Le Club d'échecs d'Evry Grand Roque remporte le doublé Coupe de France d'échecs et Top 12 féminin.

Evénement magique, la Coupe de France d’échecs 2010 va se jouer ce dimanche 27 juin entre le club francilien d'Evry Grand Roque, grandissime favori, et le petit poucet lorrain, Metz Fischer.

La Coupe de France d’échecs 2010 va se jouer ce dimanche 27 juin entre le club françilien d'Evry, grandissime favori, et le petit poucet Metz Fischer. Comme pour le Top12 féminin, cette finale se déroulera dans les superbes locaux du Conseil Général de la Marne à Châlons-en-Champagne. Découvrez en avant-première, la présentation détaillée de l'épreuve, par notre ami Diego Salazar, avec l'interview "bord de touche" des deux capitaines.

Vassily Ivanchuk, who won the 2009 Kings Tournament, couldn’t play in Bazna this year as he had already signed for the 45th Capablanca Memorial. Halfway through the tournament in Cuba, the Ukrainian leads the top group, ahead of Nigel Short and Leinier Dominguez. IM Robert Ris plays in the open group, and reports from Havana.

By IM Robert Ris

The start of the tradition began in 1962 when revolutionist Ernesto “Che” Guevara could give the tournament a financial impulse. At that time he gained control over the National Bank and became minister of Industries. As has been said, Che used to be a fanatic chess player himself and liked to compete with strong local players.

In 1965 Che left the country to initiate other revolutions in Africa and Latin-America. Fortunately, the continuation of the tournament was never in danger, despite the tense relations with the USA due to the outbreak of the Cold War. After an absence of almost three years, Fischer accepted to participate in its 4th edition. However, he couldn’t obtain a visa and hence it was decided he would participate from New York by telephone. His games took much more time and so the American ran out of energy towards the end of the tournament, when he eventually lost to Geller and Kholmov, enabling Smyslov to take clear first. Since then Cuba has been considered as one the most chess-friendly nations worldwide, where a lot of top player have executed their moves.

The popularity can still be seen among its inhabitants. Before the tournament I went together with my friend IM Ruud Janssen for a couple of days to Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city of the country located on the eastern part of the island. Walking around the town we noticed people playing our royal game in parques and on the streets, something very unfamiliar to many other countries. People really breath chess in Cuba and are not afraid to play a game or two with their foreign friends.

Locals in Cuba play chess wherever they can...

...and happily meet the foreigners...

...though this old man preferred his chess pieces to be used for checkers!

This year the organizers even managed to increase the strength of the Elite Group. With the participation of Vasily Ivanchuk (winner in 2005, 2006 and 2007), Nigel Short, Evgenij Alekseev, Ian Nepomniatchi (reigning European Champion), Leinier Dominguez (winner 2004, 2008 and 2009) and Lazaro Bruzon (winner in 2002) a spectacular event has been once more guaranteed.

The first part of the tournament was mainly dominated by Ivanchuk. The Ukrainian GM doesn’t seem to be upset being surpassed on the latest rating list by his countryman Eljanov. In Havana, Chucky seem to have his nerves under control and is on 4 out of 5, a clear point ahead of Nigel Short, whom he beat in the very first round. The Englishman had to sacrifice a piece and even got 4 pawns in return. However, Chucky’s bishops proved to be much stronger and could easily collected them all.

Short vs Ivanchuk at the start of the game

Ivanchuk’s superiority over his colleagues was proven in the other rounds as well. In fine manoeuvring battles he outplayed Alekseev and Nepomniachtchi, while in his black game against Dominguez he seemed to have the better of the play for a long time, before settling for a draw.

The tournament is being held in Salon Internacional of the 5-star hotel Habana Riviera, where the heat seems to influence the players. Especially the invited players from abroad seem to suffer, which logically results in bad blunders. A typical example is the following one, where the current European Champion overlooks a simple tactic.

Nepomniachtchi-Short

Something has gone wrong for Black in the middlegame and he has to fight for a draw now. 29…Rb3 Play could have been simplified by 29…Bxe5 but after 30.Rxe5 Rxc3 31.Rxe6 Rxc7 32.Rxa6 Rb7 33.Ra4 the rook ending is still quite unpleasant, as White will bring his king to the b-pawn. Therefore, Short decides to play for a cheap trick. 30.Rf3? Falling for the trap. With 30.Re1! White keeps his extra pawn. 30…Bxe5 and now Nepomniachtchi realized the pawn on f7 is untouchable due to back rank mate. Hence, the Russian went for 31.Rc8+ (31.Rfxf7? Rb1+) when the players agreed to split the point.

In subsequent rounds Short managed to add two wins to his account against Alekseev and Bruzon. Until now he and Ivanchuk are the only players who managed to win a single game. Cuba’s number one Leinier Dominguez still has to get his motor running and so far only produced five draws. Bruzon and Nepomniatchi both only lost once, while Alekseev is probably the most unhappy about his minus two performance so far.

Besides this Elite group, another closed GM tournament and a big open is being held to please the other Cuban players as well. Halfway the tournament, Peruvian GM Emilio Cordova and Cuban GM Yunieski Quesada Perez are sharing the first place with 3.5/5 in the Premier group. In the Open section Cuban IM Jose Angel Guerra Mendez still has the perfect score, followed by Danish IM Karsten Rasmussen, who in the next round will meet each other.

Game viewer

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Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Elite | Premier | Open via TWIC

Players on San Francisco’s Market Street.
Photo by cormac70 (flickr).

Many major cities around the world have their chess watering holes. The U.S. is replete with these cultural icons. In New York, there is Washington Square Park; in Los Angeles, there is Venice Beach; in Chicago there is North Avenue Beach; in Washington, DC there is Dupont Circle; in Atlanta there is Woodruff Park; in Boston there is Harvard Square. Until recently, San Francisco on Market near Mason Street (by the BART station) was the chess spot.

Chris Torres, who runs the chessmusings blog, told The Chess Drum that city officials of San Francisco is proceeding to ban chess activities in the downtown area. According to reports, chess players have been at the location for nearly 30 years and like most of the places above had become a part of the surrounding city culture. Some of these chess spots are even mentioned in tourist guides.

Apparently there had been some complaints to the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) about disruptions from the chess players. There were stories of fighting and in one video an angry person said, “let’s shoot this (expletives shouted)”. Here is an excerpt from a SF Weekly article,

SFPD had received several complaints from citizens about players’ conduct — fighting, drinking, and some outstanding warrants, according to Lt. Lyn Tomioka, a police department spokeswoman.

The warrants and also the stay-away orders — apparently some chess players had been warned to keep away from area businesses and area merchants, including the artists who peddle their wares on Market Street near the chess games — were the biggest problems. The organizers of the chess matches were asked to move their act a block down the way to the 1000 block of Market Street, Tomioka said, but sometime between then and now the games fell apart and are today gone.

It appears the police action was a step in a confluence of factors leading to the games’ demise. Soon after the chess players were told to move, organizer Hector Torres landed in the hospital, according to Bob Offer-Westort, the Coalition on Homelessness’s Civil Rights Organizer. Without Torres, nobody bothered to set up the tables from their storage home at 66 Turk Street, and the games died out. (See article)

Chris Torres raised the question of whether it was the chess players or the urban environment causing some of the disturbances. Despite assertions that these incidents are isolated, the group has apparently been forced from the area. Police were recorded as saying there had been gang activity. Players such as Hector Torres and John Powell had been two players to help keep this tradition going, but their past-time has been threatened.

This case is not unprecedented. Back in 2002, chess players in Chicago had the exact same case when the chess tables were moved from the famous Harper Court mall in Hyde Park. It was a famous location and chess was a spectacle in the area. A few local businesses complained about crime in the area and that chess players were not patronizing the businesses. They added that some of the customers were scared away from the area because chess attracted some unsavory observers. The chess community launched a big fight, but the chess tables had been sold. After some time an agreement was reached to allow players to set up folding tables every Saturday, but the activity soon died since the tables were not available 24-7. (See article)

Torres wrote a letter to San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. In it he says,

With funding for various organizations that help the homeless population being hit hard by the financial meltdown, I feel it is irresponsible if not mean-spirited for the city of San Francisco to take away one of the few possibilities left for free and legal entertainment. Furthermore, for a city that entices tourists to come on the basis of its many cultural opportunities, it does not seem fitting for San Francisco to be shutting down harmless attractions such as chess. (See article)

There are a number of issues here. One may view this through the lens of race or of class. Many of the men are in economic straits and are of “minority” ethnic groups. Proprietors may say that the chess group hurts business because it attracts a homeless element that scares away shoppers who prefer not to be harassed. There has not been an official statement released from the city. In a city that parades itself as a diverse Mecca, this development will certainly be a blot on the history of the city.

• Old habits are strong.
• The area covered by the knowledge is too broad. There isn't simply enough time to evaluate everything. What you don't do automatically you can't do at all during a game. Due to lack of time and short term memory overload.
• On the other hand there are area's in the game that aren't covered at all. Examples are openings and dynamic positions.

On May 15th, I left Chicago’s O’Hare airport for a long journey to Africa. I finally set foot in Africa on May 18th in Johannesburg, South Africa. My trip was delayed two days because of a passport issues. I finally got my passport corrected, boarded my flight and flew a smooth 15 hours over the Atlantic Ocean, Namibia and Botswana.

I was amazed at the wide variety of movies on the entertainment system. I settled for “Blind Side”, “Fight” and Arabic language movie “Ameerika”. I landed at Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg at around 5:20pm and a driver came to pick me up. World Cup fever was in full force as the airport was festooned with all types of paraphernalia of the pending football tournament.

World Cup fever is everywhere in Africa!

After a 40-minute drive from the airport, I arrived at the Garden Court Hotel, a nice accommodation sitting across from the Nelson Mandela Court. Since I was delayed two days, my plans to meet with officials in CHESSA, the official federation of South Africa, fell through. I had informed Rista DeBeer of CHESSA that I would miss our scheduled meeting. I had intended on meeting IM Watu Kobese, but it turns out he would be in Angola for BCI tournament. I did make contact with a Ph.D. classmate who has lived in South Africa for 12 years. That would be the only night I spend in the city.

My group consisted of thirty professors from around the U.S. on a “Faculty development Tour”. They already had visits to Vodocom, Chamber of Commerce and the University of Pretoria. Before heading to Kenya, we visited Soweto, the Mandela Museum and the Apartheid Museum before catching the five-hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya.

Soweto is always a historic treasure to visit as there are many landmarks to commemorate the successful struggle against apartheid. This was my second time to South Africa and while I did not see the squatter camps this time, these landmarks are reminders that the struggle continues (a luta continua).

The flight to Nairobi was uneventful and we set down in Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at around 7:30pm. As we exited customs, we were met with a crush of people waiting for other travelers. After accounting for all 30 in our group, we boarded the vans and then set out on the dark roads of Nairobi. Artistically arranged billboards dotted the roads with the illuminated lights overhead. As a frequent traveler, I have learned not to spend time talking to fellow travelers instead of silently taking in the new scenery. Interesting view.

We arrived at the famous Stanley Hotel, reputed to one of the best accommodations in Nairobi. The lobby is one of the most important features of a hotel and the Stanley lived up to its billing. Prior to my trip I had posted messages on the Kenya Chess Forum and made contact with the chess players via e-mail. They stated that the hotel is in the middle of the commercial section and that I would be close to the chess club.

After a couple of grueling days visiting Kenyan businesses and traversing the streets of Nairobi, I arranged with some of the local players to visit the chess club. The days were very interesting as I was able to get an idea of the pace of Kenya. In one instance, I experienced the stifling Nairobi traffic. Once I got to the hotel it had begun to rain a bit. This means that traffic would intensify. There are so many potholes in Kenya that one has to be careful not to land in a water-filled crater. I finally made contact with the Kenya players and was picked up by Mehul Gohil and Kim Bhari during the rainy evening.

Daaim Shabazz signing a Wilbert Paige booklet for Githinji Hinga.

Daaim Shabazz with Mehul Gohil and Kim Bhari.

The club resided in an office building on the 2nd level and the room resembled a small lounging area. There were several tables arranged and there were players engaged in blitz battles. I presented club members with several copies of the Wilbert Paige Memorial booklet and dozens of monogrammed ink pens. After taking several pictures I played a round of blitz games with several players. The games were interesting apart from a few blunders and sluggish play on my part. I was well-received at the club and it was a wonderful evening.

On the next morning, we took a drive from Nairobi to Arusha, Tanzania. It was a tortuous road filled with massive potholes and in total disrepair. Our driver weaved as if he were navigating an obstacle course in a sports competition. Apart from the weaving and bobbing, the scenery was idyllic… beautiful plants and flowers, tropical trees, huge termite mounds and sights of the Maasai herding their cattle were common on the four-hour journey. There were stretches of the road that were paved with brand new black top. The Chinese have been making quite a bit of progress in improving the infrastructure and they could be seen on the road in their hard hats.

Idyllic view of mountains in Tanzania.

Arriving to Tanzania, we were shown Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. It is a handsome structure that was partially covered by clouds on our Nairobi-Arusha drive, yet it yielded an imposing presence. We saw many of the beautiful man-made mud structures that are characterized in racist literature, but that are absolutely stunning and ingenious. We arrived in Arusha, but our hotel had a power outage on a few of the floors, so we have to change venue.

Tanzania is a country that shows a lot of character and not the typical commercialization that strips the cultural uniqueness. The streets were bustling and in the outskirts there were countless road markets. The country is very lush with all types of foliage, gardens on the roadsides and miles of coffee and corn plantations. In the city, there were hawkers everywhere and if you step out of the hotel, they were ready to sell you an array of overpriced souvenirs.

In one episode, one gentleman wanted to sell me a ski cap and and a bracelet for 55,000 shillings. Of course it is overpriced, but I told him I wanted the ski cap with the Tanzanian flag. He said 45,000 shillings. I asked him for a calculator and quickly showed him that the cap he was trying to sell me was about US$34.00. “That’s not a good price,” I told him. The same cap I can get for US$5.00 in the states. I eventually gave him 10,000 shillings (US$7.00) for it. The price haggling was good fun.

After sending the night in Arusha, we took a road trip to Ngorongoro. As we drove, the acacia trees were a staple in landscaping and children were seen fetching water and being industrious. There were also a number of schools off in the distance. The Maasai warriors were never too far out of view. We stopped for bathroom breaks, but many were urged not to photograph the locals unless permission was granted. We finally arrived at the Ngorongoro Lodge which set on a coffee plantation. It couldn’t help to think about my coffee plant of 19 years.

Young Maasai apprentices

The thing that I most remember about Tanzania is its greenery. There were plots of plants and flowers along the road for miles. Animals were grazing just short of cars and trucks whizzing past. We were sometimes stopped by a caravan of cows crossing the road. We visited a large coffee plantation and were given a tour of how coffee is produced from the tree to the roasting. We also visited a lush banana plantation which gave us an opportunity to understand why people in Africa sometimes live off US$1.00 a day.

There were rows and rows of banana trees at different stages of development. We also ran into other fruits such as passion fruit, papayas, avocados and limes. There were also a pumpkin patch and a rice plantation. We got quite an extensive explanation of banana processing and how they were harvested. While I knew about the nine-month gestation period for bananas, I never knew how they sprouted and that they bore a pretty, purple bulbous flower at the end of the stem.

We visited a volcano crater, the home of a abundant array of wild animals. We saw wildlife in all its magnificent… wildebeest, zebras, warthogs, gazelles, bucks, elephants, lions, cheetahs and baboons. The most exciting part of the trip was climbing 4,000 feet up the crater on a precipitous slope of mud. We stopped once or twice to get a fantastic view of nature’s creation. However, there was nothing guarding us from a fatal tumble over the cliff. Nothing but a skillful driver. It was nerve-wrecking for some of the passengers as the wheels were only a few feet from the edge.

Stunning view of the crater!

On our second visit to an animal conservation, we saw a lot of giraffes and many of the animals mentioned. We rode by a colony of baboons and for about 10 minutes, we watched them socialize in their human-like ways. The giraffes were the most interesting and I was exposed to their “necking” ritual in which two males compete for a mate. On the third animal safari, we went on foot and came within 30 meters of animals. As we approached a herd of buffalo, they watched us closely for about 10 minutes. We were able to walk the trails of the animals and to see how they managed their habitat and co-existed. Fascinating!

Crested Crane, national bird of Uganda

On the walking safari, we came face-to-face with the animals.

No introduction is needed.

The handsome Superb Starling.

In this set of pictures to follow, I have chosen approximately 140 photos for this segment. The last set is dedicated to Tanzanian wildlife and nature. Links to all the pictures are also included if you’d like to take the time to view them. The total is close to 600. Enjoy!

Le château de Villandry est l'hôte ce week-end du Trophée Roza Lallemand 2010, le championnat de France féminin de parties rapides d'échecs.

Viktor Bologan, Dmitry Jakovenko, Sergei Karjakin and Alexander Riazantsev started with one draw and one win at the Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, Russia. The other participants are Ivan Sokolov, Emil Sutovsky, Alexander Onischuk, Baadur Jobava, Sergei Rublevsky, Arkadij Naiditsch, Nikita Vitiugov and Alexander Motylev.

The 11th edition of the tournament named after 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov takes place June 2-13 in Poikovsky, Russia. For the first time the tournament now has not 10, but 12 players. In this round-robin of 11 rounds, the rest day is on June 8th.

Poikovsky is located in the Nefteyugansk region of the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous area. It’s about 150km eastern of Khanty-Mansiysk. Its name comes from the nearby river Poyka. The population is close to 30,000 people and the main economic drive is the extraction of oil and gas.

Eleven years ago local authorities decided that a big chess tournament would do the region well. A year later a chess school for children was opened, like the tournament named after Anatoly Karpov. This year the chess school celebrated its 10th anniversary on June 1st, International Children’s Day. The festivities were opened by Karpov himself.

In the 11th tournament there are two players who never missed a single event in Poikovsky: Bologan and Onischuk. Jobava, Karjakin and Vitiugov make their debut this year. Motylev is defending his 2009 title.

Evgeny Surov posted a first photo report on Chesspro, where many players can be seen planting a tree in Poikovsky, including Anatoly Karpov himself.

Top seed this year is Sergei Karjakin, who just finished the ACP World Rapid Cup successfully a few days ago. He and the other finalist in Odessa, Dmitry Jakovenko, started with 1.5/2, and so did Viktor Bologan and Alexander Riazantsev.

Games rounds 1-2

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Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

Apple lance en France vendredi matin à 8h l'Ipad, sa nouvelle tablette multimédia. L'iPad est à l'ordinateur portable ce que l'iPod a été au walkman.

Face à la ruée attendue à l'entrée des magasins ce matin, les deux Apple Store français, situés à Paris et Montpellier, ont décidé d'ouvrir leurs portes dès 8 heures.

Les lecteurs de Chess & Strategy pourront aussi se procurer la précieuse tablette dans les magasins Boulanger, Surcouf, Darty et Fnac. Pour l'événement, tous les magasins Fnac parisiens accueillent le public à partir de 9 heures ce matin, une heure plus tôt qu'habituellement, et le site en ligne du distributeur commercialisera l'iPad dès 8 heures.

Attention, une bonne nouvelle peut en cacher une autre !

La sortie de l'Ipad va ravir les joueurs d'échecs puisque Gameloft, leader dans l'édition et le développement de jeux vidéos téléchargeables, accompagne le lancement de l'Ipad par la sortie en juin de 7 nouveaux titres dont Chess Classics.

Un logiciel d'échecs qui fonctionne déjà sur Iphone et qui sera adapté à l'ergonomie de l'Ipad. A vous de jouer !

Surnommé le Tigre de Madras, Anand, 40 ans, remporte le titre mondial pour la troisième fois consécutive. Couronné champion du monde d'échecs en 2007 à Mexico, il avait déjà gardé son titre en surclassant le Russe Vladimir Kramnik en octobre 2008, à Bonn. A Sofia cette année, Vishy Anand totalise 6,5 points contre 5,5 points pour le challenger bulgare Veselin Topalov et reste ainsi champion du monde d'échecs. Et si Anand jouait un match revanche contre Garry Kasparov qui l'avait battu en 1995 ?

Les photos de la cérémonie de clôture du championnat du monde d'échecs viennent de paraitre sur le site de notre partenaire Chessdom !

Flash Info : En remportant la 12ème et dernière partie du match, Vishy Anand conserve son titre ! Le score final : Viswanathan Anand 6,5-5,5 Veselin Topalov.

Flash Info: Nulle de folie dans la 11eme partie entre Anand et Topalov. Une partie anglaise (1.c4) sauvée in extremis par l'Indien. Le suspense reste entier au championnat du monde d'échecs à Sofia à une partie de la fin. Le score ce soir : Viswanathan Anand 5,5-5,5 Veselin Topalov.

Le championnat du monde d'échecs à Sofia est totalement relancé à seulement 4 parties de la fin. Depuis le début de la semaine, la cote de Topalov remonte en flèche.

Flash Info : Le joueur d'échecs bulgare Veselin Topalov ne rate pas sa chance avec les Blancs. Il sort le grand jeu sur la défense slave de son adversaire indien Vishy Anand et remporte à point nommé la 8ème partie.

Topalov pousse Anand à la faute (54...Fc6 ??) dans une finale de Fous de couleurs opposé avec un pion de plus.

Après la 3ème partie nulle d'affilée hier dans le match entre Anand et Topalov, nous y sommes.

Flash Info : Nulle dans la 7ème partie du match entre Anand et Topalov.

Flash Info : Anatoly Karpov - le 12ème champion du monde d'échecs - est arrivé à Sofia sur invitation du comité organisateur pour assister au match Anand-Topalov.

The sixth game of the World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov ended in a draw today. For the third time a Catalan came on the board, and after an interesting fight between Anand’s knight pair and Topalov’s bishop pair a drawish ending was played out till move 58 where a move repetition again brought a silent end to the game. Video added.

For all the match details, rules and regulations we refer to our large overview article here. Here’s a summary:

The match will take place April 21 – May 12 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Venue is the Central Military Club in Sofia, Bulgaria. The match will consist of 12 games, and if necessary, a 4-game rapid tiebreak, if necessary 5 2-game blitz matches and if necessary 1 sudden death game. The classical games will be played in pairs of 2, so there will be a rest day after every 2 games. No postponements are allowed. Topalov has White in games 1,3,5,8, 10 and 12.

Schedule

The time control for each game is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. The Chief Arbiter is Panaqiotis Nikolopoulos (Greece). The Deputy Chief Arbiter is Werner Stubenvoll (Austria). The total prize fund is 3 million Euros: 2 million for the players, 400,000 for FIDE taxes and 600,000 for organizational costs. The winner will receive 1,2 million Euros while the loser receives 800.000 Euros.

Score

Videos

If you can’t see the sixth video in the player above: this is a cache problem of the browser. We’ve contacted blip.tv about the problem. Please remove your cache files and try again. Here’s another copy of the game 6 video:

Click To Play

Game 6

On the hottest day so far in Sofia (about 26° C) many citizens could be found parading on the street, celebrating Labour Day, which as in many countries is a national holiday in Bulgaria.

Instead of celebrating what was orginally planned as a rest day, Anand and Topalov chose for labour instead: they played the longest game in the match so far! It was another Catalan and again soon the queens went off. Both sides had two rooks but Anand ended up with tho knights, and Topalov with two bishops.

A special detail of this game is the route Nb1 followed. It went Nb1-a3-c4-e5-d7-c5-b7-d6-c8-a7-c6-b4-d5-b6 before it was captured! Amazingly, the knight never went to a single square more than once.

Besides, in this game the two white knights together probably broke a World Championship record of thirteen consecutive knight moves.

As FenderTwang mentioned on the Chess.FM broadcast today, in the 10th match game Tal-Botvinnik 1961 a single white knight played ten moves in a row.

For a long time it remained unclear which side was better, though these knights did seem to provide some initiative. After one knight was traded for the black-squared bishop, on move 37 Topalov sacrificed a pawn to maximize his piece activity. By returning his b-pawn, Anand liquidated to a position with three against three on the kingside, which he held to a draw comfortably.

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Both players arrived at the board, and are waiting for the arbiter to start the clock

Chief Arbiter Nikolopoulos just did that, and Anand opens 1.d4...

...which is answered by 1...Nf6...

...and like in game 2 and 4, the World Champ plays 2.c4.

"Today was a tough game," Anand said at the press conference...

...while Topalov said he was certainly planning to try harder in the second half of the match

The spectators at the start of the game

Chief Arbiter Panaqiotis Nikolopoulos from Greece

Deputy Chief Arbiter Werner Stubenvoll from Austria

In the meantime the organizers also received an official apology from the electricity company CEZ for the suspension of power supply during the fifth game:

To
Boyko Borisov
Prime-Minister of Bulgaria
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
President of The World Chess Federation
Traicho Traikov
Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism
Svilen Neykov
Minister of Physical Education and Sport
Stefan Segriev
President of The Bulgarian Chess Federation

Subject: Electricity break in the central part of the capital at street’s area of: Rakovska Str., Slavianska Str., Aksakov Str., Tzar Osvoboditel Str., 6-ti Septemvri Str., Ivan Vazov Str.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Today, 04/30/2010, at 15.35 h due to an accident occurred through the cable lines in the central part of the city, the consumers in the area of the streets mentioned above remained without power supply. At 16:05 h, the electricity power supply was restored with a priority for the Central Military Club, “Salza i smiah ” theater and the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism. The rest users were fed at 16:30 h.

We’d like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused to you, and send our special apologies to the participants and organizers of the match for the World Chess Championship Anand-Topalov. We want to assure you that despite the busy traffic, our teams have made every possible effort and succeeded in restoring the electricity power supply as quickly as possible.

The main reason for such incidents is the outdated and inadequate network capacity in the central part, which needs substantial investment to improve it state.

Realizing our responsibility for providing quality services, we assure you that we will offer adequate investment plan for approval by the competent authorities, with the help of which the problems with the electricity supply of the capital should be resolved in the long term perspective.

Sincerely,
Ivan Kovarzhchik,
Executive Director
CEZ Distribution Bulgaria AD

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC
• Rules & regulations (PDF)
• The Week in Chess with analysis by IM Malcolm Pein and reports by Mark Crowther
• Anish Giri annotating for Chessbase
• Europe-Echecs, also reporting from Sofia
• GM Ian Rogers blogging for the USCF
• Rogers writing for Crikey
• GM Kevin Spragget blogging
• GM Susan Polgar with live commentary
• Chessdom (also live commentary)
• Crestbook (GM Sergey Shipov, live commentary in Russian)
• GM Dejan Bojkov analysing the games
• Die Zeit’s coverage

Viswanathan Anand osera-il resservir une 3ème fois la Catalane avec les Blancs à Veselin Topalov ? C'est la question qui hante la salle de presse de Sofia.

Ze Match ! Le championnat du Monde d'échecs entre le Bulgare Veselin Topalov et l'Indien Vishy Anand tient toutes ses promesses.

Le 3e Grand Prix Fide Féminin se déroule à Nalchik en Russie, du 26 Avril au 8 Mai 2010 mettant aux prises onze très fortes joueuses d'échecs.

Chaque semaine, le maître international canadien d'échecs Jean Hébert nous propose sa Newsletter.

A la Une, un départ percutant pour le championnat du monde d'échecs.

Aux échecs, les championnats du monde ont l'habitude de commencer lentement. En général les joueurs s'observent avec précaution, d'abord dans l'intention de connaître les ouvertures sur lesquelles l'adversaire a l'intention de baser sa stratégie de match. Mais pour Anand et Topalov la guerre a débuté dès le premier coup de la première partie!

D'abord une victoire écrasante du Bulgare, apparemment mieux préparé pour une défense Gruenfeld dont Anand n'est pas un grand spécialiste. Puis dès le lendemain, le champion réplique avec une belle victoire stratégique sinon psychologique, entraînant son adversaire dans un milieu de partie sans dame avec un plan de jeu difficile à tracer. Y-a-t-il déjà eu un championnat du monde avec une partie décisive de chaque côté pour inaugurer le match ? En 1954, Botvinnik avait remporté les deux premières parties contre l'aspirant Smyslov, puis en 1972, Spassky gagne la 1ère contre Fischer, de même que la seconde, mais cette fois par défaut, car l'Américain proteste contre la présence des caméras qui filment le match.

On l'attendait combatif à souhait et il ne nous a pas déçu !

Veselin Topalov a réussi une entrée en fanfare dans le championnat du monde d'échecs face à Vishy Anand. Avec les pièces blanches, le joueur d'échecs bulgare a mis rapidement la pression sur la une défense Grünfeld de son adversaire.

Au point que l'Indien a fini par gaffer dès le 23ème coup en jouant son Roi en f7 à la place de son Fou en d7 (position du diagramme ci-contre). Mais, il fallait oser répliquer par un sacrifice de cavalier au coup suivant. Bravo Topalov et que la fête commence !

La première partie du match du championnat du monde d'échecs 2010 se joue ce samedi à 16h heure de Paris. Le Bulgare Veselin Topalov fait face au tenant du titre, l'Indien Viswanathan Anand. Ce match se dispute en 12 parties du 24 avril au 13 Mai à Sofia.

Five countries, 2000 kilometres, about a million potholes, an unexpected ferry and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. A member of the Anand team wrote a report of a crazy roadtrip through Europe.

The following report describes the travelling of the Anand team from Frankfurt to Sofia, from Sunday to Tuesday. It was written by a member of the team, and was also published at Chessbase and the All India Chess Federation. The author allowed us to reproduce the following, remarkable story.

Months of careful planning for the chess world championship in Sofia by the Anand team were disrupted by a volcano in Iceland, located under Eyjafjallajökull, one of the smaller glaciers of the North Atlantic island. Tens of thousands of people were stranded on airports in Europe. One of them was Viswanathan Anand, who had travelled with his wife and manager Aruna from Madrid to Frankfurt on Thursday April 15th. They planned to continue their journey to Sofia on Friday April 16, together with three other travellers. Two more seconds were to fly from other airports in Europe to the Bulgarian capital on Friday to join the team there.

On Thursday April 15, Hans-Walter Schmitt and another helper of the Anand team flew to Sofia to prepare the arrival of the team Friday. The plan was good and well thought through. But then, on Friday, the bad news was that the ash cloud from Iceland had reached Frankfurt Airport and the airport had to be closed at 09.00 a.m. This meant that the planned flight to Sofia, LH3484, which was scheduled to depart at 10.05 a.m., was cancelled, just like hundreds of other flights. It was quite unclear how long the airport would remain closed, therefore Aruna Anand and the team decided to rebook for the evening flight, LH3488, which was scheduled for 19.45 p.m.

Anand’s baggage was checked through to Sofia. Since it was not clear, however, if the evening flight would depart on time, or depart at all, Aruna thought that it wise to collect the checked-through baggage from Madrid, just to have everything under control in case of another cancellation. She was in close contact with Lufthansa, who were very cooperative, and picked up the baggage herself on Friday afternoon. You should know that finding four pieces of luggage in a major airport like Frankfurt is not an easy task, especially when there are heavy disruptions. Only in case of an emergency, e.g. if somebody has life-saving medicine in his suitcase, an airline is willing to make baggage available for the passenger.

After solving this problem, it soon became clear that the evening flight to Sofia would not depart as well, since Frankfurt airport would be closed until Saturday morning at 02:00 a.m. Once again the tickets were rebooked, and despite a long waiting list, Anand and his team were accepted and even got boarding passes for the first flight on Saturday, April 17, LH3484, at 10.05 a.m. However, on Friday, when it became clear that the situation at all major airport was becoming more and more critical, Aruna Anand and her team had already started searching for alternatives. Plans were made to travel to Vienna, which had one of the airports that was still open at that time, to get a flight from there. However, Vienna also closed down on Friday evening.

Aruna began to study other train schedules in detail, but it soon became clear that everything was booked out and it was absolutely impossible to get a ticket. Team Anand also had to bear in mind, that travelling to Sofia by a land route was also problematic, since not every country on the way would accept transit travellers from India without a valid visa! The shortest route is via Serbia, for that Anand and his wife would need a visa, which was impossible to at such a short notice.

There were some very generous offers from Anand supporters, who wanted to help get the world champion and his team to Sofia as quickly as possible. Wolfgang Grenke, one of the main sponsors of the Chess Classic, and sponsor of the Bundesliga team Baden Baden, in which Anand plays, offered Anand the use of his private jet. However, German authorities could not give him permission to fly, since the airspace in Germany was now completely blocked. Even German chancellor Angela Merkel had to take an overland route when she arrived from San Francisco on Friday and was not allowed to enter German airspace.

On Saturday, after another cancellation of all flights from Frankfurt and other airports in Germany, including all flights to Sofia, it became obvious that there was only one final possibility to reach Sofia: by car. However, most car rentals, taxi companies and other VIP services simply had no cars and staff available, while companies that did simply refused to drive all the way to Bulgaria. Finally, after many hours of trying, team Anand managed to find a VIP service by Taxi Lagerberg, located in Amstelveen, The Netherlands. They contacted two of their best drivers, Paul Oostheim and Peer Reintjes, on Saturday, and asked them to stop their shift immediately, in order to be able to drive to Bad Soden on Sunday. This is 500 kilometres from Amstelveen, a five hour drive.

In the meantime, two more seconds of Anand arrived, very late on Saturday, in Bad Soden to join the team. They had originally intended to fly to Sofia on Friday, but after the closure of the airspace, they had redirected to Bad Soden. To do so they had to travel more than twelve hours by train on Saturday, coming from different countries. But they made it somehow – what other choice did they have?

On Sunday morning, at 11:00 a.m., the Mercedes Sprinter, equipped with all kinds of amenities like a fridge, two TV screens and a DVD player, arrived in Bad Soden and after picking up the team in the hotel, the journey started at 11.28h. The drivers had prepared the route for Sunday: we would cross the Germany border in Passau, drive through Austria and continue to Budapest, to spend the night there. That was a 1000 kilometre trip, and after a smooth drive with a lot of sunshine the team arrived in Budapest at 22.30 p.m. Bear in mind that the drivers had started their trip in Amstelveen at 06.00 a.m.

On Monday, the journey continued at 08.00 a.m. with a morning traffic jam in Budapest. But the drivers managed to get the team out of the city pretty fast, and the drive to Szeged was easy, despite the heavy rain. The Rumanian border was reached at 13.30 p.m. The team had to transfer to Bulgaria via Rumania, because this country will accept Indian passports without a visa. The border was crossed near Arad, the federal border police recognised Anand. After crossing the border we started to watch the first film of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the extended version to be precise.

We had to drive 480 km through Rumania to the city of Vidin at the Bulgarian border. If you use Google Maps you may find it a bit strange that we had to reckon with 9-10 hours for this fairly short distance. But when you actually have to drive this route you understand why it takes so long: there are numerous construction zones, about every ten kilometres, dead dogs and cats on the road have to be avoided, and there are about a million potholes. To make the situation even more difficult for the drivers it was raining continuously – a miracle that the car survived these extremely bad road conditions. Even the two very experienced drivers had never seen such bad roads.

In the car however, the atmosphere was very good, there was food and drink, and the second “Lord of the Rings” film, “The Two Towers”, helped us pass the time. After more than twelve hours driving through Romania, at 22.35h, we finally reached Calafat in Romania to cross the border to Bulgaria. That was when we saw a long queue and a ferry, and it dawned upon the passengers that there is no bridge across the river “Romania” and we would have to use the ferry. That meant waiting until enough cars had arrived for the ferry to cross the river. After over an hour, just before midnight, the ferry started, and twenty minutes later, on 20 April at 12:05 a.m., Anand finally reached Bulgarian territory. One of the Bulgarian border officers checked the passports in the bus. When he read “Anand” aloud he realized that he was checking the passport of the chess world champion and started laughing: “Ah, Anand!“ Without any further checks we were allowed to pass.

Only 250 km left to Sofia, with about four more hours to go, but the story is not completely over. In the meantime, the last part of the Ring-trilogy, “The Return of the King”, was running in our Sprinter DVD, and we were confident that we would reach Sofia at about 04.00 a.m. that night. And, dear readers, when the streets are empty, when you have driven 36 hours and your destination is within reach, you want to get there as quickly as possible. With only 100 km to go, at 02.15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, April 20, the Bulgarian police noticed a dark Mercedes Sprinter with a Dutch license plate, driving a just a little too fast. You guessed right: we had to stop and the driver had to explain why he was speeding (74 km instead of the allowed 50) – and what he was doing in Bulgaria. However, when the driver told the very friendly police officer that Vishy Anand and his team were on board, the officer smiled and said: “Ok, take him to Sofia, but not too fast, ok?!“

Without a fine we continued the last leg of the journey to Sofia, although we were stopped again by the police, this time just for a routine traffic check. Finally, at 05.30 a.m. after travelling for more than 40 hours, we arrived at our destination – just in time to have an early breakfast. There was only one problem: we arrived at the Hilton Sofia still a little too early and had missed the last hour of “The Return of the King“. We will have to watch that on our way home…

La formidable aventure de l'US Quevilly en Coupe de France a pris fin mercredi en demi-finale après une défaite contre le PSG. Remis de ses émotions footballistiques, notre ami normand Samir Adyel nous offre sa chronique hebdo sur les échecs en guise de consolation. Prenez donc le temps de découvrir son nouvel article du journal Paris-Normandie, un surprenant voyage dans le monde des cases blanches et noires, raconté avec passion chaque semaine sur notre site échiquéen.

Au sommaire cette semaine, un mat en deux coups signé G. Mott-Smith, tiré du Chess Revieuw, de 1939. Puis Samir nous apprend qu'en général, le roque permet de mettre le roi à l’abri. C’est ce que pensaient les blancs lorsqu’ils ont pris cette décision au 8ème coup. Mais leur choix était discutable car après avoir roqué leur roi se retrouve étrangement esseulé. Cette nouvelle donne a incité les noirs à lancer une attaque rapide faisant voler en éclats le roque et mettant à genoux le monarque blanc.... Une idée brillamment illustrée par la partie Van Wely (2681) – Acs (2591) disputée à Hoogeveen (Pays-Bas) en 2002.

Place ensuite à un curieux tableau final avec un mat esthétique issu de la partie Dodge – Houghteling de Chicago en 1904. Puis, une superbe finale jouée très récemment en Bundesliga dans laquelle le numéro 3 français Laurent Fressinet va démontrer toute sa dextérité. Enfin, une petite phrase de l'artiste français Marcel Duchamp, et pour finir un piège d'ouverture sur la Défense russe. Merci Samir !

N’en déplaise à l'écrivain Jean Giraudoux, la guerre de Troyes aura bien lieu… Elle se déroule du 11 au 18 avril, et a pour champ de bataille un terrain de 64 cases ou plutôt plusieurs centaines.

A l'issue de la 4e ronde, on peut commencer à entrevoir ceux et celles qui ont de bonnes chances de concourir pour le titre. Après quatre parties, ils sont encore 19, dans les 10 catégories, à détenir 100% des points. Cet après-midi, 5e ronde et entrée en lice des poussins et des petits-poussins.

Capitale de l’Europe pour ses magasins d’usine, mais aussi ville de lumière avec sa première collection mondiale de vitraux d’église, Troyes va se décliner en noir et blanc et sur 64 cases pendant toute une semaine.

Les championnats de France d’échecs des jeunes se dérouleront en effet du 11 au 18 avril à l’Espace Argence, situé en plein coeur de la ville à la forme toute symbolique de bouchon de champagne. Ces championnats de France retrouveront ainsi la région de Champagne-Ardenne, 6 ans après Reims en 2004.

Un choix géographique qui correspond à la volonté de la FFE de proposer chaque année des destinations attractives à une des manifestations phare des échecs français. Chaque année, le championnat de France des jeunes rassemble plus de 1200 participants de moins de 20 ans et trois fois plus d’accompagnateurs (parents, entraîneurs) qui gravitent autour de la manifestation.

Le championnat de France des jeunes est vraisemblablement le seul championnat national au monde de jeunes à rassembler autant de joueurs en même temps et en un même lieu. De même, sur l’Hexagone, les échecs sont assurément la seule discipline sportive à proposer un tel championnat national de jeunes sur une durée d’une semaine.

Source : communiqué officiel de Joëlle Mourgues (FFE)

Les meilleurs jeunes français de la discipline seront présents dans la capitale auboise, et les spectateurs (entrée libre) pourront notamment voir à l’oeuvre Cécile Haussernot, championne d’Europe 2009 des moins de 12 ans et Guillaume Lamard, vice-champion d’Europe de la même catégorie chez les garçons. Tous auront à coeur d’accrocher l’une des places qualificatives pour les championnats d’Europe des jeunes qui se dérouleront en septembre prochain en Géorgie, ou ceux du monde qui se disputeront en novembre en Grèce.

À noter que les principales parties seront retransmises en direct et sur Internet ; des commentaires seront également assurés pour le public dans l'amphithéâtre de l’Espace Argence.

Afin de lancer l’événement, une partie d’échecs vivante, avec de jeunes figurants (âgés de 7 à 20 ans), vêtus de costumes médiévaux, aura lieu place de l’Hôtel de ville le samedi 10 avril à partir de 15h. Le coup d’envoi officiel sera donné le dimanche 11 avril à 14h30 à l’Espace Argence par François Baroin, le Ministre du Budget et Maire de Troyes, grand amateur d’échecs, et par Jean-Claude Moingt, le président de la Fédération Française d’échecs (FFE).2007-2010 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

A new version of Aquarium 2010 (version 4.0.3) will soon be released and it’s free for current users. The new version has several new features, some of which are described below. First a quick overview, followed by more detailed description of each feature:

• A new correspondence chess module and improved support for correspondence players.
• Hide selected names in the Navigation Pane.
• Highlight the moves in the notation that lead to the current position.
• Automatically mark moves that have been analyzed deeply with infinite analysis.
• See which games are being analyzed with infinite analysis.
• Keyboard shortcut to add infinite analysis evaluation and time to the notation.
• Configurable fields in database list (new fields: Date and ECO).
• Cancel option in IDeA startup dialog box.
• Three new options when stopping IDeA.
• Two new IDeA presentation options.
• “Active” button to activate/deactivate projects in IDeA Control Center.
• “View Project” button in IDeA Control Center.
• IDeA session statistics in IDeA Control Center.
• Automatic creation/correction of tree configurations.
• QAT Engine configuration button in IDeA view.
• A new Root Node button in IDeA Project View ribbon.
• Improved project statistics.
• 2D-Eval chart showing IDeA node distribution by score.
• MM-Delta chart, comparing infinite analysis evaluations with IDeA scores.
• Branching chart, showing number of candidate moves for variations.
• A link to analysis settings has been added to the IDeA Project Status window.
• A single-click link to enable/disable root nodes added to Project Status window.
• Improved Root Node List dialog box.
• Four new lists for storing positions along with comments.
• Changed display of IDeA analysis queue to facilitate handling of large number of positions.
• A feature that makes accurate count of nodes in an IDeA tree.
• Reset IDeA marks in notation.

Besides the new correspondence chess module, most new features can be characterized as usability improvements.

Correspondence Chess

The new Aquarium correspondence chess module is a major new feature that gives you a unified method of playing your correspondence games on Xfcc compliant servers.

Starting Aquarium’s correspondence play module

You get a quick overview of all your games in a single list, even if you have games in progress on different servers.

The new Aquarium correspondence play module

When you make your moves, many of the possible sources of error are eliminated. Games can be saved directly in an Aquarium database where you can check opening statistics, look up the position in endgame tablebases or use Aquarium’s analysis tools. No matter how extensive your notes and analysis are, Aquarium automatically ensures that only the move you make is transferred to your opponent and your notes and analysis will stay private.

For an overview of this new module, see Correspondence Chess with Aquarium 2010.

Hidden Names in Navigation Pane

Another feature that is of interest to correspondence players is the new “Hidden Names” option. It specifies names of players that should be hidden in the Navigation pane (sidebar) list. Click the Aquarium button, select “Options” and then “Display Options” from the menu. Clicking the “Hidden Names” button allows you to enter names that won’t be displayed in the Navigation pane.

Hide names in Navigation pane

In this example, when a game involving “Karpov, Anatoly” is open, only his opponent’s name will be displayed in the Navigation pane. If Karpov had white against Kasparov, then “- Kasparov, G” would be displayed so you can easily see the opponent’s name.

If you are a correspondence player, you might want to take advantage of this feature and hide your own name. When you are working with a database of your own games, you can quickly see your opponents’ names, as they won’t get cut off in the Navigation pane, even when you have the white pieces.

How Did I Get Here?

When examining a heavily annotated game, have you ever got lost in the notation? Unsure about the path you followed to reach the current position? Press the “L” key and the path will be highlighted as shown in the next image.

The path to the current position is highlighted

If you press “L” again, the highlight effect will be removed. If you move to a position outside the current path, press “L” to highlight the new path.

This new feature works in the Sandbox, database game view, and IDeA Project View.

Infinite Analysis

Now you can highlight moves in the notation that you have analyzed with infinite analysis. This feature gives you a quick overview of the moves you have analyzed and helps you spot positions that may need more attention.

Highlight analyzed moves

Click the dialog box launcher (tool button) in the Infinite Analysis group (highlighted in the image above). “Additional Infinite Analysis Options” will be displayed. Here you can enter the number of seconds required to mark a move as analyzed. In this example a move will be marked after 10 seconds of infinite analysis. Here is an example showing several moves marked as analyzed.

Analyzed moves highlighted in notation

Moves that have been analyzed for more than 10 seconds are highlighted with “Engine analysis” style, which in this case has been defined to display the move in pink color. You can modify the style by pressing Shift+S. For more information about styles and move classes, see Aquarium’s Hidden Treasures, Part One.

Even those who use IDeA as their main analysis tool, like to browse analysis trees looking for positions where they suspect the evaluation may not be correct. In that case, they can run infinite analysis to verify the IDeA results. Since the “Engine analysis” style is saved with the game, you can quickly see which positions you have analyzed when you open the game at a later time.

This is another feature that will be useful for correspondence players who need to keep track of their analysis in several ongoing games. This is a good opportunity to remind users that Aquarium stores all your infinite analysis, as long as it is sufficiently deep.

Stored infinite analysis

If you hover with the mouse pointer over the move and evaluation shown in the status bar, a window will pop up showing the results of your previous analysis of the current position as the screenshot above illustrates.

Now that multi-core computers have become common, and some players even have access to two or more computers, you may want to run infinite analysis on more than one game at the same time. You can always see which games are being analyzed by the green rectangle next to the games in the Navigation pane as shown below.

Green rectangles indicate analysis

Here we see three games being analyzed at the same time with infinite analysis. The green rectangles help you to quickly identify which games are being analyzed.

One more infinite analysis feature worth mentioning is the new Ctrl+E keyboard shortcut. It copies the current evaluation from the analysis window and inserts it as a “Long After” comment in the notation along with the analysis time.

Configurable Fields in Database List

Aquarium is slowly adding improved database features. In the new version, you can configure which fields are displayed in the database list.

Configurable columns

When you want to add or remove columns, right-click over the game list to display the menu shown above and click “Select columns.” Two new fields are available for the database list: Date and ECO code.

The IDeA Control Center

IDeA sees many improvements in the new Aquarium 2010 version. Unlike the initial Aquarium 2010, which revolutionized the analysis features, the new version focuses on usability improvements and giving the user more information about the status of the analysis.

Since there are so many changes, I break them into sections based their location. I start with the new buttons in the Ribbon and changes to how existing buttons work.

Starting IDeA

When you click “Start IDeA” in the IDeA Control Center and there is more than one active project, a list of the projects is displayed. If these are actually the projects that you want to analyze, just click OK.

IDeA informs about active projects

Now there is a Cancel button in case these are not the projects you want to analyze. After canceling, you can activate the projects you want to analyze and deactivate others before starting IDeA again.

Stopping IDeA

When stopping IDeA you get three new options, instructing IDeA to perform certain tasks before shutting down.

Actions to perform before stopping

If you don’t select any of these options, IDeA will stop immediately, without completing the analysis of current tasks, as it did in the previous version.

Wait for current IDeA tasks to finish stops IDeA after completing the tasks that are currently being analyzed.

Minimax after finish will minimax IDeA trees for all active projects before stopping.

Make accurate position count in subtrees (long) is a new feature that makes an accurate count of positions reachable from every node in the tree. Note that this is a very time consuming operation and you should not use it at all for trees with more than 30,000 positions. The method used for counting is more advanced and accurate, but also different from the method normally used by IDeA itself. One of the differences is that IDeA counts each node in the tree once, but the new option may count the same position many times if it can be reached via different paths. Also, it is not affected by move colors. Therefore, the numbers you see will often be very different from those normally shown by IDeA.

IDeA Presentation Options

Clicking the tool button in the IDeA group gives you two new options.

IDeA presentation options

Automatically show the selected task in the notation refers to what happens when you click a task in the task queue, which is displayed in the Stage Status window in project view. If you select this option, the position corresponding to the task, and the line leading up to the position, will be automatically displayed in the notation.

Display a warning when there are many active projects decides if the dialog box described above is displayed when you start IDeA with more than one active project.

Activate/Deactivate Project

The “Active” button is now available in the IDeA Control Center. This means that you can select a project in the project list and press “Active” to toggle the active state of the project.

In this example, the project at the top of the list has been selected as shown by the black border around it. It’s currently inactive and indicated by the “Status” column and the gray characters. Clicking the “Active” button will activate the project.

View Project Button

The new “View Project” button, below the project list, opens the selected project.

In this example, the Carlsen-Kramnik project would be displayed in project view. The “View Project” button is equivalent to double-clicking the project or selecting it and pressing the Enter key.

IDeA Session Statistics

The “Statistics” button in the IDeA Control Center displays statistics about the current analysis session.

Here you can see at what time the analysis session started and the CPU efficiency. Of course you want the CPU efficiency to be as close to 100% as possible. In this case it is 95%, which means that the engines have been busy 95% of the time. The rest of the time (5%), they have waited for a task to analyze; e.g., while IDeA is minimaxing the analysis tree.

CPU efficiency can be low if you are starting a new project from scratch with several engine instances. In general, the efficiency will increase if you analyze more than one project at the same time.

Automatic Creation/Correction of Tree Configurations

It seems that tree configurations are the main cause of frustration for new IDeA users. This problem is addressed in the new Aquarium version.

If there is no tree configuration specified for an IDeA project, it will be created automatically when the IDeA Project View is opened.

IDeA also examines existing configurations when IDeA Project View is opened. It checks if the fields “Positions,” “IdeA,” and “Main tree” use the IDeA tree that the user selected for the project. If not, then they are updated to use the project’s IDeA tree.

In addition to this, all changes to tree configurations as well as IDeA project settings are now immediately saved to disk. The former is not limited to IDeA or IDeA tree configurations.

Engine Button in QAT

You can now customize the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) in IDeA view to display an “Engine” button that brings up the “IDeA Engines Setup” dialog box.

IDeA QAT customization

You can add the new button by right-clicking somewhere in the QAT and selecting “Customize.” Make sure that “idea” is displayed in the “Mode” drop-down list and then select “Engines” by clicking the check box in the “Visible” column. The “Engines” button (highlighted in the image above) will be added to the QAT when you click OK.

The new button is available both in the IDeA Control Center and IDeA Project View. Previously, you had to switch to the IDeA Control Center and click the “Engines” button in the ribbon to modify the IDeA engine list. As before, it can only be modified when IDeA isn’t running.

IDeA Project View

The Project View Ribbon has several new buttons, including new statistics buttons, which give you a new insight into the analysis tree, beyond what a simple score and position count can do.

The “Root Node” button allows you to add a new analysis root with a single click.

Add the current position as root

When you click the button the current position is added as a root. One of the most common operations in Aquarium 2010 IDeA is to add and remove root positions. As you’ll see later in this column, removing root positions has been made equally easy.

Next we come to a feature that truly deserves its own special column: The “Statistics” group in the Project View Ribbon. It opens up a completely new view of the analysis results. This can help you to better understand where to focus your analysis resources, how likely your opponent is to go wrong in different variations, if the IDeA analysis is likely to surprise an opponent who relies only on infinite analysis, etc.

IDeA statistics

The four statistics buttons are shown in the image above.

The leftmost button, Project, gives you numeric information about the project.

2D-Eval displays a chart showing the distribution of scores for the sub-tree starting in the current position.

MM-Delta graphs the differences between infinite analysis evaluations and the IDeA scores.

Branching charts the number of alternatives examined for moves following the current position. This helps you find positions where additional analysis may be needed.

IDeA project statistics

The first pane, “Overall statistics,” shows the total passes or stages that have been completed and how many tasks of each type (”Prolongation,” “Alternatives,” and “Deep Prolongation”) have been created. Finally the results of the “False Alarm” checks are shown.

The second pane is an overview of the latest “Prolongation” stage. It shows the total number of leaf nodes in the tree, how many of those were rejected because of the limit you have set on variation length and the number of analysis tasks that were generated.

You can reset these statistics at any time by clicking the “Reset” button.

The third pane, “Other,” is new and shows when the tree was last minimaxed, when the latest backup was created and how many positions the tree contains.

The 2D-Eval chart shows the frequency distribution of scores in the sub-tree starting from the current position. The chart title in the screenshot below shows that the current score is +0.52 pawns, which means that White has a slight advantage. The chart is based on the 5 best moves in each position.

IDeA project statistics

The X-axis shows evaluations, but the Y-axis the number of positions. Here we can for example see that 41.1% of positions in the sub-tree are equal.

There are many things you can read from the 2D-Eval chart. In this case, we see that the distribution is rather flat across the three highest bars where the bulk of the nodes fall. If a game is played from this position, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the evaluation changes and if it does it most likely will move towards equality. In an over the board game, Black should be able to draw the position, but he has to be careful.

If you right-click over a chart, you get the option to save it to a graphics file or copy it to the clipboard.

There are several options available for the 2D-Eval chart. There is a drop-down list in the upper-right corner of the chart where you can choose to chart the nodes for all moves, or just for a specific move.

Chart a selected move

By default all moves are charted, but the drop-down list shows all available moves along with their score. When you select a specific move the chart is immediately updated to reflect your selection.

There are also options at the bottom of the chart window where you can specify the maximum number of alternatives that are included in the statistics.

Limit the number of alternatives

In this example, “Best White moves limit” is set to one. This means that in positions where White is to move, only the best move is considered. “Best Black moves limit” is set to five, so Black’s five best moves are added to the chart. After modifying the values, you must click the “Refresh” button to update the chart.

Finally, there are a few common presets available for the number of alternatives considered for each side.

Presets for number of alternatives

If you select “everything” all nodes in the sub-tree will be included. The other options are are displayed as two numbers, separated by a colon. The first number stands for the number of white alternatives and the second one for the number of black alternatives. If you, for instance, select “1:5″ only the best move from White will be included, but Black’s five best moves will be included in the chart.

The next chart is the “MM-Delta.” It compares the IDeA scores for the positions in the tree with the infinite analysis evaluations.

Infinite analysis evaluations vs. IDeA

The statistics are broken down by the color, so you get several pairs of yellow and brown bars, where the former represents White’s moves and the latter Black’s moves.

The Y-axis shows the difference between the infinite analysis evaluation and the IDeA score, measured in percentages, which are commonly used in Aquarium when evaluations need to be converted to winning percentages. On this scale, 5-7% means that when translated to probability of winning, the difference between infinite analysis and IDeA is 5-7%.

Positions where there is less than 1% difference between infinite analysis and IDeA are not shown in the chart.

If you right-click over one of the bars in the chart and select “Add to Notes”, the positions corresponding to that bar are added to a note list (see the description of note lists above), where you can browse them and examine further. This feature can be quite interesting for positions where there is a big difference between infinite analysis and IDeA.

The options for selecting data for the chart are similar to those for the “2D-Eval” chart described above.

The third chart is the “Branching” chart. This shows you which positions have many candidate moves analyzed and which have fewer moves analyzed.

The Branching chart

You can, for instance, take advantage of this information to decide where you want to focus your analysis. The following options are available for this chart.

Branching chart options

If you click a point on the lines in the chart, the corresponding variation is displayed in a box below the chart. You can then click “Go to position” to view the position on the board in Aquarium.

The chart can show moves for “Both Sides,” as in this example above or only for the “Current Side.” The chart can be limited to the best candidate moves, by specifying a low “Evaluation delta.” After changing delta, you must click “Refresh” to update the chart.

I have only described the technical part of using the new charts above. Their practical application is much more exciting, and an Aquarium user (”buffos”) will soon publish some interesting examples of their application on the Aquarium support forum. You should definitely check the forum, because it has a lot of useful information about Aquarium.

Project Status Window

The Project Status window has three improvements, which make working with IDeA faster and more convenient.

The improved Project Status window

The first change is that the “Analysis settings” is now a link that brings up the “Analysis Quality Settings” dialog box with a single click. Previously you had to switch to the IDeA Control Center to change the seconds/position, depth, maximum time, etc.

The second change makes working with root nodes more convenient. In the example above, you see three “Root nodes” links: “52 root node(s),” “(1/2),” and “disable this root.” When you click the second link, you cycle through the active roots. The first number (”1″ in this example) shows the current root and the second number (”2″ in this example) shows the total number of active root nodes. The third link is only displayed when the current position is a root node. If it is enabled, as it is in this example, the link shows “disable this root” so you can disable it with a single click. If the root is currently disabled, the link changes to “enable this root” and clicking it enables the root node. In the previous version you had to open the Root Node List to disable and enable root nodes. Clicking the leftmost link (here “52 root node(s)”) displays the improved Root Node List dialog box, shown below.

The new Root Node List dialog

The following improvements have been made since the initial Aquarium 2010 release:

1. The “Eval” column, showing the current score of the root node has been added.
2. The “Position” column now shows the final moves leading up to the root position, if they are available. Previously, only the FEN string for the position was displayed. This makes it much easier for the user to remember how the position shown on the board (missing from the image) arose.
3. The “Comment” column let’s you add comments to individual root positions. This can be very useful if you have several root positions.
4. If you open the Root Node List, where the current position is a root node (active or inactive), then the corresponding line is highlighted in the Root Node List. An example can be seen in the image above, where the third line from the bottom is highlighted.

The third and final improvement to the Project Status window is the addition of four lists that you can use for storing important positions along with verbal commentary. The names of the lists indicate what kind of positions they are intended for: “Good,” “Interesting,” “Critical,” and “Dubious.” As you can see when you look at the Project Status window image above, each list is displayed as two links, similar to the root nodes, and the links work in a similar manner. The two links are the name of the list (e.g., “Critical”) and a link with two numbers separated by a slash. The first number stands for the current position in the list and the second number is the total number of positions in the list. Clicking the numbers displays the next position in the list. When you reach the end of the list, it rewinds to the start of the list. Using this feature you can quickly scan the positions in each list. Clicking the name of the list displays the “Note List” dialog box. An example is shown in the next image.

A Note List dialog

As you can see, the “Note List” dialog box is similar to the “Root Node List.” For every position, you can see when it was added to the list, it’s current and initial score (the score when it was added to the list) and the most important piece of information, your notes about the position. You can edit, copy and paste the commentary. Right-clicking on an item in the list opens a menu where you can copy or move the position to other note lists. Double-clicking an item in the list opens the position setup dialog box.

There are five buttons at the bottom of the “Note List.” The leftmost button let’s you “Remove” the currently selected position, while “Remove All” deletes all positions from the list. The next button is “Add Board Position”; this is a quick way of adding the position displayed on the main board to the list. If you run into an interesting position that you want to remember, click the “Interesting” link in the Project Status window and then this button. It is disabled in the screenshot, because the current position is already in the list. When you are done, click the OK button to store your changes, or Cancel to ignore them.

Once you have opened the “Note List” dialog box, there is a drop-down list below the chess board (not shown in the image above), which lets you switch between the available lists.

Whenever you open a list and the current position is in the list, it will be highlighted. This applies both to the note lists and the root node list. An example can be seen in the image above, where the first position in the list is the current position.

Stage Status Window

The first thing you will notice about the Stage Status window in the new version is that the task queue looks different.

The Stage Status window

Instead of a fully expanded queue with one square for each task, only the tasks that are being analyzed are displayed individually. The leftmost gray square shows that there are eight finished tasks. There are two green squares, which represent the tasks that are currently being analyzed. You can click an active task to see the engine analysis. In this example, the second active task has been selected and you can follow its analysis in the space below the queue. The yellow square shows that there are 14 tasks in the queue waiting to be analyzed.

One of the reasons for this change is to allow the processing of large EPD files when showing each individual task would not be practical.

A new menu item has been added to the “Manage” menu in the Stage Status window.

Make an accurate position count

The “Fill Subtree Power” scans every position in the tree and makes an accurate count of positions that can be reached from it. It is the same operation as was described above when the new features of the IDeA “Stop” button were described. Note that this is a very time consuming operation and you should not use it for trees with more than 30,000 positions.

IDeA Notation Window

There is one change in the IDeA notation window, which clears IDeA related highlighting from the notation and then displays all root positions, both active and inactive, with a blue color.

Reset IDeA marks

If you want to highlight the root moves and remove highlighting from positions that were manually added to IDeA, right-click over the notation window and select “Reset IDeA marks” from the menu.

Conclusion

As you have seen in this column, the new Aquarium 2010 version is a major update. It offers new features, such as the correspondence chess module, and numerous changes that were designed to improve the usability of Aquarium 2010. Best of all, the new version is free for current users!

C'est parti pour la 1ère phase du championnat de France d'échecs de 1ère division (Top 16) qui se joue ce week-end.

FIDE Trainers Commission

FIDE Trainer Awards 2008 & 2009

The sculptures are beautiful and stylized chess pieces, a real work of top art and maybe much more good looking than the ‘original' Chess Oscars.

The sculpture has been named as the "Tree of Chess".

The artist is now in Kiev, in the Sculpture Salon and on March 5th he will open his monument of the great Ukrainian poet Shevchenko, in Athens, Greece!

Chaque semaine, le maître international canadien d'échecs Jean Hébert nous propose sa Newsletter échiquéenne gratuite.

A la Une cette semaine : Jouer à Cappelle et mourir !

Il faut faire le tournoi de Cappelle la Grande au moins une fois dans sa vie. C'est une expérience unique qui marque un joueur d'échecs, peu importe son niveau. J'y avais déjà joué en 1996. Renouveler l'expérience 15 ans plus tard ajoute à mon bagage de bons souvenirs échiquéens. Brièvement en chiffre voyons de quoi il retourne.

Lors de sa 26e édition, ce tournoi a attiré 653 joueurs (3e meilleur total de son histoire) de 55 nations différentes, incluant 73 GM, 44 MI ainsi que tout un assortiment de titrées féminines et de FM. Parmi ces concurrents plus d'une centaine d'entre eux (surtout des GM mais aussi des joueurs moins titrés provenant de fédérations "exotiques" comme le Canada) sont hébergés et nourris gracieusement durant leur séjour...

A new version of Aquarium 2010 (version 4.0.3) will be released soon. It’s a free update for current Aquarium 2010 users. One of the new features is a correspondence chess module that keeps track of correspondence games played on Xfcc compliant chess servers. The Xfcc protocol was designed by Martin Bennedik. Servers of this type include the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF), SchemingMind.com, and myChess.de.

Correspondence chess has changed a lot in recent years; transitioning from snail-mail to email and now to server based play. Aquarium only supports server based play, which without doubt is the most convenient method of playing.

When playing correspondence chess, you must, of course, respect the rules regarding the use of chess engines. Some servers allow them (e.g., ICCF in most events), while their use is forbidden on other servers. Some servers allow the use of engines under special circumstances. As an example, SchemingMind only allows their use in “Advanced chess.”

For the purposes of this column, I will assume that you have already registered and joined a tournament on one of the supported servers.

Aquarium for Correspondence Players

Correspondence players normally play several games at the same time and Aquarium supports simultaneous analysis of multiple games and positions using either traditional infinite analysis or the innovative IDeA (Interactive Deep Analysis) method that explores and expands critical lines automatically.

IDeA in action

Many correspondence players already make extensive use of IDeA. The improvements in Aquarium 2010 were especially useful for them (multiple projects, positions and engine instances). Although IDeA can be used as a fully automatic tool, it really shines when the player takes advantage of its interactive features. IDeA records all its results in an “analysis tree.” This is a valuable feature for correspondence players, as they can later access their stored analysis from any game where a previously analyzed position arises. If you find yourself playing the same opening again, you can expand your analysis tree, searching for interesting alternatives, novelties, etc.

The implementation of infinite analysis in Aquarium also has many convenient features (see Infinite Analysis with Rybka Aquarium) for correspondence players. Several engines can be used to analyze different games at the same time and analysis presets (see Analysis Presets in Rybka Aquarium) let you use more than one engine to analyze the same position and quickly switch between different engines and methods.

The image below shows an example of three games being analyzed with infinite analysis. One of the positions is displayed on the board with the analysis window below the board. This game is highlighted in the sidebar with a blue background.

Simultaneous analysis of three games

A red rectangle has been drawn around the three games. You can always see which games are being analyzed by the green rectangle next to the game in the sidebar as shown below.

Green rectangle indicates analysis

Many of you will notice that this is the same icon as is shown in the status bar for each active engine.

As mentioned above, both IDeA and infinite analysis support simultaneous analysis by multiple engines. In the case of IdeA, it would normally be multiple instances of the same engine. Both methods can also take advantage of analysis on networked computers as described in Networked Computers with Aquarium 2010. This means that you can combine the analysis power of several computers.

Networked analysis with thirty-four engines

There are many other Aquarium features that are useful for correspondence players. Browsing the Aquarium articles archives should give you insight into some of them. For a quick overview of various smaller features see Aquarium’s Hidden Treasures, Part One and Aquarium’s Hidden Treasures, Part Two.

The only thing that has been missing for playing correspondence chess in Aquarium is a tool for live updates of games (sending and receiving moves from the server). This may seem like a minor issue that can be solved by copy/paste to and from the server. Technically that is correct. However, correspondence players must perform this action thousands of times a year, and they need to take great care not to make a “technical” mistake, as it can easily lead to the loss of a game. It’s frustrating to see hours or days of analysis go down the drain due to such a mistake.

The Aquarium correspondence play module is designed to minimize manual intervention and thereby the chance of mistakes. It accepts moves automatically from the server. When a game is saved, all previous analysis is preserved, the game is activated and you can instantly start analyzing the position.

Getting Started

Click the Aquarium Button in the upper left corner, select “External programs” and then “Correspondence Play” from the right pane to start the module.

Starting the correspondence chess module

The Correspondence Play module will appear on the screen as shown below.

The correspondence chess module

The first step is to tell the program which correspondence chess server(s) you want to use. Click the “Server options” button and the corresponding dialog box will be displayed.

Add the servers to which you want to connect

Here you can add, edit, and remove servers. Note that you can connect to more than one server. Near the bottom you can specify how often the program checks for new information on the servers (once every sixty minutes in this case). Click the “Add” button to add a new server.

Specify a new server

Here you enter information that is required to connect to the server and retrieve information about your games.

Server name is a name you choose to identify the server; e.g., ICCF for the ICCF server. You can use any name you like.

Server address is the URL used for Xfcc communication with the server. You will usually find the address to use in the help file or the FAQ of the server. The correct addresses for SchemingMind.com and ICCF are given as examples in the dialog box. For your convenience, here are the addresses for the three servers mentioned at the beginning of the column. You can copy the address of the server you want to connect to and paste it into the server address field:

• ICCF: http://www.iccf-webchess.com/XfccBasic.asmx
• SchemingMind.com: http://www.schemingmind.com/xfcc/xfccbasic.asmx
• myChess.de: http://www.myChess.de/xfcc/xfccbasic.php4

User name is your username on the server. As mentioned earlier, you need to register on the server through their website.

Password is the password you use when logging onto the server.

After filling out these fields, click OK and a list of your games will be fetched from the server and displayed on the screen as shown in the screen-shot below.

Connected to server

If you select a game from the list, it is displayed at the top of the screen and the current position is shown on the board.

The game list

If a game in the list is shown in bold (such as the first line in the list), it’s your turn to move. When a new move arrives, the corresponding game is shown in red type until you select the game; after that it’s shown in bold. The list above shows two red games.

The list itself consists of the following columns:

The leftmost column (#) shows the identification (game number) that the server has assigned to this game.

Col shows your color in the game. Yellow means that you have white and brown means that you have the black pieces.

Opponent is your opponent’s name.

Event shows the name of the event or tournament. It is assigned by the server when the event starts.

Your time shows how much time you have remaining until the next time control.

Opp. time shows how much time your opponent has left until the next time control.

Status shows the current status of the game. When a game is in progress it shows the current move. When a game is finished it shows the result.

Comment allows you to keep notes about the game. They are your private notes and are not sent to your opponent. This is very useful for correspondence players with many games. They can use the notes to get a quick overview of the games. The notes can be used for your evaluation of the position, what needs to be checked, how you intend to analyze, etc. The Comment column is not shown in the image, but here is an example of how it can be used.

Private comments about the games

The text wraps automatically, but you can also press Ctrl+Enter to force a new line.

Saving Games to a Database

You can enter moves and variations directly on the board in the correspondence chess module and then send your move to the server without using Aquarium at all. However, a serious player will always save his games to the database and do his analysis there. Even while playing the first few moves, he needs to research the opening repertoire of his opponent and look up the latest games in the opening variation that is being played. So, after connecting to the server and getting a list of your games, the next step is to save the server games to a local database.

First, you need to create the database. Click the “Base options” button. The “Database Options” dialog box will appear.

Create/select a database for the games

Here you should click the ellipsis button to the right of the “Save game to database” field. It opens up a standard Windows dialog for choosing a database name and a directory for storing it. After selecting a directory and choosing a name for the database, click the OK button. Your database will be created and you can start saving your games.

There are two scenarios to think about when you save new games from the server.

If you don’t have any previous analysis of the game or you don’t want to merge the game with existing analysis, just select the game from the list (by clicking it) and then click the “Save” button. The game will be appended to the database as a new game. Note that when you save the game, it will automatically be opened in Aquarium where you have full access to it and all other games in the database.

This was simple enough, but if you just started to use the correspondence chess module and already have a lot of analysis for the games, you can choose to merge the server game into an existing game. This is a convenient way of taking advantage of your previous analytical work. In this case, do the following (note that this is only required the first time you save the game):

1. Open Aquarium (if it isn’t already running)
2. Open the database that you defined above.
3. Open the game containing the existing analysis. You will merge your server game with this game.
4. Switch back to the correspondence chess module and select the game you want to save
5. Press “Save.” The following dialog box will appear.

Merge game with existing game analysis?

If you select “Yes,” the server game will be merged with the game you opened in Aquarium. If you select “No,” the server game will be appended to the database as a new game.

If you change your mind and don’t want to save the game, click “Cancel.”

Remember that this process is only needed the first time that you save this game to the database. Once you have done that, simply press “Save” when you want to update the game in the database after a new move has been made.

Note that your analysis of the games in Aquarium will stay private, so there is no need to keep one copy of the game with your analysis and another “clean” copy without annotations. If you need to see the bare game score, you can always do so in the correspondence chess module.

For the more technically minded, the link between your correspondence game and the game in the database is maintained in Config/xfccBasesList.xml. If you delete an entry in that file (you can find the game by its id), then that link is broken and you can re-link it.

Making a Move

You can make your move either directly in the correspondence chess module or start by selecting the move in Aquarium itself. Both methods are described below.

Making a move in the correspondence chess module is very simple. Just make your move on the board and click the “Make move” button. You will be presented with the following window.

Sending a move to the server

The move you are going to send is shown in large, red type at the top of the window. There are two text areas below the move. The one at the top shows your opponent’s comments for his previous move (if any). You can write a message to your opponent in the lower text area and it will be delivered with the move.

There are four radio buttons below the text areas. In this example, two of them are active and you can use them to resign or offer a draw. “Accept draw” is inactive unless your opponent has offered a draw, in which case you would select it to accept the draw. “Claim draw” is only active when you can claim a draw according to the laws of chess. That’s all there is to it when you make your move using the correspondence chess module.

You can also start by selecting your move in Aquarium if you have previously saved the game to the database as described above. Start by opening the game in Aquarium. Go to the current position in the game. Move the mouse pointer to the tree window, right-click the move you want to make (23.Nxb5 in this example) and select “XFCC Play” from the menu as shown in the next image.

Sending a move from Aquarium

The correspondence chess module will be opened and the selected move will be played on the board. Now you can submit it by clicking “Make move” as described above.

It would be interesting to receive feedback from users about this method of selecting the move from the tree window. It does have the advantage that it practically forces you to look at its evaluation before you submit it (assuming engine analysis is allowed). In the image above, 23.Nxb5 has the best score (+0.00), but you would probably hesitate and recheck everything if you saw another move with a better score. If you have a better suggestion, I’m sure that the developers would like to hear about it.

Conclusion

The new Aquarium correspondence chess module gives you a unified method of playing your games on Xfcc compliant servers. You get a quick overview of all your games in a single list, even if you have games in progress on all these servers. The list has a very useful comment field for each game, where you can enter your private notes. When you make your moves, many of the possible sources of error are eliminated. Games can be saved directly in an Aquarium database where you can check opening statistics, look up the position in endgame tablebases or use Aquarium’s analysis tools. The combination of Aquarium’s powerful analysis features and the new correspondence chess module makes Aquarium a one stop solution for correspondence players.

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?

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.

Kenya has a budding chess community has now finished its qualifying tournament have named the team that will travel to the Olympiad in Khanty Mansiysk, Siberia. Mehul Gohil writes an intriguing account of the qualifiers and sends a collection of very captivating photos. Enjoy!

Not many people in the world know of John Mukabi. That kind of name is easier to pronounce then the hard to chew on “Khanty Mansiysk” but it wouldn’t ring a bell or invoke the nostalgia of an old masterpiece…surely it cannot be the Alekhine – Mukabi 1-0 boilover (Bad Pistiyan 1937, Queen’s Gambit Declined, Orthodox Defense) as annotated by Harry Golombek? That’s fiction.

Kenyan history is steeped in vivid story telling in the form of oral literature. Here is an example – Caissa made the first chess brain some 50 km south of Nairobi in the pre-historic wastelands of Olegersaille. She called it Homo Sapien. Then from here, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, the Homo Sapien spread out of Africa and took the chess brain to all the other countries of the world.

Homo Erectus Skull from Kenyan National Museum… did it contain the first chess brain?

At 1800hrs on some odd day in September 2010, the journey will begin all over again: Five Homo Sapiens will board an air-o-plane at JKIA, out of Africa they will fly and into Russian airspace will enter the specie Homo Sapien Chessus Caissa…and onward to Siberia.

John Mukabi or “The Beast”, as he is more affectionately called in Kenyan chess circles, made the last moves of the Kenya National Olympiad Qualifier on a dramatic first February 2010 weekend and booked his ticket to Siberia and to what will be his seventh Olympiad appearance.

Kenyan chessers love their Olympiad. It’s everything. It’s the fight, it’s the mad scramble on the preliminaries, it’s the blood war with chess friends over the board, it’s the phone calls to relatives “I’ve made it into the team!”; or it’s the drowning of yourself in sorrow amidst the many bottles of Tusker after you have suicide-bombed your winning position. The after game “Donner” kebabs and nyama choma fail to digest, misery abounds in the developing constipation, and everything becomes “…the hell of hells…Gehenna…The vale of Kai Hinnom”.

Tom Mboya Street, the busiest in Nairobi. Also the neighborhood of a chess hot spot.

Many around the world would not understand reasons for such strong passion and madness. After all, here is a Kenya that lacks ELO pedigree, its chessmen do not pawn storm international events, the Giuoco Piano is weaker this side of the Indian Ocean than it is on the Vishy washy Chennai shores. But every two years comes along an opportunity to go on pilgrimage – Olympiad. This is the Chess Haj where a forgotten chess world pays homage to the familiar one – as Viswanthan Anand stares into the complex depths of the Olympiad hall, looking back at him from the far and lost aisles will be Kenyan variations.

Indeed, Caissa’s chosen ones – the Carlsen, the So, the Giri, the Nakamura and et al – sometimes forget or are unaware about the exact proportions of their fame – they have a worldwide fan club, right down to Nairobi’s chess hotspots: Sandton Palace in the Tom Mboya Street neighbourhood, South C “Golden Gate”, Downtown Pub & Restaurant, Sippers, Goan Gymkhana.

Peter Gilruth watching an intense Akello – Ouma game.

Steve Ouma looking for the Siberian Tiger.

Akello Atwoli studied the remains of his game against Steve Ouma. A clinching swindle had put him through. I watched as Akello trapped a queen on g8, drew invisible patterns around the board, translated his post-mortem reverie into finger dance. Later on the two of us speculated on what would be the nature of our debut Olympiad. As we bounced off each other one appealing chess-tourism idea after another, Peter Gilruth, Kenya’s long standing No.1 and our Board One, interrupted our Russian daydreaming.

Around a chess board he gathered us two and the others (including the candidates for the board 5 Playoff, Singe, Ouma, Nderitu and Dolf). Like a wise old Luo elder of ancient times with young inexperienced warriors sitting around a fire, he told us that the Olympiad was more than mere hero-worship of the Kramnik. It was a responsibility to keep the legacy of Kanani, Andolo, Nguku and the other Kenyan Olympian giants who went before us alive. To make the best of our little ELOs and big spirit.

Despite an incredibly snowy winter, we had a good turnout at the latest Philadelphia 9Queens Academy held on Saturday, February 20th. While Israel Riley, Windsor Jordan and Ben Cooper at ASAP worked with some of the younger girls, the advanced group worked on opening strategies. Alisa Melekhina and Leteef Street specifically showed the girls the Scotch Opening. I facilitated a consultation game in which each side would get two passes to ask me or Alisa for advice on the best move. The ladies only used one pass each but the game was very interesting. Check it out and some key variations below. The next Philadelphia Queens Academy is on March 27. Contact Jenshahade@gmail.com if you’re interesting in joining the fun.

Alexander Grischuk defeated Veselin Topalov in round 9 of the Linares super-tournament. The two are leading with just one round to go. Gashimov-Vallejo and Gelfand-Aronian were both drawn. Big pictorial report.

The 27th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez “Ciudad de Linares” takes place February 12-25 in Linares, Andalucia, Spain.

A six players, double round-robin, with Veselin Topalov (2805), Levon Aronian (2781), Boris Gelfand (2761), Vugar Gashimov (2759), Alexander Grischuk (2736) and Francisco Vallejo Pons (2705).

Rounds start at 16:00 CET, with rest days 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, with 30 seconds increment starting from move 61. The Sofia rules for offering a draw apply in Linares for the first time.

Round 9

Just two rounds ago Veselin Topalov seemed sure of his first tournament victory in Linares, but two days later this picture has changed dramatically. Alexander Grischuk defeated the tournament leader with the white pieces in round 9 and should now be considered favourite for victory, since this year the first tiebreak rule is the individual enounters. Update: Here I forgot that Grischuk lost to Topalov in the first stage. The tiebreak rules are:

1. Individual result.
2. Highest number of victories.
3. Highest sum of points against players who scored 50% or more.
4. Remove the points scored against the player/group of players at the bottom of the standings. If still equal, do the same for the player/group of players above.
5. If still equal, blitz games will be played (but only to decide the 1st place).

Grischuk was ‘pretty much happy’ with his play, as he said after the game. And he had all the reason, since he had simply played a good game, and certainly better than Topalov. Slightly under pressure, the Bulgarian continued to play quickly, to try to create complications; a strategy we also saw for example during his match against Kamsky a year ago. This time his opponent kept his calm and didn’t give away the advantage. During the last phase Topalov didn’t defend optimally and so Grischuk won the ending with RBN vs Q easily, where it should have been more difficult.

Gashimov-Vallejo was drawn, and way before move 40, before which officially one is not allowed to agree to a draw. However, an exception is made in clearly drawn positions, and this was one of them.

Later Gelfand and Aronian also split the point and for the Armenian this was the 9th consecutive draw. His comment after the game: “A personal record! I once had eight, but never nine!”

Tomorrow we’ll have a video with Grischuk’s reaction after the game as well as a video on ‘the draw’, with comments by Gashimov, Vallejo, Aronian and Gelfand. Unfortunately the Hotel Anibal’s internet speed is too slow to upload.

Games round 9

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Calle Cervantes (Cervantes Street)...

...where Teatro Cervantes, the venue, is located

Only three boards fill the stage this year...

...and just 10-20 spectators showed up on Tuesday

But the press room is crowded as always...

...with, amongst others, Ljubojevic and Topalov's two Dutch seconds, Erwin l'Ami and Jan Smeets

As always, the games shop across the street of Hotel Anibal is dedicated to chess again...

...with the flags of all the participants...

...and all kinds of chess sets....

...creating a beautiful picture

The January issue of the Spanish chess magazine Jaque

Does that cover photo look familiar? Sharp vision! It’s by yours truly, also published over here; the report on the London Chess Classic for Jaque was done by me.

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

With three more draws in round 7, the drawing percentage Saturday rose to 77% in Linares. Veselin Topalov kept his 1.5 point lead, with three more rounds to go.

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 7 report by Rick Goetzee

Five centuries ago
Before telling you about the happenings in today’s 7th round, we’re going back 500 years. Because that’s when the chess tradition in Linares was anticipated. Juan Huarte de San Juan (1530-1592) is the patron of Spanish psychology. He was a writer, philosopher and professor at the university of Baeza. One of his publications was Examen de ingenios in which he defined profiles of people who excelled at different professions. One of the profiles was that of a chess player, as Huarte was very fond of the game.

The Huarte de San Juan street in Linares

According to Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Huarte described personal and psychological attributes which match Kasparov’s characteristics more than 400 years later. As he was a high-profile and controversial figure the Spanish inquisition brought him to court and he was convicted. Then he promised that he would give the heritage of all of his work to the church and not to his nine children. This saved his life. His wish was to be buried in the Santa Maria church in the heart of Linares. With a twinkle in his eye Ljubo said: “It’s clear that the spirit of Huarte is still present in Linares and that’s why we have this great chess tradition.”

The Santa Maria church in the heart of Linares

I also had a word with one of the organisers, Señor Paco Albalate. After reading all the comments from people expressing their disappointment with this year’s tournament, I had to ask him a few questions.

Q: Last year the announcement was made that Dubai would organise the first half this year. What happened?
A: They made a lot of promises, also about prize money. But in the end nothing materialised and we don’t really know why. But we are working with a number of candidates for next year’s tournament. Also, next year a number of changes will be introduced but it’s too early to give any details about that.
Q: With the economic recession how difficult was it to put the tournament together this year?
A: Very easy. We cut the budget by 30%. We cut the prize money, brought the number of players down and we cut hotel costs. And what helped was that the players generously accepted the changed conditions.
Q: What about the rule of not allowing draw offers before move 40?
A: Yes we introduced a version of the Sofia rules. We wrote to all players beforehand because it was important for us that they understood why we were doing this instead of just enforcing the rule.
Q: How does it feel that people are saying that Linares is no longer the Wimbledon or the Tour de France of chess?
A: It’s clear that there are tournaments that are stronger. It’s clear that Corus is a very important tournament with a different format than we have here. It’s true that the Tal Memorial is a great tournament. But we have organised a first class tournament for 27 years. This year it may be a bit less than we are used to, but in 2011, if our projects work out, we will surprise the chess world.

There were three more draws in Linares today. Grischuk took nine minutes for his response to Gelfand’s 1.c4; eventually the Russian decided to go for 1…Nf6. The players ended up in a complicated rook ending which was drawn after 60 moves.

Alexander Grischuk pondering over his first move

Gashimov-Topalov was a Nf6/Bc5 Ruy Lopez in which Gashimov sacrificed a pawn. The game went along like Kamsky-Topalov 2009 till move 7 when Kamsky played 7.d4 followed by 7…Qe7 8.dxc5 Nxc5 9.Nc3. Svidler-Ivanchuk 2009 was followed a while longer which deviated with 10.Qxg7 Bxd4 11.Qg3 a6. At the right moment Topalov gave back the pawn and had the better chances, but a draw was agreed on move 42.

Aronian-Vallejo was the most interesting game of the round. In a Slav defence Vallejo came up with the mysterious 7…Qc7 and then 11…Qb6. It looked like a loss of tempo but eventually he reached a promising position with two rooks against the queen. Then the Spaniard won a pawn and then another, but suddenly the screen showed ½-½. What had happened? Nobody knew. Ljubo: “He is two pawns up and has good winning chances. He must have been very tired.”

Games round 7 with brief annotations

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The chess hotel: Anibal

Photos © Rick Goetzee

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

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

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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