples that illustrate them – but disappointingly, the rest of the book hardly mentions the eight points again explicity and instead focuses on thorough and at times engaging analysis Hortillosa’s tournament games from 2008 and 2009.

The result of this is perhaps the book’s only real problem: it’s overlong; I’d say it’s at least 50 pages too long. Like all chess enthusiasts, Hortillosa just loves to talk about his own games and to describe the thoughts that went through his head during them – and he knows he’s pretty good at it – but it’s just too much. Sometimes the explanation of ten perfectly normal opening moves is spread out over two and a half pages, and we get comments like this:

MacIntyyre-Hortillosa
Pawtucket 2008
Position after 7…Nf6

I normally do not continue with …Nf6, especially when … e6 has been played. Looking at this game one week later, I could not remember what I was afraid of that led me to post the knight on f6 instead of following generally established wisdom, which dictates playing it to e7. I was probably mixing systems here, a known defect in amateur play. When … e6 is played, Black normally should follow through with … Nge7. These two moves are a natural pair.

You’d think this was already more than enough explanation for a very common opening manoeuvre in a game that will last 60 moves in total, but Hortillosa has only just started:

Most strong players including the late world champion Botvinnik would prefer …Ne7 even with the pawn on e5. The advantage of posting it on e7 is that the natural break f7-f5 is ready to go whereas in the position where the knight is on f6, Black has to waste a tempo before he can play …f5. (…) One data point on the board that rules out …Nf6 in favour of …Ne7 is White’s h2-h3…

And this isn’t even the end of it. I’m not saying Hortillosa doesn’t make some valuable observations along the way, but such lenghty commentary does appear a bit self-serving to me. More importantly, the games in this section, while entertaining, don’t very well explain how Hortillosa’s ’system’ got him the results he achieved. My impression is Hortillosa simply had a lot of time on his hand, studied a lot of chess, received professional training (from IMs and GMs) and made very deep analysis of his games. And lo and behold, he made considerable progress. No ’system’ needed at all!

With that in mind, the rest of Hortillosa’s book does ultimately become ‘just’ any amateur’s dream: a great way to show a lot of, at best, fairly interesting tournament games. They’re all very well analysed, they do contain a lot of useful prose, interesting digressions good advice, but in the end they’re still games played by a 2100 player with an interesting message. It’s an interesting experiment in the sense that this (modest) game level may actually be helpful to players of that level (if only because their mistakes are so recognizable). Personally, though, I prefer playing over games by the big guys, but there you go.

That said, Improve Your Chess at any Age may well offer a glimpse at the future of chess publishing 2.0: everyone has a chess engine these days, so why not publish a book with your own chess games? Andres Hortillosa, at least, has written a very sympathetic version of this new concept, and I think lots of club players will enjoy his writings and recognize (and improve upon) many well-known issues in it.
In the end, Hortillosa’s book should not make us jealous, but inspire us to analyse our own games even better and to formulate our thoughts and mental blockades more transparantly. Hortilossa has given us a pretty good example of how it can be done – at any age.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Improve Your Chess at any Age
• Read more book reviews

Anatoly Karpov will put forward his candidacy to become FIDE President, according to reporters of Russian news agency SarInform. “It is necessary to restore order,” the 12th World Champion reportedly said yesterday.

Sunday night Anatoli Karpov landed at the airport of Saratov, Russia for a simul and a meeting with the local governor. There, according to local news agency SarInform, Karpov announced that he has the ambition to become FIDE President.

“It is necessary to restore order,” Karpov was quoted. “The problems with the World Championship, the calendar, changes of decisions, changes during a cycle, this didn’t happen before. Besides, the prestige of the World Champion should return to its old level.”

The new Presidential elections which will take place during the General Assembly of the FIDE Congress, held during the 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk in September this year. Nominations for the office of President must reach the FIDE Secretariat at least three months before the opening of the General Assembly. To be elected, each candidate must first be nominated by his federation. The Russian Chess Federation hasn’t yet officially nominated Anatoli Karpov as their candidate.

After Bessel Kok’s failed attempt to win the FIDE Presidential elections during the Turin Olympiad in May 2006, Karpov would be another big name fighting against current FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The 12th World Champion never concealed that he’s unhappy with Ilyumzhinov’s policy. During the opening press conference of their rapid and blitz match in Valencia last year, he and his old rival Garry Kasparov took the opportunity to heavily criticize FIDE.

In recent times, Karpov has been occupied mainly as a business man and politician. Since 2005, he has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia. These days he only plays a few tournaments a year.

Links

• The SarInform article
• FIDE Handbook on Electoral Regulations

Sunday night Anatoli Karpov landed at the airport of Saratov, Russia for a simul and a meeting with the local governor. There, according to local news agency SarInform, Karpov announced that he has the ambition to become FIDE President.

“It is necessary to restore order,” Karpov was quoted. “The problems with the World Championship, the calendar, changes of decisions, changes during a cycle, this didn’t happen before. Besides, the prestige of the World Champion should return to its old level.”

Continuamos con la segunda de las tres entregas de ejercicios tácticos de "Doble de Caballo"

Final Round 10

Alexander Grischuk felt that he was lost for much of his game against Francisco Vallejo Pons and that the best position he had was the last one. The Sicilian Najdorf didn't seem quite as bad as this but white definitely had the intitiative and some extra minutes at the end when he decided to repeat the position. This draw left Grischuk with a superior tie-break (better results against the leading players) but waiting for the result of Topalov's game.

Veselin Topalov rather bravely took on Boris Gelfand's super-solid Petroff Defence. Topalov managed to present Gelfand with some new problems but it seemed for a while that black was doing fine. However Gelfand then chose to give up the exchange in the hope that Topalov couldn't break through. Although the position was rather difficult to break down it seems like Topalov should be much better and he chose to exploit this by returning the exchange in a position where he had the advantages of 4 vs 3 pawns on the queenside and black's king was cut off. With best play this probably would have been drawn but getting there was fiendishly complicated. Gelfand got a long way towards securing the draw but then started to go wrong. 48....a2 49. Rd7+ Ke6 was probably drawn a little easier than his 48...Ke8 which took 15 minutes of thought. His 49...a2 seems to be losing (49... Ke7 50. Rh7+ Ke6 51. c4 Ke5 52. Rd7 Rc3 53. Rd5+ Ke4 seems to be the correct drawing idea). Topalov then brought home the full point and secured his first Linares win (he lost out on tie-break to Kasparov in 2005).

Levon Aronian said that after 9 draws in a row (a record for him) he was definitely going to look for a win today and this he mananged. He played a very complicated Modern Benoni against Vugar Gashimov. There were still plenty of pieces on the board at first time control on move 40 and although Aronian had something of an advantage Gashimov's position probably shouldn't have collapsed as fast as it did.

Round 10 Results

Vallejo 1/2 Grischuk
Topalov 1-0 Gelfand
Aronian 1-0 Gashimov

Final Standings: Topalov 6.5, Grischuk 6, Aronian 5.5, Gelfand 4, Gashimov 4, Vallejo 4

The results of the final of the Winton Capital British Chess Solving Championship, 2009-2010 are now available. I hope to post the problems used, and their solutions, in the next day or so.

Topalov es Topalov. Tras la victoria de Grischuk sobre Veselin en la penúltima Ronda la Final se puso caliente e incierta. Topalov ganó a Gelfand y Grischuk salvó la ropa ante Paco Vallejo. Conclusión: Veselin Topalov Campeón de Linares en solitario. Recupera puntos en el Ranking y estaría a 1 punto de Carlsen en el próximo listado.

Tras el duro golpe que el Campeón ruso Alexander Grischuk sobre Veselin Topalov, en la 9na Ronda, alcanzándolo en la punta del torneo, la 10ma y última Ronda prometía un final de suspenso y emoción.

Vallejo Pons, Francisco-Grischuk, Alexander: ½-½ (32). Siciliana Najdorf. Alexander venía de dos victorias y tenía mejor sistema de desempate en caso de compartir la punta con Topalov. Esto le daba buena chance de consagrarse ganador del Linares. Hasta 10. … Ce5 se repetía Anand-Grischuk, Match, Mainz CCM5, Rapid, 2005 (½ en 24). Paco jugó bien –no por nada es un Top 2700-, quedó con iniciativa y da la impresión que tuvo algunas opciones. Grischuk ofreció el peón b7 para movilizar sus piezas y montar contrafuego, pero lógicamente no fue aceptado. No pareció buena 20. … Tab8 y el Blanco quedó con la pareja de Alfiles y un peón en c6 que podía generar algún problema al Negro. Queda por ver si era suficiente. Paco eligió cambiar piezas y tras una repetición de movidas se acordó el empate. Grischuk a la espera de lo que pudiera hacer el duro Gelfand. Un empate sería buena noticia para él.

Topalov, Veselin-Gelfand, Boris: 1-0 (62). Defensa Petroff. Ya sabemos que Gelfand conoce bien y practica mucho la Petroff y que no es fácil ganarle. Se siguió Caruana-Kramnik, Corus 2010 (½ en 31), que ya publicamos en Zona de Ajedrez. Veselin trató de presentar problemas nuevos a Boris y mantener la partida viva y en tensión. Claro que habrá jugadas técnicamente mejores, pero hay que resolver en el tablero. Tras 24.fxe3 Topalov había quedado con calidad e iniciativa. Gelfand debería trabajar bastante para sostener la posición. Imprevistamente 32.Txf6 (32.Td1 +/-) devuelve calidad y todo pareció equilibrarse. Quedo un final de Torre y cuatro peones contra Torre y tres peones, que aunque complicado no se veía con muchas chances de desnivel. 49. … a2?? (49 ... Re7 50. Th7+ Re6 51. C4 Re5 52. Td7 Tc3 53. Td5+ Re4 parece ser el camino correcto hacia el empate) y Topalov aprovechó. Un nuevo error 51. … Tb2?? Y el final ya era inmodificable. No obstante Topalov es Topalov y es muy linda la definición con 61.Txa2!!.

Aronian, Levon-Gashimov, Vugar: 1-0 (58). Benoni. Ya hablamos varias veces de Gashimov y la Benoni. Una posición con varios antecedentes recientes. No parece buena idea 13. … h6. Una partida bastante compleja, con altibajos, pero interesante. Se llegó al control de tiempo con bastantes piezas en el tablero e iniciativa para Aronian. Gashimov no tardó en derrumbarse, 50. … Cxd6?, 51. … Df5? y Levon demostró que las Blancas ganaban, así que Vugar se resignó poco después. Para Aronian el único triunfo tras 9 empates. Para Gashimov una actuación que lo dejó en el último puesto y con Gelfand los que más puntos perderán por sus actuaciones.

Acompañamos las posiciones finales, un detalle de todas las Rondas y las partidas para ver y descargar.

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En un primer acercamiento al tablero hay una percepción física y una atracción por la disposición y los movimientos de las piezas, también por la relación sutil entre éstos y las casillas. Este arte visual impacta en el "ojo de la mente" y allí, la imaginación creativa los toma y transforma. Todo este proceso es arte porque es creación. Y es dinámico porque transforma la posición en una nueva, que a su vez genera un nuevo proceso y una nueva obra de arte visual. La maravilla del ajedrez es que este arte es obra de cualquier simple jugador y tan válido como el de Carlsen. Simplemente porque genera satisfacción al creador. Cada uno en su nivel podrá disfrutarlo.

El problema creo que refleja plenamente esto y es una gran combinación de arte visual e imaginación. Su autor, Lev Ilich Loshinsky, fue presentado en nuestro anterior: "La Belleza de este Problema".

El Blanco debe desalojar la casilla d4, pero para ello necesita antes una sutil jugada que permita controlar dos casillas blancas imprescindibles para que el Rey Negro no escape. Recuerden que es sutil y que el procedimiento permitirá crear siempre una doble amenaza sin respuesta. No es fácil, creo, pero es cuestión de ponerle empeño y ganas.

In the 6th round of the Linares super-tournament, Veselin Topalov was in trouble against Francisco Vallejo until the Spaniard suddenly blundered a full rook. By then Gashimov and Gelfand had already drawn in a very theoretical Petroff. The last game to finish was Grischuk-Aronian, which also ended in a draw. Thanks to his win, Topalov is the world’s number one player in the live ratings again.

The 27th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez “Ciudad de Linares” takes place February 12-25 in Linares, Andalucia, Spain. As a result of the financial crisis, the event went back to the (nowadays almost universal) formula of six players, double round-robin.

This year Veselin Topalov (2805), Levon Aronian (2781), Boris Gelfand (2761), Vugar Gashimov (2759), Alexander Grischuk (2736) and Francisco Vallejo Pons (2705) play. The rounds start at 16:00 CET; rest days are on the 17th and the 22nd. The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20, then 20 minutes for the rest of the game, wit 30 seconds increment starting from move 61. The Sofia rules for offering a draw apply in Linares for the first time.

Round 6 report by Rick Goetzee

Ljubomir Ljubojevic

Ljubojevic met his wife-to-be at the 1981 tournament. He then decided to settle in Linares, also because there was quite a bit of chess activity in the region, apart from the yearly grandmaster tournament. In those years there were plans to bring chess to schools, but unfortunately they didn’t materialise. According to Ljubojevic this is a great pity, as he was often approached by parents telling him that their children would love to learn chess and he visited schools to talk about the game.

The press room, at the first floor of the Teatro Cervantes

Recently a second attempt has been launched. Only two cities in Andalusia have plans to integrate chess in the school curriculum: Sevilla and Linares. Ljubojevic says that it is a pity that it took almost thirty years before a second attempt was made but ‘better late than never’.

Ljubo doesn’t like the Sofia rules: ‘they are funny’. In his view top chess players are artists and artists have good days and bad days and this should be accepted as part of the game. Also he thinks it’s hard to enforce the rule, because if strong players want to make a draw they will find a way through a perpetual check or move repetition. “It is done because organisers think it will favour chess. What they should do is invite the right people, then they won’t have to worry about short draws.”

There was some confusion at the start of today’s round at the board of Topalov-Vallejo. A guest made the first move and started the clock but Vallejo’s clock started to run. The arbiter had to intervene to reset the clock.

Topalov and Vallejo pointing out the error to arbiter Faik Gasanov

Then Vallejo took three minutes to reply to Topalov’s 1.c4. After an English opening the game became very sharp as Vallejo setup an attack against Topalov’s king. It was hard, even for Ljubo, to give a correct evaluation of the position although it seemed that Vallejo was better. His main problem was the clock, having only one minute left for the last twelve moves. He played well for a long time till he hung a full rook on the 38th move and overstepped the time limit on move 40.

According to GM Larry Christiansen on ICC’s Chess.FM, Gashimov proved to have done a lot of good homework against Gelfand’s Petroff. He achieved a promising position from the opening without counterplay for Black. However, Gelfand defended accurately and a draw was agreed in a knight endgame.

Grischuk decided to burn the midnight oil against Aronian, trying to win a rook vs knight endgame with an extra pawn for Black. In an empty pressroom there was still the voice of Leontxo Garcia continuing his commentary for the tournament website. Finally, at move 101, the players decided to call it a day.

Before we’ll leave you, we’d like to point out that GM Anish Giri, reigning Dutch champion and winner of the Corus B group this year, is doing wonderful commentary for Chessbase each round. This round he did Topalov-Vallejo, over here.

Games round 6 with brief annotations

Game viewer by ChessTempo

The town hall of Linares which proudly shows...

...the tournament poster - something the Spanish are really good at

Andalusian palm trees in sunny Linares

The entrance of the venue; the Teatro Cervantes

Photos © Rick Goetzee

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

Theophilus Thompson is recognized by most as the first Black player of note in the U.S. Born in 1855 in Frederick, Maryland, Thompson took to chess after seeing two gentlemen playing. He learned the moves from observing and was soon kibitzing in the games. It was interesting to note this interaction was possible when slavery was still practiced.

After noticing Thompson’s interest John Hanshew, the publisher of The Maryland Chess Review, loaned the 17-year old Thompson a board and several chess problems to solve. Thompson duly solved these and then made some of his own for good measure!

Thompson played in a few tournaments and has several interesting games, notably his dashing win over C.H. Blood. In a June 1986 article in U.S. Chess Life, Larry Parr reported that Thompson played correspondence chess and scored 7-2 in one tournament. Neil Brennan also wrote a very comprehensive essay on Thompson. Thompson is famously known for his book on chess problems called “Chess Problems: Either to Play and Mate”. Below is a link to this historic document!

The Dutch quarterly Matten provides a mixture of interviews, stories and anecdotes with a literary flavour, interweaved with drawings, cartoons and photos. We bring a review of the 7th edition in the Dutch language, together with a review of De Pion, the first book of a new series on chess pieces by endgame composer (and ChessVibes contributor) Yochanan Afek and the Dutch ‘Mr. Chess’ Hans Böhm.

Mijn recensie van het vorige Matten-nummer begon ik met de constatering dat er sinds de opheffing van Schaaknieuws niet veel meer te beleven was op Nederlandstalig schaakgebied. Dat is niet meer helemaal juist. Niet alleen is er de nieuwe website schaaksite.nl, een initiatief van Kees Schrijvers met columns, verslagen en analyses, maar ook schrijft Richard Vedder sinds enige tijd zeer lezenswaardige schaakboekrecensies op schakers.info en zijn niemand minder dan Yochanan Afek en Hans Böhm een nieuwe, laagdrempelige serie over de schaakstukken begonnen. Het eerste deel, De Pion – De Ziel Van Het Schaakspel, werd onlangs gepresenteerd. Hoog tijd dus voor weer eens een Nederlandse (dubbel)recensie.

Matten 7: Eindelijk op topniveau!

Matten 7, uitgegeven door New in Chess, staat dit keer helemaal in het teken van schaken en vrouwen, en de introductie van dit enkele thema voor (bijna) alle artikelen is een gouden greep van de redacteuren, want dit nummer is zonder twijfel de leukste Mattten sinds haar oprichting in 2006.

Ik wil beginnen met het interview dat Karel van der Weide had met de schaaktweeling Marlies en Laura Bensdorp. Hebben we in het verleden Van der Weide als schaakliterator regelmatig kritisch gevolgd, de rol van interviewer vertolkt hij met verve. Het interview, met de goed gekozen titel Zelfstandig en Weerbaar, is vlot geschreven, scherp en tegelijk bedachtzaam van toon en levert veel interessante en soms onthullende antwoorden van de schaakzusjes op. Sterk is vooral dat Van der Weide in dit interview nu eens niet zijn eigen (inmiddels overbekende) opvattingen over een onderwerp als het vrouwenschaak herhaalt, maar de zusjes alle ruimte geeft hun punt te maken:

Het aansnijden van het onderwerp [vrouwenschaak] leidt bij Marlies tot enige verontwaarding. Hoe de KNSB met damesschaak omgaat, valt volgens haar zeker nog te verbeteren. De ‘publiciteit’ rond het afgelopen NK in Haaskbergen sterkte haar in die opvatting. De persdienst had toch op z’n minst een paar foto’s op internet kunnen zetten?! Laura vult aan dat vrouwen sowieso op een heel andere manier naar schaakverslaggeving kijken. Reportages op ChessBase en New in Chess worden eerst beoordeeld op de kwaliteit van de foto’s, anders beginnen de zussen niet eens aan de tekst! Marlies vervolgt dat ze zich vreselijk ergerde aan een uitspraak van Hans Böhm tijdens datzelfde NK. Hij zei dat hij hoopte ‘geen damespartij te hoeven bespreken’. Marlies: ‘We zijn minder goed dan de mannen, maar het is altijd zo negatief’.

In zo’n fragment toont Van der Weide dat hij wel degelijk kan schrijven: hij observeert, verwoordt en interpreteert goed, durft op te schrijven wat hij hoort en mixt alles met pittige soundbites van de dames zelf. Ook prima: het interview is ideaal van lengte, lang genoeg om de diepte in te gaan en toch kernachtig genoeg om niet te gaan vervelen.

Langer van stof is een ander vermaard interviewer, Dirk-Jan ten Geuzendam, in een sympathiek vraaggesprek met Corry Vreeken – het interview is langer, maar de 82-jarige Damesgrootmeester honoris causa heeft logischerwijs ook meer te vertellen dan de nog geen dertigjarige dames Bensdorp. Ook Ten Geuzendam slaagt erin de geïnterviewde opmerkelijke uitspraken te ontlokken – curieus vond ik bijvoorbeeld dat Vreeken aan het eind van het gesprek, dat veel gaat over ouderdom en nog meer over herinneringen aan het verleden, bekent nog wel degelijk te schaken: op internet. Relevant en stijlvol is ook Ten Geuzendam’s inleiding over schaken en sanatoria in de literatuur, die mij herinnerde aan een andere beruchtste schaakroman die zich afspeelt in een sanatorium: Murphy van Samuel Beckett.

Beckett had trouwens misschien beter gepast in het stuk van Peter Boel over die andere grande dame van het Nederlandse schaak: de in 2007 overleden tienvoudig Nederlands dameskampioene Fenny Heemskerk. Eigenlijk vond ik Boels stuk nog boeiender, waarschijnlijk omdat het persoonlijker, soberder en diepgravender van toon is: waar Corry Vreeken vooral smakelijke anekdotes vertelt, beschrijft Heemskerks dochter, die zelf ook behoorlijk schaakte, openhartig de manische depressies van haar moeder en de moeilijkheden die dat opleverde voor het gezin én Heemskerks schaakprestaties. Het resultaat is een betrokken en aangrijpend portret van een Nederlandse schaaklegende.

Diepgang wordt zeker ook niet vermeden in John Kuipers’ stuk De ziel tussen duister en licht over Erika Sziva en Johan van Mil, een relaas dat in zijn eerlijkheid en onopgeschmukte tragiek soms bijna pijnlijk om te lezen is. Iets luchtiger, maar eveneens zeer onderhoudend, is het interview dat Danielle Pinedo hield met Peng Zhao Qin. Pinedo stelt goede vragen die getuigen van mensenkennis (’je aanpassingsvermogen is je redding geweest’, ‘ben je nooit bang geweest dat je familie de dupe zou worden van je vlucht?’) en Peng geeft open en uitgebreid antwoord op de vragen.

Sterk is ook het opzettelijk wat raadselachtig gelaten stuk van Jan Timman over zijn trainingservaringen met Judit Polgar, en Matten’s huisfilosoof Dirk Poldauf houdt een genuanceerd en goed beargumenteerd ‘enerzijds-anderzijds’ betoog over het vrouwenschaak als speciale discipline, waar ikzelf mij in elk geval uitstekend in kon vinden:

“Op korte termijn zou het afschaffen van toernooien voor alleen maar vrouwen een traumatisch effect kunnen hebben en ertoe kunnen leiden dat sommige meisjes zich bij het ontbreken van de kans op snelle lauweren van het schaken afwenden. Op de langere termijn zou het waarschijnlijk echter tot een normalisering in de verhoudingen in het toernooischaak leiden (…).”

De korte rubrieken Het Notatieformulier (Rob van Vuure) en De Foto (Allard Hoogland) zijn ook nu weer leuk om te lezen, en ook Het Gedicht dat Paul van den Hout schreef voor Frans Naerebout (’Verliezen doet hij immers nog maar zelden,/ want juist zijn stille kracht wordt onderschat’) is mooi en toepasselijk, op zijn minst voor wie Naerebout gekend heeft.

Is het dan alleen maar hosanna voor de nieuwe Matten? Niet helemaal. Lex Jongsma schreef een wisselvallig en wat rommelig stuk (met de al even rommelige titel ‘Mag ik u mijn Dame aanbieden? Het Dameoffer en het Paard in de Zak’) dat aanvankelijk over De Groene-hoofdredacteur Martin van Amerongen lijkt te gaan, maar opeens overspringt op Reuben Fine, dameoffers en iets ‘uit eigen werk’. Jongsma’s aanstekelijke manier van vertellen komt op papier een stuk minder tot zijn recht. Ik kon mijn aandacht er in dit artikel niet bijhouden: te veel van de hak op de tak, te veel onuitgewerkte invallen, overbodige uitwijdingen en te stellig geformuleerde opinies (’Nu was Freud een genie, en Fine een schaker van wereldkampioenstatuur, en een zeer geacht en goed verdienend psychiater, die weliswaar nooit meer toernooien speelde, maar het schaken allerminst verleerd had: bij een enkele malen herhaald bezoek aan het Amsterdamse koffiehuis/schaakcafe op het Leidseplein eind jaren zestig, in de pauzes van een …’ Enfin, enzovoorts.)

Vergeleken met deze woordenbrei zijn de twee bondige stukken over Jan Timman, van Hans Böhm (‘Madame Chaudé de Silans’ over hun reizen naar Frankrijk) en van Franka van der Loo (over de fascinatie van Laurie Langenbach) een lust voor het lezend oog. Pikant is de foto van Langenbach voor Timman waarop ze in ‘een decolleté tot haar navel’ staat afgebeeld met op de achterkant de woorden ‘Op de overwinnning!’.

Ach ja, en dan is er nog Guus Luijters, als altijd kwistig strooiend met boek- en filmtitels en Grote Namen uit de Kunst en Literatuur. Luijters weet niets van schaken, is niet geïnteresseerd in schaken, schrijft niet over schaken. Dit keer roept hij wat over Graham Greene en de onlangs verschenen laatste roman van Nabokov (The Original of Laura), ‘koortsig proza, waarin zowaar een keer geschaakt wordt’, zonder ooit iets diepzinnigs of verrassends ter tafel te brengen. Raadsel waarom Luijters iedere keer weer gevraagd wordt voor een bijdrage aan Matten; ik begin inmiddels te vermoeden dat de redacteurs het zelf ook niet weten.

Tot slot: een fascinerend portret van de Pools-Nederlandse schaker Salo Landau door Adri Plomp – het enige artikel dat niet over vrouwen gaat. Choquerend zijn iedere keer weer de antisemitische stukken die Aljechin, wiens secondant Landau was in 1935, in de Tweede Wereldorlog schreef; maar de door Plomp beschreven gebeurtenissen rond de dood van Landau in de oorlog, zijn nauwelijks met droge ogen te lezen. Het is volkomen terecht dat de Matten-redactie er ondanks het themanummer toch voor gekozen heeft dit boeiende artikel nu op te nemen.

Met Matten 7 is het tijdschrift eindelijk helemaal op het niveau dat past bij de al tijdens de oprichting uitgesproken ambities van de redactie. Proficiat!

Wij presenteren … De pion – De Ziel van het Schaakspel

Er is een nieuw project van Hans Böhm en Yochanan Afek: een serie boeken over alle stukken van het schaakspel, uitgegeven door Trion Sport. Het eerste deel heet De Pion. Uit Böhms voorwoord:

Elk stuk van het eeuwenoude schaakspel verdient het om apart gepresenteerd te worden. Dit boek is het het eerste in een serie van zes – en we beginnen met de pion. Nog nooit zijn van dit kleine stuk zoveel speelfacetten, aanvallend en verdedigend, bij elkaar gebracht. Per thema – zestig in totaal – geven we vier voorbeelden. Door de presentatie, vier diagrammen op de linkerpagina en uitleg op de rechterpagina, is dit boek een ode aan de pion maar ook een leerboek.

Uit de inleiding wordt overigens niet helemaal duidelijk voor wie de serie nu precies bedoeld is. Voor mensen die ’slechts’ geïnteresseerd zijn in schaken? Of ook voor schakers die het leuk vinden problemen en schaakpuzzels op te lossen? Gezien het niveau van de stellingen denk ik eerder het laatste – en dat is goed nieuws voor gevorderde schakers!
Böhm schrijft dat hij te rade is gegaan bij schaakhistoricus Leo Diepstraten om een beeld te krijgen van de ontstaansgeschiedenis van de pion als schaakstuk. Afek heeft voor zijn selectie van fragmenten en composities inspiratie opgedaan uit vele verschillende bronnen. Kortom, dit is een degelijk project geschreven door twee schakers die weten hoe ze hun passie over het voetlicht moeten brengen, en dat is te merken.

De historische inleiding is een pakkend en levendig geschreven stuk met relevante citaten en interessante feiten over de evolutie van de moderne schaakpion, die over het algemeen ook nog eens accuraat beschreven is. Ik kwam één foutje tegen: het zogenaamde Göttingen manuscript stamt volgens de laatste wetenschappelijke opvattingen niet uit 1471, maar uit de vroege 16de eeuw, zoals ik vorig jaar leerde op een symposium in Valencia over de oorsprong van het moderne schaak. (Zie J.A. Garzón, The Return of Francesch Vicent, 2005, p. 399 e.v.) Ook in de bijbehorende beschrijving van de ontwikkeling van de rokade kan wellicht de nodige nuance worden aangebracht, maar ik wil geen muggenzifter zijn. Het historische gedeelte van het boek is leuk en informatief, en daar gaat het om.

Het leeuwendeel van het boek bestaat uit de al genoemde fragmenten en composities, ingedeeld in relevante thema’s. Het eerste thema is ‘De vertraagde pion’ en het eerste voorbeeld is meteen al behoorlijk pittig:

Remise. De eindspelkenner herkent direct een overeenkomst met de beroemde studie van Réti over het ‘kwadraat’, en inderdaad is deze studie van T.Gorgiev uit 1930 daarop gebaseerd, al noemen Afek en Böhm dit niet. De oplossing:

1.c6! (niet 1.a4 h6! ‘en zwart wint het tempospel’ of 1.a3 h5!) 1…h6 2.a3! h5 3.a4 h4 4.a5 h3 5.a6 h2 6.a7 h1D pat. Of 1…Kc7 3.a4 [sic, bedoeld is 2.a4] 3…Kxc6 4.a5 Kb5 5.Kb7 Kxa5 6.Kc6 h5 7.Kd5 ‘en de witte koning zit in het kwadraat (h1-h5-d5-d1) en dus remise’.

Oef! Hoe fraai en subtiel de studie ook is, voor een eerste voorbeeld in het boek vond ik dit tamelijk zware kost, vooral omdat de bijbehorende uitleg nogal summier en weinig specifiek is. Mensen die dit boek kochten omdat ze ’schaken een leuk spelletje vinden’ zullen zich toch misschien wel even op hun achterhoofd krabben wat nu precies de definitie van een ‘kwadraat’ is (is dat altijd h1-h5-d5-d1 of alleen in dit geval?). Schakers die Afeks werk kennen weten dat zijn niveau hoog is, maar geldt dat ook voor argeloze kopers?

De voorbeelden zijn trouwens niet allemaal zo pittig, al zijn ze ook nooit echt makkelijk. Uit het hoofdstukje ‘De kamikazepion’:

Wit aan zet.

Dit is een fragment uit de partij Tal-Zdravko Milev, München 1958. De eerste zet is fraai en in het kader van het thema niet al te moeilijk te vinden, maar daarna wordt het toch lastiger:

1.d5!! exd5 2.Tfe1! Kd8 3.Db3 c5 4.Pxc5! en wit won in enkele zetten (al schrijven Böhm en Afek dat de partij hier ‘abrupt eindigde’).

Afek en Böhm geven als alternatieven voor zwart op de tweede zet 2…dxe4 3.Dxe4+ De7 4.Dg4 en vervolgens – zonder nadere toelichting! – de tamelijk complexe variant 2…Le7 3.Pf6+! Kd8 4.Db3 Kc8 5.Lf4! Dxf4 6.Txe7 Tb8 7.Dh3+ en wit wint. Hier sta ik toch wel even van te kijken. Ten eerste wil ik na het spectaculaire 3.Pf6+ toch ook wel even weten wat er volgt op gxf6 gevolgd door rochade, dus ik zocht de partij op in mijn database en kwam toen pas te weten dat zwart helemaal niet meer mag rocheren aangezien de koning op zet 14 een stuk op d7 geslagen heeft en daarna weer teruggegaan is naar e8. Dat hadden de auteurs er toch wel even bij mogen zetten! (Dat wit toch wint als zwart had mogen rocheren, doet daar niets aan af.) Daarnaast is pas 19…c5? de beslissende fout en kan zwart nog aardig partij geven na 19…Kc8, al blijft wit ook dan goed staan.

Uit deze twee voorbeelden blijkt dat de auteurs hun taak op een tamelijk rigoureuze manier hebben opgevat: het gaat ze puur om de ideëen die door de thema’s worden geïllustreerd: het visuele aspect. Ze lijken minder geïnteresseerd in de uitleg van het waarom, en dat is jammer, want gaat het daar uiteindelijk niet om? Misschien is dit een knieval naar het ‘grote publiek’, dat mogelijkerwijs niet zit te wachten op een diepgaande uitleg, maar op zoek is naar ’snel vermaak’. Zou het zo zijn? Zou een oppervlakkige lezer wel geraakt worden door de schoonheid van Gorgievs studie, maar niet geïnteresseerd zijn in de precieze uitwerking?

Toch valt niet te ontkennen dat Hans Böhm en Yochanan Afek met De Pion een zeer vermakelijk en aanstekelijk boekje hebben geschreven, dat zich zowel goed leent voor ‘in bed’ als voor diepere (zelf)studie. Welk stuk volgt? Het Paard? Ook dat belooft wat.

• Koop Matten 7
• Koop De Pion
• Lees meer recensies

On ChessCafe, an English translation of three sonnets on chess by Vladimir Nabokov has been published. According to John Roycroft, it is ‘the first English verse translation of the trio of linked chess sonnets that Vladimir Nabokov published in the Russian émigré journal Rul’ in Berlin in November 1924.’

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov, most famous to chess players for his 1930 novel The Defense, held a lifelong fascination for chess, publishing problems and writing about the subject on various occasions. (Though it is very unclear how strong he really was as a chess player.) Of chess problems, he wrote that they are ‘the poetry of chess’:

They demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, harmony, conciseness, complexity, and splendid insincerity.

His three early sonnets, including the original Russian text, linking, according to Roycroft, “chess, chess problems, chess history and sex”, can be read here. Underneath the article, there’s an interesting comment by professional Russian translator Sarah Hurst on some translational issues. It struck us that in the first sonnet, Philidor’s opponent is called ‘Dyuser’, which Roycroft translates as ‘Légal’. We have not been able to find the reason for this, since the full name of Légal (he of the mate) was Legall de Kermeur. Perhaps one of our readers knows more about this mysterious (to us) ‘Dyuser’?

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, gaining international fame with his novel Lolita (1955) as well as his strong and highly-esteemed opinions on literature and art. His poems, however, are generally regarded as being of lesser importance. His last unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, was recently published posthumously.

(Update: Apparently ‘Dyuser’ stands for ‘Du Sire’ or ‘Dusserre’, which could in fact refer to ‘Sire de Legal’, although this is questioned by other scholars.)

Nous vous offrons tout d'abord ce bon café de notre ami photographe Charly Founes, histoire de bien commencer la journée avec Chess & Strategy.

Ensuite, prenez le temps de lire le nouvel article sur les échecs du journal Paris-Normandie, un surprenant voyage dans le monde des cases blanches et noires, raconté avec passion chaque semaine sur notre site échiquéen par Samir Adyel.

Au sommaire de cette chronique échecs très éclectique : un mat en deux coups signé de D. J. Shire, tiré du Problem Observer de 1989, l’arroseur arrosé illustré par la partie entre Ivanov et Cheparinov à Séville en 2004, une devinette, l'agenda normand, une finale 100% british entre Miles (2565) et Short (2485) à Manchester en 1982, une citation du 2ème champion du monde d'échecs Emanuel Lasker et un piège d'ouverture dans le début Larsen à l'Open Féminin Moscou 2010. Merci Samir.

2007-2010 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

Stanislas Gounant a écrit:
Salut Nicola,

Il semble que "Terry" ait des problèmes avec les prénoms, il m'appelle Stalinas (l'homme de fer en russe ?).

Lucie, 10 ans, licenciée au Stade Français JEEN, fait découvrir depuis le 6 février et jusqu'au 7 mars sa passion pour les échecs dans l'émission Trop la pêche !

Dans ce programme court, proposé par l'ANIA (Association Nationale des Industries Alimentaires), Lucie et 9 autres enfants font comprendre, chacun à leur façon, que pour donner le meilleur de soi-même, quelques règles simples peuvent aider. Le reportage sur Lucie a été réalisé dans les locaux du Stade Français JEEN - organisateur du récent Top 12 féminin - avec sa famille et le MI et problémiste Abdelaziz Onkoud.

2007-2010 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

On January 28th we published a review of Viktor Moskalenko’s latest book Revolutionize Your Chess, and it wasn’t a positive one. Now we have received a reaction by Mr Moskalenko, which we’re happy to publish as an open letter here at ChessVibes.

In his review of Revolutionize Your Chess our reviewer Arne Moll wrote that he didn’t like the book. He used strong words, like ‘amazingly silly’, ‘rather confusing’, ‘extremely simplistic’ and ‘hopelessly flawed’. Here’s GM Moskalenko’s reaction:

On January 28 ChessVibes posted a singularly negative review, written by Arne Moll, of my new book Revolutionize Your Chess. The way Mr Moll approached my book, the tone of his review, the many (in my view) unjustified points he makes, and the subsequent vitriolic reactions by quite a few ChessVibes readers (some of whom confessed they didn’t know my book at all) did shock me.

My initial reaction was quite emotional. I really could not understand what I did to deserve Mr Moll’s bashing. On a Spanish website I did question Mr Moll’s motives, an unjustified action for which I have apologized. Now, after I have had some time to reflect, I am very grateful that ChessVibes has allowed me to post this more considered reaction.

Mr Moll hits his review off by venting his irritation that there are appearing many “improve your chess” books on the market. He confesses that he is not really interested in those books, because improving is only of secondary interest to him. Could it be that this negative attitude towards this type of works has coloured what he writes on my book?

Because the sole purpose of Revolutionize Your Chess is indeed this: to give to aspiring club players a set of tools with which they can improve their chess. I cannot help that Mr Moll dislikes the genre, and I cannot help that there are other books that make the same claim. But I think my book deserves to be judged for what it is. Mr Moll does not do this. In his incredibly fierce attack on my book he uses hyperbole, sarcasm and condescension in an apparent effort to humiliate me. He calls a part of my book ‘amazingly silly’, ‘extremely simplistic’ and ‘hopelessly flawed’. He says somewhere that when I write about the basic concepts of chess I ‘didn’t have a clue’, and he calls me ‘a show-off’. But, strangely, he fails to do one important thing: he does not contend that my system isn’t working! He has not tested, or even probed, if a chess player who does what I recommend in my book and who uses the tools I hand to him, becomes a better player or not. I will explain, later on, why I maintain that my system works.

Mr Moll heavily focuses on the foreword and the first two chapters of my books, in which I describe the structure of my system. Indeed 70% of his review is on less than 10% of my book. Briefly: in this part I offer a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the game: Chess Skills, Personal Skills, as well as my 5 so called “Touchstones”: tools to use for a dynamic understanding of all positions on the board. I also propose a test, which I jokingly call the Moskalenko Test, which my students use to rate their performance in a game. Obviously, Mr Moll does not like what he sees.

One of Mr Moll’s big problems is that I say my system is ‘revolutionary’, while he recognizes various elements in my system that other writers have mentioned before me. He seems to think that finding elements in my book that also feature in other chess writers’ books somehow falsifies my claim that my system could lead to a revolution. I think that the comprehensiveness of my system (Personal Skills, Chess Skills, Touchstones and Test) is indeed new, and that most club players who follow my advice will truly revolutionize their chess, and become a better player.

In the Foreword of my book I tried to find the reason why most chess players, once they have reached a certain level, fail to make real progress (of course a central problem in chess teaching). I made Mr Moll almost choke with anger by writing: “The answer is quite simple: the general rules of the game have not been discovered yet.” This is what Mr Moll calls ‘amazingly silly’. And why? Because there are, writes Mr Moll, ‘thousands of grandmasters and tens of thousands of IM’s’ (incidentally, Mr Moll is more than 500% wrong here about the actual numbers) who are pretty strong players. He suggests, no doubt sarcastically, that I think that strong players have still not grasped the right system.

What a strange thing to say! Maybe Mr Moll does not know that I am a strong player myself? Please allow me to explain: I am a Grandmaster and a former champion of Ukraine. I have won dozens of international tournaments, and I am still an active player. I have coached quite a few strong players, Vassily Ivanchuk is one of them. I think I am well qualified to judge what top-players know and how they think. I am not an idiot, of course I know that I don’t need to explain to them the basics of how they must think about chess. Obviously, my book is meant for club players. About elite players I explain that the reason they are almost invincible for any amateur is that they are so good in applying the Touchstones. Being aware of the process in their head is another matter; often top-players are thinking intuitively. This is also in the book.

My statement about the general rules that have not been discovered yet, is of course meant to provoke my readers. That is my style of writing, I always look for ways to keep them awake.

“I like to see myself as a philosopher” writes Arne Moll somewhere in his review. I think therein may lie one of the basic problems with his article. My concepts are not philosophical at all, they are very practical. Mr Moll looks for philosophical trouble behind many statements I make. He says concepts like ‘time’ and ‘material’ (which I use as ‘Touchstones’ to evaluate a position on the board) are ‘tricky philosophical ideas in the first place’. But in my book they are not tricky, and they are not philosophical. They are practical tools which every chess player can use to become better. And in my book I explain how they can do so.

I am not a philosopher. Apart from my own career as a player, I have been a chess trainer for many years. I have taught hundreds of club players. My classes have been recorded by the Catalan Chess Federation and are available online for thousands of players. I have written two successful books (which Mr Moll to my amazement says he liked) which sold thousands of copies all over the world. I get good feedback, literally daily, from my pupils, my viewers and my readers. I think I know quite well what beginning and more advanced chess players know and how they think. And what they should do to become better players.

I was amazed to see Mr Moll stating that “Moskalenko really didn’t have a clue when he wrote about these concepts”. This statement is, among other things, quite strange for someone who professes he liked my other books. How does Mr Moll think a Grandmaster who has written some good chess books (that’s me) reaches that level? By not having a clue? My friends have advised me not to use the word I will use now, but I strongly feel I have to do it: here I think Mr Moll is being disrespectful.

Somewhere at the end of his review Mr Moll calls me ‘a show-off’ because I use my own games or fragments of my games to illustrate specific chess instruction topics. I have thought about the merits of his reproach for quite a while. Let me just say that I think it is a strange thing to blame me for. An illustration of an instructional theme is either on or off the mark, at least that is my opinion. The show-off reproach, again, fits in the general condescending tone of his review. Strangely, Mr Moll says he likes my other books (The Fabulous Budapest Gambit, and The Flexible French) a lot; but in these books I use my own games as examples just as much as I did here! Does Mr Moll think that Nimzowitsch is a show-off because he uses his own games in his books? Besides, I use games from dozens of other players as well.

From my 340 pages book with hundreds of games, fragments, exercises and examples, Mr Moll cites just one practical example. In this position:

I discuss two possible moves for White: the good move Be3 and the dynamic move d5. I recommend d5. Mr Moll claims that I fail to give ‘any reasons’ why I think d5 is more dynamic. But he is simply wrong! I do explain that after Be3 Black plays …e6, blocking the position and giving White some trouble to exploit his lead in development. On the move d5 I explain that I choose this advance ‘in order to fight for space, hindering the development of the black kingside at the same time’. I think the example is not a bad illustration of the theme: there is a good, solid positional move available. And yet I recommend another move, a dynamic move. Without the solid move my example would be less valuable, I think.

After treating this one example wrongly, Mr Moll says that ALL the examples I give in the book (and there are many hundreds of them) are deficient. ALL examples suffer in that I ‘focus on the Touchstones for the sake of the Touchstones only’. Again, I find this a puzzling swipe. Mr Moll may not like the concept, but does he really think I employ the Touchstones just for their own sake? That I select my examples just to prove my system? Doesn’t he think my pupils would have left me many years ago if I would be doing just that?

I am not claiming originality in every point I make in the book. It is a strange thing to ask from an author, even from an author who claims to aim for a revolution. My book is a real revolution in that it brings everything together. Naming other books or authors who have written about some elements of my system does not mean my approach would somehow not be fresh.

And judging from the many positive reactions I get from readers, I may very well have succeeded. Obviously, not with Mr Moll. Maybe he is too strong a player (and too much of a philosopher) to find my concepts good tools. It may be that Mr Moll dislikes my enthusiasm. But I am a passionate believer in my system, because I know, from experience, that it works. It works for players of 1600 ELO, as well as for players with 2200 ELO, and even higher.

Maybe next time a chess improvement book comes up for review at ChessVibes, it would a good idea to ask someone to review it who does not dislike the genre, who does not see himself primarily as a philosopher, and who is more interested in the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Once more I would like to thank for the opportunity to publish this reaction.

Sincerely,

GM Viktor Moskalenko
Barcelona, 12 February, 2010

Update 14:40 CET: meanwhile Arne Moll has responded in the comments – we’ll give it here as well:

As it is a true honour for me to have such a respected Grandmaster and author respond to my reviews, let me just mention a few general points that Mr. Moskalenko seems to have misunderstood in my initial review, rather than addressing every single sentence of his letter point by point.

Mr. Moskalenko starts off his letter with the complaint that I am supposedly not interested in ‘Improve your chess’ books and am therefore biased against his book Revolutionize Your Chess (and hence unqualified to review it objectively). To me, this merely shows Moskalenko doesn’t read my reviews on a regular basis (and indeed I couldn’t possibly expect him to), for then he would have known that the very review before the one I wrote on Moskalenko’s book, is a highly positive and enthusiastic review of Lars Bo Hansen’s book called (ironically, if anything) Improve Your Chess.

In fact, I was also very positive about Herman Grooten’s Chess Strategy for Club Players, the book that recently beat Revolutionize Your Chess in the ChessCafe Book of the Year competition, and numerous other books that intend to improve the reader’s chess skills. My remark ‘What’s with all these improve your chess books recently’ was just a ‘by the way’, trying to make the related (but admittedly not terribly relevant) general point that lately, a lot of books focus on chess improvement while surely trying to make the reader enjoy chess is at least as important as that.

In any case, as I had already written in the comments underneath my review, a reviewer’s personal taste is not relevant as long as he’s ‘not prejudiced, focuses on the book and not his own taste, and he knows his literature.’ I would think my liking Moskalenko’s previous book sort of proves I’m not prejudiced against him, and apart from this one ‘by the way’ paragraph, I focus my entire review on the contents of the book itself. As for ‘knowing my literature’, I think I’ve shown this already sufficiently in the review itself.

I could mention several other points in Mr. Moskalenko’s letter where he misinterprets my intentions and words. For instance, he makes much of my sarcasm and hyperbole, but then without blinking an eye declares that he himself means to ‘provoke his readers’ and that this is simply his ‘style of writing, I always look for ways to keep them awake’. Well, Mr. Moskalenko, it seems we agree on something after all! Perhaps we should just drop this point?

Another small thing to note is that Mr. Moskalenko altogether ignores the positive things I have mentioned about his book in my review, instead claiming it is ‘singularly negative’. This is also why it’s simply untrue that the one example I picked from the book to illustrate a point is used by me to imply that ‘ALL the examples I give in the book (and there are many hundreds of them) are deficient.’

But here’s what I actually wrote in my review: ‘To be sure, there are better examples in the book, but they all suffer from the same illness.’ I also wrote, ‘The book does contains good stuff, but I liked the Viktor Moskalenko of The Flexible French much, much better.’ Forgive me for thinking this small nuance is probably worth pointing out.

I suppose I should also say I’m surprised by Mr. Moskalenko’s statement that his concepts ‘aren’t philosophical at all’ and that he himself, unlike me, ‘isn’t a philosopher’. Well, fair enough, but Moskalenko himself claims that while authors like Suba and Beim discuss many interesting aspects of dynamic chess, they offer ‘no theoretical framework’ – surely implying Revolutionize Your Chess is different in this respect! A few sentences later, he even explicitly states that ‘in the present book, we will make an attempt to systematize this dynamic approach to our game’.

And in Chapter 2, just to take one example, Moskalenko writes that the factor Time ‘has thus far been neglected in theoretical works. This dynamic factor should be included in any chess system if we want to call it conclusive’.
To me all this sounds distinctly philosophical. In fact, capitalizing the t in Time is, if anything else, the generally acknowledged way of indicating a ‘Platonization’ of the object at hand. But perhaps I’m again being too, well, philosophical here.

There is, however, one point in Mr. Moskalenko’s reply that I would like to elaborate upon a bit in more detail. This is when he writes that I do not contend that the system described in Revolutionize Your Chess ‘isn’t working’: ‘He has not tested, or even probed, if a chess player who does what I recommend in my book and who uses the tools I hand to him, becomes a better player or not.’

Indeed I must confess that I haven’t fully tested the system (although Mr. Moskalenko couldn’t possibly know this himself), for the inexcusable reason that I am, apart from being a father and a full-time employee, just a reviewer whose task it is to read the book and write his conclusions down as accurately and conscientiously as possible. (I imagine Mr. Moskalenko also doesn’t accept positive reviews when the reviewer hasn’t fully tested the system?)

But suppose I would like to test Mr. Moskalenko’s system before writing anything at all about it. How would I do it? Surely applying the ‘Touchstone Tools’ in my own games is not nearly enough: a sample of just 1 player can’t possible say anything meaningful about a method, can it? I’d have to ask perhaps my entire chess team to study the book and apply it in their own games to the best of their ability.

But then there would still be the (in my view very likely) possibility that our game improved not because of the Touchstone Tools, but by us being suddenly occupied with chess for much more than we currently are. You see, this is what statisticians call the correlation is not causation maxim: the fact that we’re reading Moskalenko’s book and actively trying to apply the Touchstones doesn’t prove Moskalenko’s method works – not at all.

For all we know the very fact that we’re in an experiment might make us more conscious of our play during games, and we might improve our game even without studying anything at all. This is a variation of the well-known placebo effect. To avoid such confusion, we’d at least need some sort of control group with a bunch of players of the same average level who would also engage in active chess study, but specifically without using Moskalenko’s Touchstones – say, by studying Mark Dvoretsky’s books.

After some time – say, a year – we’d probably be able to say something about whether Moskalenko’s method works or not (calibrating for random rating fluctuations and such, of course), and whether it works any better than other current chess-improvement methods.

Now, this would be an extremely interesting experiment, and I would be more than willing to try it myself if given enough time and money, but what I’m really wondering is whether Mr. Moskalenko himself has ever done such an experiment.

After all, he accuses me of not having tested his method and very firmly claims that his method does work. My question is very simple: has Mr. Moskalenko systematically tested his method, and can we see the results? And perhaps I should mention another statisticians’ maxim, which is that the plural of anecdote is not data. It’s great to have many testimonies from players who are happy their money was well spent and they improved their chess by receiving chess training, but this doesn’t, of course, prove the training method itself works: it just proves they improved their game.

And this may have happened for numerous reasons – the most important one being what I also wrote in my initial review, which is that ‘improving one’s chess can be achieved by studying any chess book seriously.’ (Mr. Moskalenko seems to have overlooked this remark.)

Let me finish by what strikes me as an extremely important point, made by one of the commenters to this post. It’s this: ‘Maybe [Moskalenko] is right in saying so, but he fails to address how his students got better using his advice.’

This is precisely my whole problem with the book. It’s not the Touchstone tools, it’s not the provocative language, not the lack of philosophical depth, not even the annoying -T1 and -T4 notation: it’s the lack of specificity; the lack of explaining how the touchstones work (and why), how students improve their game and how dynamic chess works; and how revolutionary Moskalenko’s book is, precisely.

Perhaps these questions are typical philosophical questions, but so be it. I’m just a an ordinary chess player trying to improve and be inspired by chess. Mr. Moskalenko claims he knows ‘quite well what beginning and more advanced chess players know and how they think.’ In other words, he knows exactly how I think. I can only hope he will some day understand my point of view in this matter after all.

Links

• Revolutionize Your Chess
• ChessVibes review of Revolutionize Your Chess
• More book reviews

The Linares tournament started peacefully today, with draws on all three boards. Topalov surprised Vallejo with a Breyer against the Spaniard’s Ruy Lopez and easily equalized. Grischuk needed a lot of time on the clock, but was also doing fine with Black against Aronian in a 4.f3 Nimzo ending. Gelfand had some advantage against Gashimov’s Benoni but just before the first time control a drawn ending was reached.

The 27th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez “Ciudad de Linares” takes place February 12-25 in Linares, Andalucia, Spain. As a result of the financial crisis, the event went back to the (nowadays almost universal) formula of six players, double round-robin.

This year Veselin Topalov (2805), Levon Aronian (2781), Boris Gelfand (2761), Vugar Gashimov (2759), Alexander Grischuk (2736) and Francisco Vallejo Pons (2705) play. The rounds start at 16:00 CET; rest days are on the 17th and the 22nd. The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20, then 20 minutes for the rest of the game, wit 30 seconds increment starting from move 61. The Sofia rules for offering a draw apply in Linares for the first time.

Round 1 report by Rick Goetzee

The famous Linares tournament is on its way again. It is true that the event has lost some of its aura and some say that Corus has taken over as the Wimbledon of chess, but it is still one of the greatest tournaments around. And not only because of its history. It’s quite remarkable how the organisers have kept the event alive through great adversity and without corporate sponsorship. In the last year they had to deal with the economic recession and voices in the local government challenging the decision to invest in a chess tournament. Also the plan to host the first half of the tournament in Dubai fell through. Despite all this, the Linares organizers have secured this famous event for another year.

The field once consisted of 14 players, but since 2006 (after Kasparov retired) there have been eight players, competing in a double round robin. This year, because of financial constraints, it went down to six. While this is a pity it puts it on par with the Grand Slam tournaments in Sofia and Nanjing. Only Corus still has 14 players in their A-group.

One of the consequences of a relatively small field is that the tournament is very strong. In Wijk aan Zee there were a few players (predominantly the local ones) who acted as the rabbits in the field, as GM Joel Benjamin referred to them on ICC’s Chess.FM. In Linares the only local player is Vallejo Pons but with a rating of 2705 he can hardly be called a rabbit.

Although he has always been a top player, it’s been already 13 years since Boris Gelfand has last played in Linares. In the polls before the start of the tournament Aronian was the favourite, undoubtedly because Topalov will have the upcoming world championship match in the back of his mind.

The opening ceremony on Friday was short but entertaining with flamenco dancers and Spanish traditional music. The first round started on Saturday at 4pm which is quite late compared to other tournaments. It must have to do with the great Spanish tradition of ‘la siesta’.

All games were drawn in the first round. Vallejo-Topalov lasted 41 moves after a Ruy Lopez opening, Breyer variation. This solid system isn’t something Topalov regularly plays, and Vallejo was probably not well prepared for it. The Spaniard chose an old system but got nothing, and after many exchanges Topalov couldn’t play for a win either.

Aronian-Grischuk was a Nimzo-Indian with 4.f3, the system popularized by Fritz Sämisch. White’s move 8.Qd2 led the game into a position that was popular in the 50s (!) and Grischuk used a lot of time in the opening, but he was able to solve all his problems. In fact if anyone was better it was Black, who could have tried 19…N7e5 if he’d had more time. After 26 moves the players shook hands. Aronian only used 40 minutes for the whole game.

The most interesting game of the day was Gelfand-Gashimov. The Azerbaijan GM went for his favourite Benoni, an opening we don’t see very often in the elite tournaments. According to GM Benjamin this is a sign of the new philosophy of modern top players. Chess is becoming more of a sport than a science. A fight over the board is preferred over home preparation.

Well, in any case Gelfand was, as so often, very well prepared. The World Cup winner went for the 7.Bf4 line, and knew all ins and outs of Gashimov’s pawn sacrifice on move 9. Gashimov always seemed to have compensation, but was it enough? White’s bishops looked very strong. Eventually Black won his pawn back and the game ended after 54 moves with a repetition of moves in a knight and bishop ending.

Photos © María José Sánchez Rivera

The pairings for the 2nd round on Sunday are Topalov-Gashimov, Grischuk-Gelfand and Vallejo-Aronian.

Games round 1 with brief annotations

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

Black History Month… a month that is to represent the triumph of a people over adversity and to pay hommage to their achievements. When Carter G. Woodson dubbed “Negro History Week” in 1926, his intent was bring exposure to the unique history and plight of the Black people. He founded the Negro World where he chronicled the condition of the Blacks and later wrote the seminal book, The Mis-Education of the Negro. He earned a Master’s a University of Chicago in 1908 and a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1912 and became one of the foremost pioneers in the field of contemporary history.

Is Black History Relevant?

Woodson had a difficult time convincing others that there was a need for a commemoration dedicated to championing the “so-called American Negro.” He was told that Black history was no different from American history and there should not be any distinction. However, it is well-known that the way history is painted depends on who has the brush. Woodson opined that Black history and the accomplishments of Black men and women were often overlooked, blotted out of history or trivialized. Negro History Week became “Black History Month” and is recognized nationally.

One of the problems with Black History Month is that the same figures are honored each year: Dr. Martin Luther King, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver. These are staple of classroom lessons on Black history, but the perhaps they have become have lost their novelty. There is an increasing concern that the history is not being taught properly or by instructors who are very selective on which figures they cover.

Of course Black history, extends far beyond what “African-Americans” have done. Black pioneers in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe had made tremendous accomplishments. Haiti has been in the news of late and of course many are hearing the name Toussaint L’Ouverture, the military leader who lead the Haitians to a stunning victory over France in quest of slave independence.

There are many other legendary leaders around the world who led independence and resistance movements such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines (Haiti), Paul Bogle (Jamaica), Marcus Garvey (Jamaica), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Amilcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Samora Machel (Angola), Zumbi dos Palmares (Brazil) to name a few.

There are also a long list of scientists (Imhotep), athletes (Jesse Owens), politicians (Patrice Lumumba), historians (Cheikh Anta Diop), scholars (Sir Arthur Lewis) that could easily fill up a large encyclopedia. One would ask, “why it is important to have this history?” The best way to explain this is to reflect on the purpose of this very website.

The Black Renaissance in Chess

Many years ago as a rising young player in Chicago, I knew only a few Black Masters. In the midst of a conversation with a Caucasian player, he asked me about the number of Black masters and I could only name the few I knew. The problem was that no one had taken time to archive the history of the players and they certainly didn’t appear regularly in chess magazines. Thus, there became a need to show the contributions of a forgotten segment. There are now thousands of pages of documented history on Blacks’ contributions to chess at “The Chess Drum“.

Looking back on chess history there are many landmarks for Blacks. There is 19th century chess problemist Theophilus Thompson who was the first Black player of note. In the U.S., Walter Harris, Frank Street and Kenneth Clayton and Leroy (Jackson) Muhammad led the 60s era along with Charles Covington and Charles Lawton of the 70s. Then came the effect of the “Fischer Boom”.

The 80s saw a mass wave of Black Masters rise and throughout the world there were players making their presence felt. The 80s saw a teen sensations named Baraka Shabazz and K.K. Karanja. African and Caribbean nations began dotting the Olympiad landscape and taking their rightful place among the cadre of chess nations. African International Masters Watu Kobese (South Africa), Odion Aikhoje (Nigeria), Robert Gwaze (Zimbabwe) have produced shining moments for “Mother Africa”. WIM Oleiny Linares-Napoles made Cuba proud by winning a silver medal in the 2008 Olympiad with 9/10.

A landmark event occurred when Maurice Ashley became the first Black Grandmaster in 1993. This became the benchmark for Black excellence and was followed by Pontus Carlsson (Sweden) and Amon Simutowe (Zambia). Of course, Emory Tate will go down in the annals of Black history as one of the most celebrated players, a reputation coming from his dashing victories. The historic Wilbert Paige Memorial was a tournament for the ages. The idea that there is such a history will provide the upcoming talents with examples of paths once trodden.

History in the Making

Currently, age records are being smashed with young stars around the world becoming living legends. It is also true that in the African Diaspora, there are a number of young boys and girls beginning to make progressive strides. In America, the players making a mark are getting younger and younger. Kassa Korley has broken the age record for U.S. National Master at 15 years 2 months. His record is endangered by players like Justus Williams and Josh Colas who are only 12 years old and already 2100 strength. These young boys have a history they can draw upon.

Scholastic All-Americans: Justus Williams and Josh Colas

There is something clearly important about seeing images of successful people with whom you have something in common. For those who have never had problems finding role models, it may be hard to understand the significance. For those who have to look far and wide for examples, the Black Master playing against the world’s best can make a huge difference in the confidence of impressionable minds. One thing is for sure… the “Wall of Fame” will only get bigger as long as we preserve the immediate history. Mimicking Carter G. Woodson, we should be compelled to present historic examples that are often overlooked. There are many beautiful stories yet to be told!

Hikaru Nakamura has quite a story to tell. Born in Osaka, Japan and arriving in the U.S. at the age of two, Nakamura has been gracing the pages of chess magazines since he began breaking many of Bobby Fischer’s records. One of the first indicators of chess talent is the age record for National Master.

There have been many talented players to come through the scholastic ranks, but many either quit playing after high school, or shortly after reaching National Master. When Nakamura entered Dickinson College, there were fears that America would lose yet another promising talent along the likes of Grandmasters Michael Wilder and Patrick Wolff.

Under the early tutelage of his stepfather FM Sunil Weeramantry and the mentorship of older brother Asuka Nakamura, young Hikaru shattered the record reaching the mark in 10 years, 79 days. In 2008, his record was later lowered to 9 years, 11 months by Nicholas Nip, a player who is no longer active. Five years later, he broke Bobby Fischer’s long-standing record by earning Grandmaster status in 15 years, 79 days.

Media comparisons to Fischer immediately heightened when he won the U.S. Championship at age 16. However, Nakamura reminded everyone, “I’m not Bobby Fischer.” He was intimating the point that Fischer was an unbalanced individual who only thought of chess. Of course, this was only half the story with Fischer, but certainly he was one who could not operate comfortably outside of the chess realm.

When you talk to Nakamura, he is comfortable talking about a wide range of topics including his beloved Vancouver Canucks hockey team. He also has a variety of interests including music, finance, sports and politics. Many of the existing stereotypes of Nakamura are based on history from his teen years and commentary from online chess servers.

Chief Organizer Erik Anderson (left) stands next to GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Rusudan Goletiani after both were crowned the 2004 U.S. Champions.

Nakamura’s talent was hardly questioned on the U.S. scene as he had put together an impressive résumé of wins. At the closing ceremonies of the 2003 U.S. Championship, winner Alexander Shabalov singled out a young Nakamura and stated that he had a bright future in chess. In American tournaments, Nakamura’s brash style has become a breath of fresh air in a sport that had become stagnant with the same players competing every year in the U.S. Championships and the open tournaments. His victory the next year was definitely good for chess.

Once Nakamura joined the elite class in the U.S., he carried a reputation as being an isolationist and distrustful of his colleagues. He rankled many when he made comments about collusion among the U.S. elite. “That’s actually why I still work alone. It’s very hard to trust anybody.” However, as Nakamura begin to ascend to a world-class level, he enlisted some help. After the 2009 U.S. Championship, he mentioned that he had been working with National Master Kris Littlejohn. This choice of a second puzzled many, but has paid dividends.

Viktor Mikalevski ponders Gata Kamsky’s next move while Nakamura-Najer reaches the climatic stage of the 2009 World Open. Photo by Daaim Shabazz.

In U.S. chess, there had been too many “friendships” between top players which resulted in many quick draws and dispirited play. Nakamura was dismissive of these tactics and forced the issue with his ‘play-to-win’ attitude. His determination affords him psychological capital when an opponent understands that they have to fight when they are already content on drawing. This fighting spirit came into great effect when he won his first U.S. Championship at age 16. However, in an important interview in Salon magazine, there were still had doubters.

“The finish is very good but few purists will rank his play in the same league as Fischer’s — it lacks elegance,” wrote chess scribe Alan Goldsmith. Another chess writer, Bobby Ang, wondered, “When Nakamura reaches the higher echelons of the chess elite, will his style work?” Citing a benchmark of great contemporary players, Ang asked of Nakamura, “Can his brilliance overcome the tactical mastery of Alexei Shirov? Will his will-to-win be sufficient to breach the solid fortifications of Vladimir Kramnik, or Peter Leko? Is his much-touted resourcefulness of a high enough standard to battle with Rustam Kasimdzhanov? I doubt it very much.” (see link)

Nakamura’s sales pitch to Europe was more difficult, but he was beginning to pick up momentum. Tournament organizers were attracted to his brash, no-nonsense style. He has since broken through in a number of strong tournaments and is now comfortably ensconced in the top 20. Many detractors rail at the notion that Nakamura has not gotten the opportunities to face the elite level. They cite his skipping Corus “B” in 2008 for the Gibraltar Masters as a snub. Nakamura cited inadequate conditions, but made good on his trip by winning Gibraltar.

He added a few more accolades including the 2009 U.S. Championship, 960 World Championship and the Cap d’Agde Rapid Tournament (over Anatoly Karpov and Vassily Ivanchuk). There were still doubters who stated that he couldn’t win in a strong classical tournament. After playing poorly in the London Classic, Nakamura finally got his coveted invite to Corus “A” and made a strong showing with 7.5/13 (4th place). Magnus Carlsen, the winner of the tournament, identified Nakamura as a new rival.

On various chess blogs, the conversation of Nakamura ascendancy is a popular topic. Naysayers continue to claim Nakamura is not worthy of “elite” status for very specific reasons. After he refutes these reasons, another set will be created and standards increased. At this point, pundits state that Nakamura has to make top 10 to be considered seriously as a World Championship. Last year, it was top 20.

Of course, the candidacy of players such as Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin or Teimour Radjabov was recognized almost immediately. What is the difference? The theory was that the European stars were “battle-tested” and Nakamura had not faced tough competition. Many top chess journals, websites and blogs take liberties to print negative portrayals of the young American star. Even his head-to-head blitz victory over Carlsen in Norway was trivialized.

So the question…”Is Nakamura the ‘Real Deal’?” Does he have World Championship potential? When Vladimir Kramnik was asked this question, he seems to believe that Nakamura is a legitimate talent, but stopped short of giving a full endorsement. Most of the fans and journalists believe that Carlsen is the heir apparent to Viswanathan Anand or Veselin Topalov, but it is not certain if Carlsen will maintain his level. The performance of Anish Giri turned some heads and the Chinese and Indians deserve attention. If one looks at Nakamura, he has many things going for him.

GM Hikaru Nakamura at 2010 Corus in Wijk aan Zee.
Photo by Fred Lucas.

Will these factors mean that he has enough to win a World Championship? Time will tell. One thing that is true is that if Nakamura has his goal set and resources are not an issue, he will have more than an adequate shot at winning the World Championship. He is only 22 years old and he will continue to get better. The downside is does not have a sponsor and gets limited help from his federation which means that he does not have the luxury of focusing purely on chess development.

In a 2005 interview with the New York Times, Nakamura summed up his chances.

”If I am able to get up there and play for the actual title of the world championship, then once again, everyone will be excited,” Mr. Nakamura said, noting how chess gained wide appeal when Mr. Fischer toppled Boris Spassky, the Soviet world champion, in 1972. ”There have been plenty of great players since Fischer but none have been American players.” (see link)

Nakamura has the tenacity, the nerves and still has some areas of improvement in his game. Given Carlsen’s breach of 2800, there will be a new cadre of players to vie for the world crown. With the right combination of training, sponsorship and tournament invitations, Nakamura hopes to be one in that number.

Bruno Fitoussi a écrit:
J'ai toutefois la nette impression que beaucoup (ou la plupart ?) ont largement beneficié de l'apport incontestable de la technologie de Fruit !  Le problème étant évidemment, pour les programmes commerciaux, le GPL associé ...

Thierry Hugues a écrit:

sur le fond de la reflexionde don dailey , quelques reflexions :

- Si dans une position meme "tranquille " il y a un bon coup à jouer , tous les bons moteurs le joueront qu'ils s'appellent Kasparov , Karpov ou Fischer.

- Avant de chercher à demasquer "des clowns", il faut utiliser l'outil sur des "familles " de logiciels à la genealogie " réputée" ( comme dans la bible ..sourire) :

ainsi les nombreuses versions de Fritz, de Junior, de Shredder, de Hiarcs .... devraient etre soumises au test .....

 et si l'on decouvre alors que Fritz 8 est un clone de Junior 8 .... et Shredder 8 un clone de Hiarcs 7 ,

et que Fritz 9 n'a rien à voir avec Fritz 8 .....mais plutot avec zapchess.... 

on pourra commencer passer au detecteur Rybka 3 , le noyer, le bruler, le desintegrer, le maudire, l'excommunier...

Patrick Buchmann a écrit:
Salut,

Autre lien intéressant: https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

Cordialement,
Patrick

Bon ... si je comprends bien : Rajlich considère que le programme Strelka est  un clone de Rybka1.0b. Mais l'analyse réalisée sur le code source de Strelka montre qu'il serait fortement inspiré de Fruit donc Rybka serait aussi un dérivé de Fruit ... CQFD (?)

Bref tout cela ressemble à un panier de Crabe   J'ai toutefois la nette impression que beaucoup (ou la plupart ?) ont largement beneficié de l'apport incontestable de la technologie de Fruit !  Le problème étant évidemment, pour les programmes commerciaux, le GPL associé ...

Cordialement,
Bruno

Message: http://lefounumerique.xooit.com/t744-Robbolito-Ivanhoe-Firebire-Rybka-il-en-manque-un-hypocrito.htm?p=2101

Nicola Gotti a écrit:

Je veux te demandé Patrick pourquoi Chessbase ne réagis pas pour Rybka car au moins pour la version 3 elle est également commercialisé chez eu ?
De plus Fritz est un native-engine comme les CometB.. et les Crafty qui sont aussi des Winboard, peut-on pas dire que chessbase fait des adaptations de moteur Winboard.
De plus pourquoi un clonage devrait se faire au même format ?
De plus je pense que si sa serait autant "simple" tu n'aurais pas demandé notre avis et tu aurais supprimer Rybka de la liste et on aurais pas entendu parler de Robblito. Je me trompe

Sackgasse (Foto von Asif Akbar)

In einer Partie wird eine Mattstellung erreicht. Doch beide Spieler machen noch einen weiteren Zug. Erst dann stellen sie das Matt fest und beenden die Partie. In einer Turnierpartie zwischen Großmeistern wäre dies schon sehr seltsam, oder. Vergleichbares geschieht aber regelmäßig in bestimmten Remisstellungen. Und kein Schiedsrichter greift ein. Nach den Regeln ist die Partie beendet. Trotzdem wird ein weiterer Zug gespielt, aufgeschrieben und alles auch noch veröffentlich. So geschehen gerade wieder in der Partie Arndt Lauber gegen Konstantin Landa am letzten Bundesligawochenende.

Regelwerk

Die aktuelle Version der FIDE-Schachregeln (siehe hier) wurde im November 2008 beschlossen, vom DSB übersetzt (siehe hier), und gilt seit dem 1. Juli 2009. Im Artikel 1.3 heißt es: “Ist eine Stellung erreicht, in der keinem der beiden Spieler das Mattsetzen mehr möglich ist, ist das Spiel “remis” (unentschieden).” Daraus folgt: Lässt sich für eine Stellung zeigen, dass ein Matt nicht mehr möglich ist, ist die Partie sofort beendet.

In einigen anderen Artikeln wird der Inhalt von 1.3 aufgenommen und ausführlicher formuiert. Ich zitiere Artikel 5.2 b): “Die Partie ist remis, sobald eine Stellung entstanden ist, in welcher keiner der Spieler den gegnerischen König mit irgendeiner Folge von regelgemäßen Zügen mattsetzen kann. Eine solche Stellung heißt “tote Stellung”. Damit ist die Partie sofort beendet, vorausgesetzt, dass der Zug, der die Stellung herbeigeführt hat, regelgemäß war (siehe Artikel 9.6).” und Artikel 9.6: “Die Partie ist remis, sobald eine Stellung entstanden ist, aus welcher ein Matt durch keine erdenkliche Folge von regelgemäßen Zügen erreichbar ist. Damit ist die Partie sofort beendet, vorausgesetzt, der Zug, der diese Stellung herbeiführte, war regelgemäß.”

Der Artikel 5.2 gibt der Sache einen Namen. So können wir kurz und knapp sagen: Eine “tote Stellung” (”dead position”) ist immer und sofort remis. Weder eine Zeitüberschreitung noch ein dritter regelwidriger Zug ändern daran etwas. Weitere Wiederholungen, inhaltlich aber nichts Neues, bieten übrigens noch die Artikel 6.9 und 7.4 b. Es gibt dazu auch einen kleinen Wikipedia-Artikel “Tote Stellung”.

Interessant ist die Geschichte des Artikels 1.3. (Im Folgenden stütze ich mich übrigens auf die Sammlung älterer FIDE-Schachregeln von Otto Janko (siehe hier). Eine kommentierte Geschichte der Regeländerungen wäre hilfreich. Ich konnte aber keine finden und freue mich über jeden Hinweis.) Er taucht zum ersten Mal in den FIDE-Schachregeln von 1996/97 auf (siehe hier: “If the position is such that neither player can possibly checkmate, the game is drawn.”) Die weiteren oben angeführten Ergänzungen wurden dann in späteren Fassungen hinzugefügt (siehe z. B. hier).

In den FIDE-Schachregeln von 1992/93 (siehe hier) gab es noch keine allgemeine Formulierung, sondern in dem damaligen Artikel 10.4 nur eine Aufzählung besonderer Stellungen, König gegen König, König und Leichtfigur gegen König, und König und Läufer gegen König und Läufer bei Läufern auf gleicher Farbe:  “The game is drawn when one of the following endings arises: (a) king against king; (b) king against king with only bishop or knight; (c) king and bishop against king and bishop, with both bishops on diagonals of the same colour. This immediately ends the game.” Artikel 10.5 stellte dann noch klar, dass ein bloßer König nicht gewinnen kann.

Gegenüber 1992/93 gab es also 1996/97 eine sinnvolle Erweiterung. In der Version der FIDE-Schachregeln von 1977 (siehe hier) fehlte noch jeder Hinweis auf später so genannte “tote Stellungen”. Groben Unfug wie eine Spielen auf Zeit mit König und Springer gegen König hätten die Regeln damals noch zugelassen. Hier hätte der Schiedsrichter eingreifen müssen.

Schachkomposition

Die Komponisten von Schachproblemen haben einen besonderen Sinn für die offiziellen Schachregeln. Ich verweise nur auf den schönen Artikel “In the Twilight Zone of Chess Rules” von Jens Kristiansen. Berühmt ist die so genannte “Pam-Krabbé-Rochade” (siehe hier und hier), die zu einer Präzisierung der Rochade-Regeln führte.

Im Problem von Tim Krabbé (siehe Diagramm) setzt der Anziehende den schwarzen König im dritten Zug matt: a) nach 1.e7 gxf3 2.e8D+ Kd3 durch die lange Rochade 3.0-0-0# , b) nach 1.e7 Kxf3 2.e8T d4 durch die kurze Rochade 3.0-0#, und c) nach 1.e7 Kxf3 2.e8T Kg2 durch die Pam-Krabbé-Rochade 0-0-0-0# mit weißem König auf e3 und weißem Turm auf e2. (Vgl. Tim Krabbé: Schach-Besonderheiten, Bd 1, Düsseldorf (Econ) 1987, S.19f.)

Zum Zeitpunkt der Komposition entsprach die Pam-Krabbé-Rochade vollkommen den Regeln. Weder König noch Turm hatten gezogen. Und nur der Turm übersprang ein vom Schwarzen bedrohtes Feld. Durch die Einführung der weiteren Bedingung, dass nämlich König und Turm auf einer Reihe stehen müssen, wurde die vertikale Rochade dann aber bald ausgeschlossen.

Nach der Aufnahme des Artikels 1.3 in die FIDE-Schachregeln 1996/97 durfte man rückblickend fast erwarten, dass Schachkomponisten sich der neuen Regel annehmen würden. Wenige Jahre später war es dann soweit. Andrew G. Buchanan beschreibt seine Entdeckung in seiner FAQ for Dead Reckoning so:

“A weird thing happened. I stumbled across a chess rule that no one knew about before. No, really. The International Chess Federation updates the Laws of Chess every few years. Obviously, they don’t change the key stuff: like how a bishop moves. But they do fiddle around at the margins, and in 1997 they introduced a rule which has little impact on the real game, but does have consequences for chess problems. It wasn’t until late 2000 that anyone noticed these consequences. It happened to be me.”

Um welche Regel es sich handelt, wissen wir ja schon. Jedenfalls machte sich Buchanan ans Werk und komponierte eine ganze Reihe von wunderbaren Aufgaben. Auf der Website Some Novel Chess Problems hat er eine ganze Sammlung zusammen mit einführenden und erklärenden Texten veröffentlicht. Hier zwei Beispiele, die zeigen wie solche Probleme funktionieren.

Bei nur zwei Königen auf dem Brett zu fragen, wer zuletzt gezogen hat, mag auf den ersten Blick ganz sinnlos erscheinen. Aufgrund der “Tote-Stellung-Regel” lässt sich das Problem von Buchanan (siehe Diagramm) aber leicht lösen. Nehmen wir an Schwarz hat zuletzt gezogen. Dann ging der König von b8 oder a7 nach a8. War das Feld frei, war die Partie mit nur den Königen vorher schon beendet, und die Diagrammstellung konnte gar nicht mehr entstehen. Diesen Schluss nennt Buchanan “Dead Reckoning”, was ich ein bisschen holprig mit “Tote-Stellung-Überlegung” übersetze.

Weiter: Der schwarze König muss auf a8 eine weiße Figur geschlagen haben. Bei einer Leichtfigur wäre die Partie vorher schon mangels Mattpotential beendet gewesen. Und bei einer Schwerfigur war der schwarze König gezwungen zu schlagen. Damit wäre die Partie ebenfalls bereits beendet gewesen. Wieder eine “Tote-Stellung-Überlegung”.  Eine Bauernumwandlung auf a8 führt zu einer der beiden schon behandelten Fälle. Daher kann der schwarze König nicht zuletzt gezogen haben. Für den weißen König lässt sich dies dagegen zeigen. Er könnte z. B. auf c6 einen Turm oder Bauern gesch