Chess for All Ages

Shirov on Shirov - Kramnik 1998

2012-01-27T14:46:00.000+01:00

Shirov won the match, but Kramnik collected the prize money and a few years later even got the opportunity to play Kasparov, when he won the title of World Champion. After quitting FIDE, Kasparov turned the chess world on its head in more ways than one.

Kramnik Vs. Shirov - Final Game (1/2) (16:52) • 'Alexei Shirov gives a first-hand account of his 1998 clash in Cazorla, Spain with Vladimir Kramnik - in a match held to decide who would become the official challenger to World Champion Garry Kasparov.'

I'd never seen the clip before, but I guess that it's an excerpt from Shirov! (Shirov-Kramnik 1998) - GM Alexei Shirovon Chessvideo.com. Who's the fellow presenting it? He's obviously a good player, but I don't recognize him.

Chess Makes a Statement

2012-01-26T14:25:00.000+01:00

But what's the statement?

The caption read,

4/17/72 -- Attica, NY : Some of the inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility play chess -- but with unseen opponents. This photograph by Cornell Capa is part of a photographic essay he produced for the McKay Commission, which is investigating the September 1971 uprising at the state prison. The commission made public Capa's report 4/17, as it resumed public hearings in New York. (UPI)

For more about the uprising, seeAttica Prison Riot(Wikipedia).

My Most Popular Posts

2012-01-24T15:10:00.000+01:00

The end of this week is the deadline for submitting material toBlog Carnivals Continue,and after racking my brain (a horrible phrase that refers to the medieval torture instrument 'the rack') for a favorite post I'm still clueless. I couldn't even decide which of my three blogs to choose from. While my chess960 blog gets less traffic than the other two, it includes material that, for me at least, is more interesting than the other two blogs.

What to do? Let the blog's visitors decide. For each of my blogs, these are the most popular posts of all time according to the stats in Blogger.com.

Chess for All Ages

I can't be absolutely certain, but I suspect that popular posts get that way because they are near the top of the results for searches on their subjects. The post on 'Soviet Geography' is popular because people are looking for historical maps of the Soviet Union; 'Big Bang Chess' is popular because people search for exactly that; and 'CFAA' is popular because CFAA means something that I am unfamilar with (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?).

World Chess Championship Blog

Here's a real mystery: I have no real idea why the 'FIDE EB' is so popular. It has had more visits than the top three CFAA posts combined, even though the WCC blog gets a quarter of the traffic that CFAA gets. The post on 'Historical Ratings' is popular because there is a natural interest; I also get a lot of email on the subject. 'Qualifiers' is popular because people search for the list on a current World Cup without specifying which year they want.

Chess960 (FRC)

There's no mystery here. These three posts correspond to common topics of interest related to chess960. If my stats are any indicator, interest in chess960 is increasing slowly but steadily.

Been There, Done That with the Swiss

2012-01-23T16:41:00.001+01:00

Monday means back toBeen There, Done That,where I added Swiss System for Chess Tournamentsto my page onImprove Your Chess Game.

Canadian Caissart

2012-01-22T09:03:00.000+01:00

In this fortnightly series onTop eBay Chess Items by Price,I'm always happy to discover artwork where the subject is chess. Examples are few and far between. The auction for the painting pictured below was titled 'Ghitta Caiserman Roth Canadian / Quebec oil painting mid century chess game' and sold 'Best Offer' for $500.

The description said,

Ghitta Caiserman Roth(1923-2005)•Easily one of the nicest pieces she did•Oil on masonite approx 10"x 8" with original painted frame 16 3/4"x 14 3/4"•Signed lower front right•Tag to back•Title to back chess game•No paint loss, frame in used condition.

For more about the artist, seeGhitta Caiserman-Rothon Earthartgallery.com.

Print Your Own 3D Chess Set

2012-01-20T16:47:00.000+01:00

That's not 'Build Your Own', 'Carve Your Own', or 'Assemble Your Own'; it's 'Print Your Own'. If you're thinking 'So what!', don't forget it's in three dimensions. A 3D printer is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

The Replicator with Chess Set© Flickr user makerbot underCreative Commons.

For more about this modern miracle, seeMakerBot Industries,'the cutting edge of extrusion technology'.

The Wikipedia Blackout

2012-01-19T16:55:00.001+01:00

As I noted in yesterday's post,New Zonal Clippings for C19on my World Championship Blog, the one day Wikipedia blackout forced me to put off some minor web research. After flashing the target page for a split second, the following screen appeared.

The text reads,

Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge•For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.

The 'Learn more' link went to SOPA and PIPA - Learn more.There's no question that Wikipedia is a positive force in the world, but it's not lily white either. A post on the The Chess Museum --A SAD REVELATION-- caught my attention when it appeared last year.

I was looking up something about Jackson Whipps Showalter and Pillsbury (H N) to confirm a thought I had about winning the US championship and then defending the title. Well, Wikipedia had the information because it was copied directly from Hooper & Whyld's book (I was double checking)! Directly. No paraphrasing, no parsing, no mention (except under references [and that doesn't given them a license to "lift"]). This is wrong.

Yes, it is wrong, and I've seen other examples of the same thing. Anonymous contributors hand-in-hand with self-policing makes a bad marriage. Wikipedia should get its own act in order before it starts complaining about forthcoming legislation designed to protect the original content creators. They deserve more respect and a better deal than Wikipedia is giving them.

The Rybka Affair: An Official Reaction

2012-01-17T17:57:00.000+01:00

Back in July 2011, I ran two posts on the Rybka disqualification from the World Computer Chess Championships:The Rybka Affair (on my WCC blog) andThe Rybka Affair (on YouTube)on this blog. The disqualification was based on a report:-

Rybka Investigation and Summary of Findings for the ICGA
Mark Lefler, Robert Hyatt, Harvey Williamson and ICGA panel members;12 May 2011

You can find the full report on the web by searching on its title. The heart of that document is its second section:-

2. Investigation
2.1 Executable file analysis
2.2 Sudden Strength Increase
2.3 Statements by Vasik Rajlich
2.4 Comparisons with other programs

After the Rybka team, the main target of the accusations was certainly Chessbase. After taking six months to investigate the original complaint, the German software company issued its position in a four part series titled 'A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess' by Dr. Søren Riis:-

Part One:Summary•Introduction•History of Rybka•The ICGA’s investigation and outcome
Part Two:A paradigm shift in computer chess•How to succeed in programming without really trying•On the matter of "plagiarism"•Playing similarity testing of computer chess programs•What defines an original program?
Part Three:Evaluation: a tale of two programs•Feature Overlap: garbage in, garbage out•Dots amazing: the case of the errant ‘0.0’
Part Four:Piece-Square Tables: sound and fury signifying something•Dr. Hyatt’s explanation•Variations in C-Sharp•The small window of opportunity argument•The ICGA’s problematic handling of the case•A subjective view of what really went down

A week later Chessbase posted on the immediate reaction to its report

Feedback on the ICGA/Rybka disqualification scandal

In contrast to the legions of hot heads blowing hot air on this subject -- from both sides -- Albert Vasse of DGT, offered an objective approach.

I suggest you take the case to the FIDE Ethics Commission. The FIDE code of ethics is applicable to the ICGA, as an affiliated organisation to FIDE. The Ethics Commission can investigate and rule on any complaint that is brought to [their] attention.

I've written about that body in the past (seeFIDE Ethics)If either side pursues Vasse's suggestion, it would be the most important case the Ethics Commission has considered to date. The ICGA plans to issue a detailed response to the Chessbase report and I'll come back to the subject after it has been released.

Walking Through Another Chess Game

2012-01-16T16:58:00.001+01:00

Following in the footsteps of Walk Through Korchnoi - Kasparov, Olympiad, Lucerne 1982,I addedWalk Through Tal - Larsen, Candidates Match, Bled 1965to my pageImprove Your Chess Game.It's the second and last Walk Through listed onBeen There, Done That.

Blog Carnivals Continue

2012-01-15T17:56:00.000+01:00

It turns out that the last of 2011's monthly blog carnivals,Happy Birthday, Carnival!,wasn't the last of all time. The tradition continues on Robert Pearson's Chess Blog withSubmit to the Chess Blogging Carnival: The Best Of!

Find the "best of" ever posts in your blog, other people's blogs or even articles from the big non-blog chess sites (just this once). I'm talking back to the dawn of the Web, or even before.January 27 is the deadline for submissions, and the first post is scheduled for February 1. Now get those links coming!

With three chess blogs and over 1500 posts on those blogs, I should be able to find something of my own to contribute. How do those guys with hundreds of suits in their wardrobe decide what to wear?

Chess Sells Beer?

2012-01-13T12:48:00.000+01:00

When you can't get enough football...

Miller Lite Chess Hospital (0:30) • 'The Champagne of Bottled Beers'

Advertising slogans of beer>Miller Beer:'It's Miller time!'•'Tastes great, less filling' •'Everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.' •'If you've got the time, we've got the beer'

Steve Jobs and Chess

2012-01-12T13:21:00.000+01:00

Although I was never a huge fan of Steve Jobs, seeing in him as much P.T.Barnum as technological visionary, I could only admire his string of product successes in recent years. Whatever one might think of him, he was one of the most brilliant personalities of our time and his exploits will be remembered long after his premature death last year.

For Christmas, I received a copy of his biography by Walter Isaacson (Thanks, Mom!) and, working through it a short section or two at a time, have read a quarter of the 600 pages. I like biographies and Isaacson's book is one of the most readable examples I can remember. Jobs never struck me as the type of person who would be interested in chess -- I imagine him to have been in the 'waste of time' camp -- so I was suprised to find a reference early in the book (p.35).

[Jobs] and Kottke enjoyed playing a nineteenth-century German variant of chess called Kriegspiel, in which the players sit back-to-back; each has his own board and pieces and cannot see those of his opponent. A moderator informs them if a move they want to make is legal or illegal, and they have to try to figure out where their opponent's pieces are. "The wildest game I played with them was during a lashing rainstorm sitting by the fireside," recalled Holmes, who served as moderator. "They were tripping on acid. They were moving so fast I could barely keep up with them."

Kottke and Holmes were important enough to Jobs' early development to be listed in the three page cast of characters at the beginning of the book.

DANIEL KOTTKE. Jobs's closest friend at Reed [College], fellow pilgrim to India, early Apple employee.•ELIZABETH HOLMES. Daniel Kottke’s girlfriend at Reed and early Apple employee.

As much as I liked seeing the kriegspiel story, it rang slightly false. I can't imagine that anyone could play a decent game of chess while doing LSD. Kriegspiel, being a game of limited information (that I've never played), must be an order of magnitude more difficult. Whatever the truth, it's a good story. Are there any other stories involving Jobs and chess?

Mystery Notation

2012-01-10T16:43:00.000+01:00

I received the image on the left from a correspondent who asked, 'I would like to know what notation is used for this game, played in 1836 at Paris'.After you realize that Black (Noirs) moves first and the ranks are numbered from Black's side of the board, it's not hard to work out the game score (giving White the first move):-

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 exd5 4.c4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Bb4 6.a3 Bxc3+ 7.bxc3 Ne4 8.Qb3 c6 9.Bd3 O-O 10.Ne2 dxc4 11.Bxc4 b5 12.Bd3 Bf5 13.Qc2 Re8 14.O-O Bg6 15.Nf4 Nd6 16.Nxg6 hxg6 17.Bf4 Na6 18.Rfe1 Qd7 19.a4 Nc7 20.Bxd6 Qxd6 21.Rxe8+ Rxe8 22.axb5 cxb5 23.Rxa7 Re1+ 24.Bf1 Qc6 25.Qd2 Rb1 26.Qd3 Rc1 27.Ra3 Nd5 28.Qf3 f6 29.Qd3 Nf4 30.d5 Qxd5 31.Qxd5+ Nxd5 *

Unfortunately, that still doesn't tell you what notation was used. Any ideas?

Walking Through a Chess Game

2012-01-09T17:01:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I wish I hadn'tBeen There, Done That.An example is Walk Through Korchnoi - Kasparov, Olympiad, Lucerne 1982,which I added to my page on Improve Your Chess Game.I created only two pages using the same Walk Through style, based on an About.com technique called step-by-step. The software allowed a maximum of 10 steps, each with a single diagram.

After completing the two pages, I determined that the notes between the diagrams were too difficult to follow without having a board at hand. Later on I switched to the Every Move Explained style (also found under Improve Your Game). That technique worked much better.

Ruy Lopez in Italian

2012-01-08T11:53:00.000+01:00

My series onTop eBay Chess Items by Priceis sometimes about comic books, as inBatman Plays Chess with the Joker,and sometimes about more serious works. The eBay item that I've captured in the composite image below was titled '1584 RUY LOPEZ Scacchi FAMOUS RENAISSANCE CHESS MANUAL BOOK Rare 1ST ITALIAN ed', received 37 bids from 20 different bidders, and sold for US $4250. The price more than doubled during the last day of the seven day auction.

The long description of the item pulled together details about the book's origin,

Printed by Cornelio Arrivabene, Venice, 1584. FIRST ITALIAN EDITION.Text in Italian (translated from Spanish by Giovanni Domenico Tarsia). Illustrated with woodcuts of the chess pieces and the chessboard."C'est la seule édition italienne de ce livre fort rare." (Olschki, Choix de Livres Anciens, 320)

its impact,

López's influential Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del axedrez, first published in Spanish in Alcala de Henares in 1561 (that edition is now exceedingly rare!), was one of the earliest chess instruction manuals ever written, and the first major chess book since the 1512 work by Pedro Damiano. López decided to write his own chess manual after finding Damiano's book unsatisfactory. Being the first translation of Lopez's book into a foreign language, and the first edition printed outside Spain, this 1584 Italian edition was crucial in making the work popular in Italy (then an emerging chess power in Renaissance Europe) - and in the entire Europe.

its author,

López de Segura (ca.1530-1580) was born in Zafra near Badajoz, probably of Marrano Jewish descent, and he studied and lived in Salamanca. Considered by many to be the first world chess champion, as he won the first modern chess tournament in Madrid, he was certainly one of the leading players of his day. In 1559-60 he went to Rome to attend an ecclesiastical conference, and whilst there, he defeated all the best players, including Leonardo di Bona. In 1561 he proposed the 50-move rule to claim a draw and introduced the word 'gambit' (particularly, in relation to the Damiano Gambit). It was an important time in the development of the game in Europe when Kings, Popes and gentlemen become patrons of chess players and organised chess competitions at court. In 1574-75 King Philip II of Spain organised a tournament and invited all the top Italian players, though this time López de Segura lost to Leonardo da Curtie and Paolo Boi, though impressing the King by playing a simultaneous blindfold tournament.

and its physical presentation.

Quarto (dimensions of leaves: 20 cm x 14½ cm). Bound in 18th-century reverse vellum (reusing a Hebrew manuscript), with a hand-written title to spine.Pagination: [viii], 214, [2] pp. Signatures: A-Z4 *4 Aa-Dd4. Collated and COMPLETE.Printed in Italic letter with some use of Roman type. Illustrated with seven small woodcut figures of chess board and pieces in text, as well as a woodcut printer's device to title-page, numerous elegant historiated and foliated woodcut initials, head and tail-pieces.Dedicatory Epistle by the translator on leaves A2r-A4r. Colophon and register on leaf Dd4r (verso blank).

I found the 'seven small woodcut figures of chess board and pieces', also pictured with the item, especially attractive. You can see the Knight and the Rook in the bottom row of my composite.

Wobbling in the Early Morning Light

2012-01-06T08:39:00.000+01:00

For the first Flickr Friday of 2012, I had the uninspiring choice of aChess Cemetery,aChess Bathroom,and a wobble chess set.

Chess set (Tulsa 2011)© Flickr user woodleywonderworks underCreative Commons.

Find more of the ever popularwobble chess seton Google Images.

Early Chess Magazines

2012-01-05T17:49:00.000+01:00

Starting in February 2008 and continuing for almost two and a half years, Europe Echecs ran a monthly column by Georges Bertola under the heading '50 Ans d'Europe-Echecs' (50 Years of 'Europe-Echecs'). Each month featured a few pages on an early chess magazine. Here is the introduction to the first column, translated loosely from the French:-

In January 2009, 'Europe Echecs' will celebrate its 50th anniversary! While waiting for this event, the Swiss chronicler and collector Georges Bertola presents, each month, one magazine which marked the evolution of the game. This friend of 'Europe Echecs' has naturally chosen to start the chronicle by tracing the genesis of 'Le Palamède', the first [chess] magazine in history, created in 1836 by La Bourdonnais and Méry.

It makes a good follow-up to my recent post on theKings of Chess Journalism.

1836: 'Le Palamède' (2008-02 p.68)
1841: 'Chess Player's Chronicle' (2008-04 p.66)
1846: 'Deutsche Schachzeitung' (2008-05 p.66)
1857: 'The Chess Monthly' by Morphy (2008-06 p.64)
1867: 'La Stratégie' by Durand and Préti (2008-07 p.64)
1876: 'Shakmatnyi Listok' by Chigorin (2008-09 p.66)
1879: 'The Chess Monthly' by Zukertort (2008-10 p.66)
1885: 'International Chess Magazine' by Steinitz (2008-11 p.66)
1898: 'Wiener Schachzeitung' by Marco (2008-12 p.66)
1904: 'Lasker Chess Magazine' (2009-01 p.88)
1898: 'Der Schachfreund' by Alapine (2009-02 p.66)
1908: 'The Chess Weekly' by Napier (2009-03 p.64)
1912: 'The Capablanca Magazine' (2009-04 p.64)
1906: 'The Chess Amateur' (2009-05 p.64)
1889: 'Deutsches Wochenschach' (2009-06 p.64)
1904: 'American Chess Bulletin' (2009-07 p.64)
1900: 'La Revue d'Echecs' by Goossens (2009-09 p.64)
1889: 'Baltische Schachblatter' (2009-10 p.64)
1906: 'Casopis Ceskych Sachistu' (2010-01 p.67)
1894: 'Tijdskrift för Schack' by the brothers Collijn (2010-02 p.64)
1893: 'Tijdschrift van den Nederlandschen Schaakbond' (2010-03 p.62)
1900: 'La Revue Suisse d'Echecs' (2010-04 p.62)
1911: 'L'Italia Scacchistica' by Rosselli del Turco (2010-05 p.62)
1913: 'Der Schachwart' by Lasker (2010-07 p.64)

The number in bold is the first year of the magazine's publication. The number in parentheses is the year, month, and page of the EE issue featuring that publication.

NB:The first periodical in the list is available on Google Books:Palamède: revue mensuelle des échecs.

Tablebase Monster

2012-01-03T17:24:00.000+01:00

Endgame Tuesday, anyone? Endgames Without a King was my seventh consecutive Tuesday post about endgames (excluding one off-topic post which was too important to be ignored), and this post continues the series.

The following diagram is the conclusion of an interesting endgame with Rook and a-/b-Pawns vs. Rook and g-/h-Pawns (R+ab:R+gh) that a friend sent me for analysis. White had a slight advantage in the Pawn race, where several plausible variations resulted in positions like the diagram.

If you had to guess the outcome, you would probably say 'Draw!' In fact, the position is a mate in 92 moves for White.

White to move and ?

Just as I did in Simple Positions, Pretty Geometries,I like to shift the pieces around in tablebase positions to see what effect small differences have on the evaluation. For example, if you remove the Black Pawn, the position becomes a mate in 55.

If, instead, you shift the Black King to g7, it's mate in 93. On h7, it's mate in 82. On e7, d7, or c7, it's a draw. The diagrammed position is apparently smack dab on the edge of theory: if the White Pawn is on a5, or the Black Pawn on h4, it's also a draw. I didn't follow the tablebase analysis on any of these permutations, but I did follow the original mate in 92.

White first spends 30 moves reaching a position where the White and Black Pawns each advance one square. This requires the White King to defend its Pawn. Then White lets his King get checked across the board to capture the Black Pawn; that takes 10 moves. In this first phase, White can offer Queen swaps, because the resulting Pawn endgame is a win.

After winning the Pawn, White takes 20 moves getting checked back to a8, where Black runs out of checks. Finally, White forces a position with the King on c8, the Queen on c6, and the Black King on h7, where any further checks by the Black Queen allow a cross check forcing a Queen swap. Then it's easy.

As my friend commented in his newsletter (seeAlan Lasser’s Game of the Weekfor some of his earlier issues), 'Over the board, those mates in 92 are hard to find!'

Been There, Done That with Rating Calculations

2012-01-02T16:38:00.000+01:00

One of the first articles I converted from my About.com material was an introduction to

Chess Ratings

one of several topics mentioned in a post titledMore about Chess History.This was far from my last word on the subject, so I converted three later articles:-

These don't make as much sense in the Chess Historycategory as that first piece, but I'll deal with that some other time. For now, I can check off another bullet inBeen There, Done That.

Happy MMXII!

2012-01-01T07:53:00.002+01:00

MMXII rotated 180° is IIXWW. Flipped, it's WWXII.

http://cooltext.com/

Just like the New Year celebration, my New Year's posts have been all over the map recently. A year ago the 2011 post was on my chess960blog and two years ago the 2010 post was on 31 December 2009.I have to go back to2009to find a normal post. In 2012, let's have a normal year! (Whatever that means).

Almira Skripchenko's Other Game Is...

2011-12-30T14:09:00.000+01:00

For the last video of 2011, let's look at the poker world looking at the chess world.

Almira Skripchenko's Other Game Is...Chess (7:38) • 'Almira Skripchenko has final tabled a WSOP event and the WPT Invitational, but before she became a serious poker player Skripchenko was an incredibly successful professional chess player.'

According to Google, which game gets Skripchenko more attention?

Skripchenko chess: 'About 226,000 results'
Skripchenko poker: 'About 98,600 results'

That's not the result I would have guessed.

'Chess Records' by Damsky

2011-12-29T16:17:00.000+01:00

I've already mentioned 'The Batsford Book of Chess Records' by Yakov Damsky in two recent posts -- Not Everyone Likes Chess960andKings of Chess Journalism --so it's appropriate to say a bit more about the book.Even though I have another work by the same author, Kramnik's 'Life and Games', I can't say that I know much about him. Gaige's 'Chess Personalia' gives only his year of birth (1934), while Chessgames.com lists only a single game underThe chess games of Iakov Damsky.

Published in 2005, 'Chess Records' never generated much of a buzz. I doubt that it's solely because of a negative review by Edward Winter,3939. Records,where the eminent chess historian put his finger on the book's major shortcomings.

Its first defect is obvious enough: poor structure and organization (only four parts/chapters), exacerbated by inadequate indexing. Secondly, the author provides ‘information’ without, in most cases, giving any indication as to its provenance. Thirdly, he demonstrates insufficient knowledge of chess lore to tackle what would have been, even for a fine writer, a demanding project.

The title of the book is misleading. While there are indeed some legitimate records -- the type of information found in Wikipedia'sList of world records in chess-- Damsky's book is more a collection of hundreds of stories arranged by a loose categorization that doesn't always make immediate sense. The style reminds me more of Assiac ('Adventures in Chess') and Chernev ('Fireside Book') than of Whyld ('Chess: The Records').

I couldn't find a list of those categories on the web, so I constructed one myself, based on the section titles assigned by Damsky. The section numbers and the descriptions in brackets (e.g. '1.1 ... [Game length]') are mine.

Part One: Games

1.1 The shortest and the longest [p.9 : Game length]
1.2 Where is the king going? [p.17 : King walk]
1.3 The more queens, the merrier [p.25 : Queen]
1.4 A heavy piece stepping lightly [p.31 : Rook]
1.5 And where will you plant your hooves? [p.33 : Knight]
1.6 Slow and steady [p.38 : Pawn]
1.7 No one ever saw further [p.41 : Combinations]
1.8 Fall of the Giants [p.46 : Refutations]
1.9 Better late than never [p.47 : Castling]
1.10 So many checks [p.51 : Checks]
1.11 Unrealized advantage [p.52 : Failure to win]
1.12 A record that will not be beaten [p.54 : Adjournments]
1.13 When two do the same... [p.56 : Symmetry]

Part Two: People

2.1 Chess life histories [p.59 : Intro]
2.2 Meteors [p.59 : Charousek++]
2.3 Ascending the heights [p.64 : Chigorin++]
2.4 Ascent cut short [p.68 : Junge++]
2.5 Pauses on the way [p.76 : Career interruptions]
2.6 A title for all ages [p.80 : GM]
2.7 Old and little [p.82 : Age extremes]
2.8 Presidents have a long life [p.88 : Federations]
2.9 A council of judges [p.91 : Prizes]
2.10 Caissa's favourites and pariahs [p.93 : Luck]
2.11 Profession: champion [p.100 : Championships]
2.12 Negative distinction [p.108 : Bottom feeders]
2.13 The most learned, the most eminent [p.110 : Napoleon++]
2.14 Gentlemanly conduct [p.121 : Etiquette]
2.15 Gens una sumus [p.123 : FIDE]

Part Three: Tournaments, Matches, Events

3.1 In contention for the crown [p.129 : World champions]
3.2 Standing out from the rest [p.134 : Longest, shortest, etc.]
3.3 Prizes for back markers [p.150 : Low score, high place]
3.4 Where history is made [p.152 : Scheveningen]
3.5 Summit meetings [p.154 : Strong tournaments]
3.6 Year after year, century after century [p.160 : Traditions]
3.7 A long, long memory [p.164 : as-Suli]
3.8 Sergeant major's orders [p.168 : Unusual rules]
3.9 Phantoms of the chess world [p.174 : Ghost games]
3.10 Defying the theory of probabilities [p.194 : Coincidences]
3.11 The prized apple of beauty [p.204 : Brilliancy prizes]
3.12 Second player wins [p.206 : Black wins]
3.13 Vertical distances [p.211 : Astronauts]
3.14 The march of progress [p.214 : Clocks, Variants]
3.15 One against one [p.225 : Marathons]
3.16 Unbroken runs [p.227 : Streaks]

Part Four: Around the Chequered Board

4.1 All onto one [p.234 : Intro]
4.2 Conventional displays [p.235 : Simuls 1/2]
4.3 Unconventional displays [p.239 : Simuls 2/2]
4.4 Without a chessboard [p.251 : Blindfold]
4.5 Prizes and stakes - frivolous and serious [p.263 : Unusual prizes]
4.6 Hunting down the prizewinners [p.274 : Unpredictable results]
4.7 Terrible vengeance [p.280 : Revenge]
4.8 The bitter taste of victory [p.282 : Wins that hurt]
4.9 A great sacrifice [p.284 : Living chess]
4.10 A priceless book [p.285 : Literature++]
4.11 Peace, perfect peace? [p.290 : Draw offers]
4.12 Boundless disrespect [p.292 : Curious manners]
4.13 A Swedish record breaker [p.292 : Stahlberg++]
4.14 Chess mysticism and reality [p.296 : The inexplicable]

While that list doesn't eliminate the book's shortcomings, it should help to locate a specific story. And let there be no doubt : there are some excellent stories here, even if their 'provenance' is missing and even when their authenticity is dubious. The book also contains over 200 games and game fragments. Although an overview of these would be worthwhile, I'm afraid I've already exceeded the time available for this post.

Endgames Without a King

2011-12-27T16:26:00.000+01:00

Continuing with The Most Theoretical Endgames,there was one type of endgame I didn't mention, because it didn't fit as nicely into my schema as the others did. An example is shown in the diagram on the right. It's a 'four piece' endgame where the White King is facing three connected passed Pawns. The Black King is supposed to be occupied elsewhere on the board and isn't shown.

This type of endgame doesn't bother human players, who can easily work without the missing King. The engine, however, goes into a panic and starts displaying inaccurate results. As far as it's concerned, the King *must* be on the board.

Lone King vs. Three Connected Pawns

The Convekta version of 'Comprehensive Chess Endings' (CCE) by Averbakh goes a long way to solving this problem. It imagines four possible configurations where the Black King is on the board, but otherwise occupied. I've indicated these configurations by the letters (A) through (D) in the diagram. If you merge one of the configurations on the Queenside with the position to be studied on the Kingside, the resulting position is fully satisfactory to the engine.

Although the position might be satisfactory for an engine, it is not necessarily satisfactory for solving the endgame. Configuration (A), for example, allows the Black King to shuttle indefinitely between a8 and b7. This means the Black Pawns are never in zugzwang, a common endgame mechanism in all sorts of positions, especially when there are only Pawns.

Configuration (B) has the disadvantage that the Black King has no legal moves. This allows Black to sacrifice its Pawns, when the game ends in stalemate.

Configuration (C) works much better than (A) or (B). The position is in perfect equilibrium, where neither the White Pawns nor the Black King can move without disturbing the equilibrium and losing. I used (C) to study most of Averbakh's example positions with the aid of an engine. The engines are amazingly fast in analyzing these positions, sometimes calculating to depth 30 or more in a few seconds.

Configuration (C) falls down in positions where the start position of the White King is gradually shifted to the Queenside, i.e. to the e-file, then the d-file, and finally to the c-file. In those positions, the White King has the alternative of rushing to its a- and c-Pawns, thereby helping them to promote.

Although I didn't feed it to an engine, configuration (D) looks like a solution to that last glitch. Not only do the Black King and White Pawns prevent each other from moving, the Black King prevents its adversary from coming to the aid of its own Pawns.

I've seen other endgames where one or both Kings were supposed to be elsewhere. Now I have a trick for working with them also.

'Themed Chess Sets' -or- 'Theme Chess Sets'?

2011-12-26T15:52:00.002+01:00

I choseThemed Chess Sets,and have wondered ever since if it's correct. Google prefers 'theme' to 'themed' by almost four to one, so I'm in the minority. My examples --Historical Themes,Animal Themes,Children's Themes, and Sport Themes --all lead to an About.com adaptation of PriceGrabber.com,where any proceeds go to persons unknown. I might change that some day to use a bona fide chess supplier, but for now it will have to do. In the meantime, add another converted article to Been There, Done That.

The True Spirit and Meaning of Christmas

2011-12-25T08:53:00.000+01:00

'Two children disillusioned with Christmas meet up with Santa and a magical white reindeer and travel with him to learn about the true spirit and meaning of Christmas.'

'The Miracle of the White Reindeer' (1965)
Fritz Feld and Chimp

KiddieMatinee.comsays about the film, 'that most Holy of Kiddie Matinee Grails'.

***

For my own future reference:-

2011:Christmas Chess @ Flickr
2010:Have a Merry Chess960 Christmas!
2009:'We'll Spend Our Christmas Being Invisible',Christmas @ Schemingmind.com
2008:Merry Christmas from Google!
2007:Merry Christmas!,a tip.
2006:Merry Christmas!,a cheeky Santa.

Christmas Chess @ Flickr

2011-12-23T10:50:00.000+01:00

'Hurry up and get back in the box...'© Flickr user garlandcannon underCreative Commons.

'...with the other chessmen, Pawns! The reindeer are arriving.'

Kings of Chess Journalism

2011-12-22T15:38:00.000+01:00

I've already quoted Yakov Damsky, author of 'The Batsford Book of Chess Records' among other titles, inNot Everyone Likes Chess960.Another quote that caught my attention was 'Savielly Tartakower - a Grandmaster, the king of chess journalism at the time' (p.239), in reference to a simul he gave in 1929.As a blogger, I feel a general affinity for chess journalists and am always willing to learn from the masters of the craft. The title 'King of Chess Journalism', although entirely subjective, is a new idea for me and I started to wonder if anyone had compiled a list of such kings covering all ages. But first, let's look at Tartakower.

I imagine that for most fans of chess history, Tartakower is better known for his play than for his writing. How strong a player was he? I turned to a chart from Elo's 'Rating of Chess Players Past and Present', where Tartakower is no.20 in the chronological list.

Hard to read, isn't it? So is the original chart because it spans two pages. A two centimeter gap at the year 1915 makes it difficult to follow the arcs that cross that point. That's why I made a larger version of the same image, eliminating the annoying gap:'Lifetime Ratings, Selected Grandmasters' as calculated by Elo.

From this we see that Tartakower reached his peak around 1923, when there were six players ranked higher: Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine, Nimzovitch, Rubinstein, and Maroczy, in that order; and the same number ranked lower: Marshall, Vidmar, Euwe (just starting his career), Tarrasch (near the end of his career), Mieses, and Janowski. That places Tartakower in the top-10 for that period.

The only resource that I know equivalent to Elo's is Chessmetrics,where we find the Chessmetrics Player Profile: Saviely Tartakower.In the past I've been critical of the Chessmetrics methodology, as inCalculating Collusion,because it draws too many conclusions on skimpy data, but it still manages to paint pretty pictures. On the 'Ratings only' section of the Tartakower page, he jumps from no.44 in the world on the September 1941 list (rating 2586) to no.10 in the world on the January 1946 list (rating 2688), despite being inactive between those months, as were most players.

The Elo table lists a few names of less-known players -- Schallopp, Mason, Stoltz, Barcza, and Pomar -- and it might be worthwhile to research them. Add to that a post on Damsky, on Tartakower, and on other 'Kings of Chess Journalism', and I might have a little series in the making.

The Most Theoretical Endgames

2011-12-20T16:02:00.000+01:00

InWhat's What in Endgames,I introduced a table showing the number of positions with specific numbers of pieces in the Convekta version of 'Comprehensive Chess Endings' (CCE) by Averbakh. For example, there are 1020 positions in CCE with exactly six pieces. This next post identifies which types of positions occur most frequently.

Starting with positions having four pieces, the most discussed endgames in CCE are (1) Pawn vs. Pawn, and (2) Rook vs. Pawn. Both occur often enough in practice, with R vs. P arising from R+P vs. R+P, after the weak side sacrifices its Rook for the enemy Pawn, then races to promote its own Pawn.

With five pieces, there are five configurations that receive a more extensive treatment than the others: (1) Two Pawns vs. Pawn, (2) Queen & Pawn vs. Queen, (3) Bishop & Pawn vs. Knight (or N & P vs. B), (4) Queen vs. Rook & Pawn, (5) Rook & Pawn vs. Rook.

With six pieces, there are only three configurations that have received extra attention: (1) Two Pawns vs. Two Pawns, (2) Rook & Two Pawns vs. Rook, (3) Rook vs. Three Pawns.

Endgames with six pieces are the limit of published tablebases, so the seven piece configurations still require some real analysis. One configuration has received more attention than the others: (1) Queen & Pawn vs. Rook & Two Pawns;while three others are relatively well researched:(2) Bishop & Two Pawns vs. Knight & Pawn (or N & 2P vs. B & P),(3) Rook & Two Pawns vs. Rook & Pawn,(4) Three Pawns vs. Two Pawns,

As for eight pieces, one configurations has received for more attention than the others:(1) Three Pawns vs. Three Pawns; with two others getting somewhat more attention than the rest of the pack:(2) Rook & Two Pawns vs. Rook & Two Pawns, and(3) Rook & Two Pawns vs. Bishop & Two Pawns,

Experienced players have grappled with almost all of the above configurations. Less frequently seen areR vs. 3P,Q & P vs. R & 2P, andR & 2 Ps vs. B & 2Ps.It might be useful to know why these are worth special study, but that will have to wait for another time.

2004 Kramnik - Leko

2011-12-19T15:10:00.000+01:00

Continuing with Been There, Done That,I added the 2004 Dannemann World Championship Match : Kramnik - Lekoto my page onChess History. In retrospect, it was an extraordinary period in World Championship history. We had both FIDE and non-FIDE title events in 2004, a FIDE tournament in 2005, a unification match in 2006, another tournament in 2007, and the definitive title match in 2008.

Batman Plays Chess with the Joker

2011-12-18T07:53:00.000+01:00

I suppose it was inevitable. Earlier this year I cut back on blogging -- seeHow I Spent My Free Day(Warning! Contains chess960 content!) -- but my fingers invariably got itchy on my day off. I decided that I could at least use the day for a light post on an easy topic, something like Top eBay Chess Items by Price.The preparation here is algorithmic: (1) Look at all higher priced eBay items sold over the past two weeks. (2) Pick one. (3) Write about it. (4) Wait two weeks and repeat.

When I started this series, step (1) had a built-in control mechanism. The search on 'Completed Items' only returned items completed, whether sold or not, over the past two weeks. A few months ago I noticed that the search was displaying completed items from as long as two months earlier. Why the change? I turned to eBay's 'Community' for help, specifically its 'Discussion Boards'.

I'm not a big fan of forums because most posts are from people bitching and moaning about whatever disturbs them. They're sort of like blogs with multiple authors. Ebay has one of the biggest groups of bitchers and moaners that I've ever encountered, most of them on the selling side. Reading the comments, you would think that the main objective of the auction site was to make life miserable for people who want to sell stuff, the worst part of it being that there is nowhere else for them to go.

After wading through dozens of threads complaining about everything, I found one from October that explained the search on completed items,Attention Collectibles Sellers: More Completed Items History.

Attention Collectibles Sellers, Completed Items Search will now return more history for items that were listed in the Collectibles category.
90 days of history for completed sold items in Collectibles
45 days of history for completed unsold items in Collectibles
15 days of history for completed items listed outside the Collectibles category

This was immediately followed by several complaints, including this non-sequitur:-

ATTETION SELLERS. EBAY OFFERS 45 DAY MONEY BACK ON ALL SELLERS LISTINGS. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THE SELLER CHOOSES THE 7 DAY OR THE NO RETURN POLICY. EBAY WILL GO INTO SELLERS PAYPAL AND GIVE REFUNDS 45 DAYS LATER. EBAY ALWAYS SIDES WITH THE BUYER. THIS IS A FACT. CALL EBAY AND ASK THEM. NO MORE EBAY FOR ME.

(sic) I don't know enough about eBay to say what constitutes the 'Collectibles category', but it apparently includes tons of chess sets. It doesn't include items like those I mentioned inDVDs as Cheap as Dirt,which have disappeared from the search on completed items.

This change makes the task of finding a suitable item a little more difficult, because I have to wade through more pages of completed items. Oops! Looks like I'm complaining about eBay now. I better stop before it takes complete control of my spirit...

***

The most unusual item of the past two weeks is pictured on the left. Its title said, 'Batman #23 CGC 6.0 Classic Joker Cover. Robin. Alfred Story. Chess Board Cover'. It received one bid and sold for US $750.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have no idea what 'CGC 6.0' means. At the top of the image you can see that it says 'CGC Universal Grade' over a large '6.0'. At the bottom of the image you can see that there is some kind of blurring, probably caused by a clear plastic cover protecting the comic.Wikipedia has a Comics Guarantypage explaining the concept. The top of that page warns, 'Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled due to vandalism', which tells me that the grading procedure is not infallible.

Chess is a fairly common theme in the world of comic books. The artwork is often similar to that shown on the Batman cover, where a superhero battles a villain by manipulating 'real people' on a chess board. In this example, the real people include a miniature Joker and Batman, which must have something to do with the story. The description of the item added,

Cream to off-white pages. Joker cover and story!! Alfred backup story by Don Cameron. Dick Sprand artwork (story and cover). Sharp looking Fine copy from mid-1944. The 2011 Overstreet price in grade (6.0) is $820.00. The CGC case is clean.

Years ago I watched a late night talk show where one of the last guests was a comic book collector. At one point the host held up one of the guest's comics to the camera and asked him, 'How much is this worth?' The guest replied, 'Oh, it's priceless!' Without missing a beat the host shot back, 'The sticker on the back says "$50". I could give you ten bucks for it right now and that would be the end of the discussion.' The guest turned a deep shade of red and the show switched to a commercial. The $750 paid for the Batman comic doesn't render it priceless, but it's not pocket change either.

World Chess Hall of Fame and Museum

2011-12-16T15:29:00.000+01:00

Featuring:Susan Barrett, Director;Rex Sinquefield, Sponsor;Charlie Dooley, St.Louis County Executive;Shannon Bailey, Vice President, Exhibitions & Curatorial Affairs;Larry List, Curator, Dr. George and Vivian Dean Collection; andDr. George Dean, Collector ('over 1000 chess sets and chess items from 100 different countries').

World Chess Hall of Fame - Opening Ceremony (5:44) • 'The World Chess Hall of Fame reopened in Saint Louis in September 2011.'

For more info, visitWorldChessHof.org.

Out to Ruin FIDE?

2011-12-15T15:33:00.000+01:00

In yesterday's summary of the recent Executive Board meeting at the 82nd FIDE Congress,2011 FIDE Executive Board : Whither the World Championship?,I mentioned a 'discussion of two lawsuits that have cost FIDE heavily'. The remarks were made during Ilyumzhinov's Report of the President. Here they are as reported in the minutes of the meeting.

Speaking about problems which FIDE is facing, I would like to draw your attention to a law suit, initiated by English Chess Federation and Georgia. I just want to mention that we have a necessity to amend the FIDE Statutes, regarding the place of settling legal disputes -– CAS of Lausanne. When I was in Tbilisi in summer for the opening of the European Women’s Chess Championship and also festivities to celebrate birthdays of two great chess players, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maya Chiburdanidze, I spoke to the President of the Georgian Chess Federation and I asked them why they sued FIDE and during the negotiations I clearly understood that this process has nothing to do with technical or sporting aspect of FIDE’s activities. I was told that I should make an agreement with Kasparov and President of Georgia. This is a pure politically cooked suit, and this has to be solved in another legal institution, and not in Sports arbitration. Mr. Makropoulos will speak in detail about this.

We had a suit against Karpov and Kasparov, in CAS of Lausanne, last September. Kasparov found sponsors in the US, who paid all expenses for this suit. You know that the meeting was also had political background and aims. And we did win the court case, but we all together lost more than 1 million USD. We all make money for chess and in one month we spend for the lawyers this amount of money. This is cash we are talking about, we could have spent this money for chess in schools or our development programmes. Now if England and Georgia do not revoke this suite, we will spend another million in legal expenses, and the 1 million USD which we would receive for chess in schools, but it would be spent for our lawyers in Lausanne.

The first lawsuit mentioned in that excerpt, the one initiated by the ECF and the country of Georgia, was chronologically the second. Since there is no explanation of what the lawsuit involves, let's turn to the Streatham & Brixton blog for a summary:Independent and accountable.

The case revolves around the appointment of extra FIDE Vice-Presidents, which, it is alleged, is unconstitutional.•It is being paid for by Garry Kasparov - or so it is suggested, and at any rate will not, it is claimed, cost (or risk) the ECF a penny •Kasparov (or whoever it may be) is not able to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne because the complainant needs to be a federation affiliated to FIDE, and hence, presumably via Nigel Short and/or CJ de Mooi, it's been agreed that the ECF should do it.

The second lawsuit mentioned, stemming from Karpov's 2010 bid for the FIDE presidency, was discussed later in the minutes of the Executive Board, during the Financial report.

Mr. Freeman [FIDE Treasurer] said [...] You can see that in the last year accounts that FIDE made a very small loss and that is despite us having legal fees more than was expected. When he did the budget he was not sure regarding the Khanty-Mansiysk Olympiad, and he did not budget for all the income, and legal fees were very high.

You all know what this court case was about – five federations together with Karpov2010 campaign sued FIDE that we illegally accepted nominations for Kirsan’s ticket. The CAS first of all decided that Karpov2010 is not an entity to join so the suit was brought by the five federations and result was that the only ticket that had an illegal nomination was from one of the federations who was suing us. That does not help. We are attempting to try and recoup the costs. 65% of the CAS costs were awarded to us and small extra sum on top of that, but none of our legal costs. This case is in the CAS at present and we are waiting to see the outcome.

You will be glad to hear that the view of the five federations is that they themselves cannot afford to pay but that FIDE is a big organisation which is rich and can raise the amount by putting a levy on all FIDE federations to pay the cost. In this case they seem to be trying to get the Greeks to pay for the Germans! We do not know if we will get some of the money back until the case is finished. The amount of nearly one million USD was spent on lawyers. We hope that expenses in respect of the second case will not reach this level. And you will see in the budget for 2012, which is ready and will be brought in later, that contingency for legal fees is included. We hope that Kasparov will stop continuously to sue us, but we cannot judge this in advance.

The CAS decision is recorded in a September 2010 document on Chessvibes.com,ARBITRAL AWARD delivered by COURT OF ARBITRATION FOR SPORT [PDF],and names the five federations: 'national chess federations of France, Germany, Switzerland, the Ukraine and the United States'.The cost of the lawsuits is recorded in an annex distributed as part of the minutes. Legal Costs of EUR 900,321 in 2010 (vs. EUR 83,711 in 2009) was the largest item in Total Expenses of EUR 2,249,975 in 2010 (EUR 1,462,544 in 2009). A Euro (EUR) is currently worth about USD 1.30.Continuing with the minutes:-

Mr. Yazici [Vice President] thanked Mr. Freeman for efforts to balance the account under the situation. He said that we have applied for recovery of costs, but asked whether there is a plan B against these federations who sued us as this money would have been used for the benefit of chess.

Mr. Freeman said we should wait and see the outcome in the CAS and then it is up to FIDE to decide if we wish to take any further action.

Mr. Hamers [Zone 1.1 President] asked Mr. Freeman about the legal fees and said that in the Verification Commission we talked about this. We see an enormous amount of money without specification. He said former legal cases were much less. We asked for specifications and justification of expenses. Verification Commission will look into this after the Congress. It is difficult to make a judgement as we do not know the details.

Mr. Freeman said that as he had said in Verification Commission the White and Case were acting very aggressively and that the CAS has never seen so much documentation. White and Case were flooding the CAS with documentation and the trouble is that CAS is arbitration court for sports and it is not like a court in any country, they are not used to this type of behaviour. We have professional Swiss lawyers, they are good, they had to take time, and there were also lawyers from other countries. This also damages FIDE professionally as well considering the time spent by FIDE staff on this. This is why we should consider the amount of hours spent on the case. Mr. Boxall knows the figure and he will require the additional info, he will receive it, and the bills were inflated by White and Case’s assertions that had to be responded to and not by FIDE. I understand that Karpov2010 guaranteed the federations concerned that they would not suffer. Now it is said that they cannot affordthe guaranteed costs. It is easy for FIDE to claim its money from its federations, this is what they are saying. He advised Mr. Hamers to speak to the suing federations, so the question should be to them, not to FIDE. We presume that they were discussing the subject with White and Case on a regular basis.

[...]

Mr. Makropoulos [Deputy President] proposed to publish this on the website. He said Mr. Hamers is right to raise such concerns as FIDE won the case. He said FIDE should stop asking expenses from these federations, but some of the federations do not learn their lessons, but then we will win again and maybe this is the only solution. he was informed that Mr. Kapustin said that FIDE should reserve more money in the budget as bigger legal cases are coming. He said he had personal discussions with the only person who is really worried, which is Mr. Azmaiparashvili. The others do not worry at all about the amount of money spent.

Mr. Gelfer [Vice President] said he has been talking about this in the last 5 years insisting that we should change the system and predicting that we will win cases and lose money. Not only that this can be left on the air, we mean here 50% of the FIDE budget. He thinks that we have very good and honest lawyers but still that if we think like a businessman, it is an enormous amount. Kasparov is planning some more law cases, what we can do, we are planning to change the Statutes that such cases should go to civil system where we have a prospect of not spending so much. CAS has a different approach, and they do not know that we have no money to spend on court cases. We will never get money back from CAS.

The discussion moved to the newer lawsuit.

Mr. Azmaiparashvili [Vice President] said that thank you Mr. Makropoulos mentioned me and this is true that many people are worrying that FIDE is spending huge amount of money on court cases which can be used in proper way to develop chess. But what I want to say and I am talking about the current court case, right now with FIDE, where English and Georgian Federations are in the court. I am saying that 14 federations approximately sent to FIDE letters asking FIDE to correct the mistake and to defend the statutes and nobody was planning to go to the court and force FIDE to spend money, but unfortunately FIDE did not react and did not correct their mistake and my federation felt insulted, but if FIDE any day is ready to correct the mistake, then we intend not to spend so much money for the lawyer. I was sorry that Mr. President mentioned the discussion with Mr. Giorgadze, I was not present and I have no information about this discussion and the President of my country is mentioned. And we have an independent country, democratic country, and the President is not involved in our federation’s politics.

Mr. Makropoulos said that there was a letter from Silvio [Danailov; Continental President for Europe], but there are no signatures or no stamps from other federations. But we saw that two federations go against us. The main point is that let’s say FIDE wins the case, that what we should correct the mistakes. You were also nominated as one of the Vice Presidents outside of the Statutes, and always General Assembly makes a decision, and it is a respected decision. And this is practice for 30 years. So the question is if we win and we spend the half of million and should we recover the costs from these two federations or not. This is a risk and this is what everyone is worried about.

Mr. Yazici said that in any democracy suing is the right of any member. I cannot understand why one is trying to defend oneself more than necessary. But when we come to the point of Mr. Azmaiparashvili, I did not know that FIDE received such a proposal. If Georgia and England are ready to withdraw the suit case, I am ready to resign on the spot. We do not care for the titles. Maybe there are some who can resign but then the two federations have to cover all

The FIDE President gave a historical recourse to the relations between Kasparov and FIDE, and between Kasparov and himself. He said that unfortunately the main aim of Mr. Kasparov is to ruin FIDE, not help FIDE.

[...]

Mr. Danailov said with all my respect to the speech of K. Ilyumzhinov, he said not only he but many other people share a lot of negative opinion of Mr. Kasparov, but he wants to share his personal experience, but he is not here to defend Mr. Kasparov. He said that Mr. Kasparov joined ECU and helped them a lot, they created a special Chess in Schools project, they invested 100,000 euro to this Commission, we met all together two officials in UNESCO. He thanked Mr. Tornaritis for arranging the meeting. And recently there was an important presentation before MPs in European Parliament. He is grateful for the support of Mr. Kasparov. He said we have to appreciate this. And this was done by Mr. Kasparov for free. I think that for FIDE instead of making war, we should find some ways to use his name as he can be very useful for the world of chess.

This was followed by a discussion on a possible settlement: 'if two Vice Presidents resign, then the case will be dropped'.

Mr. Al Hitmi [Honorary Vice President] said why FIDE is at defensive side. I know at the democratic organisation, General Assembly has a final power to nominate any number of Vice Presidents, this is the choice of the people. I suggest that I will do it by myself. FIDE should sue these people and ask for paying for damaging our reputation. I will do it myself in my capacity as Vice President. We should teach them if they do not honour our General Assembly.

Is Kasparov behind the English / Georgian suit or not? If he is, it makes me wonder if this was his real reason for supporting Karpov's bid for the FIDE Presidency last year. Whether Karpov won or not, there was bound to be material for a potential lawsuit against FIDE. Or two lawsuits.

What's What in Endgames

2011-12-13T15:15:00.000+01:00

Continuing with A Brief History of Endgame Theory,where I reproduced the preface to Averbakh's 'Comprehensive Chess Endings' (CCE), an advantage in having this work in digital format (seeAverbakh's Convektafor details) is being able to analyze the critical points of endgame research. For example, the following table shows the number of positions in CCE with a certain number of pieces.

4- :    412
5   : 1404
6   : 1020
7   :   487
8   :   222
9+ :   599

In other words, CCE has 412 positions with four pieces or less, 1404 with exactly five pieces, and 599 with nine pieces or more. As I mentioned in the Convekta post, CCE has 'over 4100 examples in total', while the number of positions in the table totals over 4400. Why the difference? The reason is that many CCE examples consist of a key, numbered diagram to illustrate a main theme. These are followed by text descriptions that shift a piece, perhaps the Black King, to different squares in order to illustrate variations on the main theme. In the book, only the numbered diagram is counted as a position, while in the digital file each shifted position is also counted once.

When the Convekta version of CCE was released, tablebases covered five-piece endgames. A few years later the first six-piece tablebase became available, and a seven-piece version is in the works today.GM Pal Benko's column 'Endgame Lab' in the December 2011 issue of Chess Life had this to say (p.48).

Progress with the Seven-Piece Database : The six-piece endgame database, a marvel in its own right, is now in danger of being overtaken exponentially by the arrival of a seven-piece database.

This month I am providing a short review of recent endgame database progress. The remarkable six-man database, now in the public domain (available at www.k4it.de), has even shown a record 243-move win. The team of Americans Mark Bourzutschky and Russian Yakov Konoval have worked together to aim for even higher peaks. As early as 2006, among other interesting records, they reported an unbelievable 517(!)-move win in a King, Queen, Knight versus King, Rook, Bishop, and Knight seven-man endgame. But these are positions without Pawns -- very rare in real games.

Their newest article (in EG 2011) presents piece and Pawn endgames too. Much more challenging for optimal play because of possible Pawn promotions and en passant moves, these endings are much more useful for practical players. Bourzutschky and Konoval gladly answered me and provided some analysis for Chess Life readers.

[...]

I asked them about their future plans. "We are not sure whether we even want to generate all the seven-man endgames, because many will not be interesting but still take up a lot of space. Better analysis of the databases generated so far, and moving to interesting eight-man endgames may be more relevant."

While I don't agree that the six-piece tablebase is 'in danger' of anything, the backend of chess is in danger of losing its mystery. But what can you do? That's progress. Over 60% of the CCE positions are already subject to exact solution and their numbers will increase in a few years.

Chess for Free, Chess for Fun

2011-12-12T14:26:00.000+01:00

Next on the list forBeen There, Done ThatisChess for Free,which I added to my page onChess for Fun.The references are somewhat dated, but the ideas aren't, and it would be a good candidate for a complete rewrite.

1824 Edinburgh - London

2011-12-09T14:04:00.001+01:00

4-year chess© Flickr user piglicker underCreative Commons.

Won by the
Edinburgh Chess Club
from the
London Chess Club
in the
Match at Chess
Begun 23 April 1824,
Ended 31 July 1828.

For an account of the match by the Edinburgh Chess Club, seeEdinburgh - London Correspondence Chess Match.To play through the games, see1824 Edinburgh Chess Club vs London Chess Clubon Chessgames.com.

Ask Kasparov

2011-12-08T17:21:00.001+01:00

A couple of months ago, the Internet Chess Club (ICC) invited chess fans to ask Kasparov questions via itsFacebook page.

Ask Kasparov - the verdict is in!We asked for questions for us to put to Garry Kasparov, and ICC was overwhelmed by your response! There was many interesting questions to be asked of the former world champion - so many that we decided we would extend the winners to 9 instead of 5. Later in the week, we will publish Kasparov's answers, but for now, find below a list of the winner's and their question.

You can find the questions on another ICC Facebook page,Album: Wall Photos.The interview took place just after a blitz match between Kasparov and Short during the 2011 edition of Your Next Movein Belgium.I don't think the interview was ever transcribed to print, but a video recording is available on the ICC at 25:30 intoICC ChessFM presents GM Alexei Yermolinsky's Game Of the Day - Kasparov - Short Match.The recording is at times hard to follow because of background noise, but it is classic Kasparov. Here are some of the highlights, abridged and paraphrased.

Q: Any plans to come out of retirement?A: No.•Q: Current goals?A: Introducing chess in educational systems around the world.

Q: Best game you played and lost? A: Game 18, 1986 London/Leningrad match with Karpov, spoiled by three blunders just before time control.•Q: Best game played very well?A: Games 24 & 16 in 1985 match with Karpov; 1999 game with Topalov; 1983 game with Portisch; mentions new book 'Garry Kasparov's Chess Career'. •Q: Most memorable tournament?A: Linares 1992 & 1993, Wijk aan Zee 1999.

Q: How to improve the image of chess?A: Just tell the facts: played all over the world, used as an educational tool, used for advertising purposes, used in movies. Don't do it like FIDE leadership, e.g. through association with aliens.

Q: Impact of chess software?A: Players have more and more of a geometrical mentality; look at positions the way computers do. People rely too much on engines; 'most players are following computer lines'. Vast amount of information available now.

Q: Will new time format for the championships or chess960 or advanced chess concepts help to promote the image of chess?A: 'I think we could definitely experiment within the same rules. The devastating thing is just trying to change the basic rules, like changing the moves or trying to change the game outcome, like eliminating draws.'

Q: How will Internet affect clubs? A: 'Physical contact is still very important.' Comes back to the teaching aspect.

Q: What is the right method of teaching chess to 4-6 years old children? A: 'I'm a chess player, not a professional teacher.' Talks about linking chess to the cultural icons that attract young children.

Q: Still active in Russian politics?A: Yes.

I'll cover Kasparov's comments on chess960 on my blog for that subject (see the sidebar).

A Brief History of Endgame Theory

2011-12-06T17:18:00.001+01:00

Continuing with Averbakh's Convekta,Averbakh's 'Preface to the First Edition' on the DVD presents a short history of endgame theory.

Out of the vast amount of literature on chess, the number of works devoted to the endgame is relatively small.The point is that the development of endgame theory has taken a rather different path to that of the opening and the middlegame.The reason for this is rooted in the very history of modern chess.

The origin of chess theory dates from the 16th and 17th centuries,' when the predominant style was that of the Italian School, typified by sharp gambit openings and swift attacks on the king.Often a game then would simply not reach the endgame, but would conclude in the middlegame, or even the opening, when the enemy king, under a hail of spectacular blows, normally involving sacrifices, would be mated.The endgame was regarded as a tedious, uninteresting phase of the game, so that the playing of it was marked by a lack of inspiration, and elementary mistakes and oversights were committed.

The deeper understanding of chess gradually led to the development of the technique of positional play and defence.It became more difficult to conclude the game in the good old style, and more and more often a game would extend into the endgame.An advantage of one 'worthless' pawn in the endgame often proved decisive, since this pawn would inexorably advance and triumphantly promote to a queen."Pawns are the soul of chess" -- this saying of the celebrated French player of the 18th century Andre Philidor shows in the best way possible the growing role of the pawn.And it is no accident that Philidor, who was the first to formulate the principles of positional play, analyzed a number of endings which have not lost their importance right up to the present time.

The number of theoretical researches on the endgame grew, but it was a long time before any generalizing works, encompassing all types of endings, were to appear.This state of affairs was furthered by another factor.There are different tasks facing researchers into the opening and the endgame.While it will sometimes be impossible (and also unnecessary) to give an exhaustive analysis of some opening system or variation, things are different with regard to the endgame.Here what is often required is a mathematically exact analysis, taking account of all possibilities, without exception, and leading to strictly defined conclusions.While in a game even between two top-class players, who have made a deep study of opening theory and have a mastery of middlegame techniques, the practical or creative element nevertheless predominates, in many endgame positions exact knowledge is of paramount importance.

A generalizing work, devoted entirely to endings, was Berger's book Theorie und Praxis der Endspiele.The first edition appeared in 1890, and the second, which was considerably enlarged, in 1922.This edition is regarded as a classic.A significant role in the creation of endgame theory has also been played by the works of Cheron, Euwe, Fine, Gawlikowski and other analysts.

The first endgame guide in Russian appeared during the Soviet era.This was I. Rabinovich's work Endshpil (first edition 1927, second edition 1938).In 1956 Lisitsin's book Zaklyuchitelnaya chast shakhmatnoy partii ('The concluding part of the chess game') was published.In our country a study of the endgame has been made by a number of top-class players.In the first instance we must give the names of Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Bondarevsky, Kholmov, Krogius, Rauzer, Grigoriev, Kasparian, Kopayev, Chekhover, I. Rabinovich, Sozin, Lisitsin, Khenkin and Dvoryetsky.Each of these has made his contribution to the development of endgame theory.

The history continues in Kotov and Yudovich's Soviet School of Chess, in a section of the chapter titled 'Main Features of the Soviet School'.

THE END-GAME:This was once the Achilles' heel of Soviet masters -- even as late as 1939, when, in a training tournament, Grandmaster Flohr won many encounters from them thanks to his excellent endgame technique.Our players tackled this problem with characteristic Soviet determination and energy. Their studies, which included the entire backlog of endgame analyses, assumed broad scope and revealed subtleties which theoreticians had never noticed before.

An outstanding endgame analyst was N.D.Grigoriev, whose work in this field may weel be called classical. Valuable contributions have been made by Averbakh, Chekhover, Kasparyan, Keres, Khachaturov, Kopayev, Levenfush, Maizelis, Rabinovich, Rabinovich, Romanovsky, and Zek.

The authors go on to mention specific endgame themes:R+fh vs. R; R+2P vs. R+P; B+a vs. a; 2N vs. Ps; Q+P vs. Q; 'the so-called nine squares problem in Rook endgames and the opposition on neighboring files' [MW:?]; B vs. BOC; B vs. N; and R+Ps vs. N+Ps.

A group of endgame theoreticians headed by Averbakh have prepared a sort of encyclopedia of endings which sums up the experience of major tournaments and matches of recent years and presents many original analyses.The endgame investigations by Soviet analysts disclose the essence of positions taken from tournament games or such as are of practical importance. This approach differs fundamentally from that of analyses dealing with variations whose correlation of forces is hardly to be met in practice.

In a subsequent post I'll map Kotov and Yudovich's summaries onto Averbakh's 'encyclopedia of endings'.

Been There, Done That with Gambits

2011-12-05T15:14:00.001+01:00

Moving right along withBeen There, Done That,I added Guide to Chess GambitsPart 1andPart 2to the Advanced Beginner section ofLearn to Play Chess.At the time I wrote the articles, I experimented with gambits on the servers and had nearly a 100% success rate, although my opponents weren't particularly strong players.

Computer Chess History

2011-12-02T14:00:00.001+01:00

Various web pages date this clip, titled 'Endgame: Challenging the Masters', to no later than 2005, but I hadn't seen it before. The end credit is for the Computer History Museum.

Deep Blue beats G. Kasparov 1997 (6:07) • 'Kasparov was the World Chess Champion, the best there was. In 1997, he made history facing IBM's Deep Blue in a chess contest, where the computer won.'

For the full story, seeComputer History Museum - Chess Exhibit:'This on-line exhibition contains documents, images, artifacts, oral histories, moving images and software related to computer chess from 1945 to 1997.'The video, one of three on the subject, is filed under 'Defeating the World Chess Champion : Moving Images'.

DVDs as Cheap as Dirt

2011-12-01T15:07:00.001+01:00

In the past I've remarked that as we approach the Christmas season, the number of Top eBay Chess Items by Priceincreases dramatically, then tapers off as the holiday season comes to an end. It's strange then, that three weeks before Christmas, I would have so few items to choose from. I could only find two auctions -- for items other than chess sets -- that closed during the past fortnight. One was a Capablanca letter that sold 'Best Offer' for US $1500:-

Original signed handwritten letter by World Chess Champion Jose Capablanca. Written March 21st, 1927, on letterhead of the Manhattan Square Hotel, during the New York 1927 Tournament, which was being held there, and while he was World Champion. Capablanca won the tournament comfortably with 14 points, ahead of Alekhine who had 11 1/2.

The other had a title that said, '215 CHESSBASE FRITZ TRAINER DVD CHESS COLLECTION LOT'. It sold 'Best Offer' for US $499.99. In fact, on the previous day the same item also sold 'Best Offer' for US $450.00. It's currently listed again for US $499.99. The description said,

This 215 DVD series is the entire collection of Fritz Trainers that includes openings, middle games, endgames, player careers, topical surveys, strategies, tactics, psychology, all related to the game of chess. This is the ultimate collection that is a must for any die hard serious tournament player. The DVDs require some format of a Chessbase reader such as Chessbase, Fritz, or Rybka. If you don't have any of these there's a free version of Chessbase Light that you can download off the internet that will play these DVDs with full function. This includes a few French and German titles as well. Total there are 202 English titles and 13 French and German titles.

The complete collection comes you onto a brand new Seagate 500GB 2.5" Expansion Portable External Hard Drive with a 1 year warranty included.

So what's going on here? My guess is that digital copies of the DVDs have been downloaded from the web, collected onto the Seagate 500GB HD, and offered to anyone willing to put up $500 for pirate copies of Chessbase software. This is another example of the ubiquitous phenomenon I first noticed a few years ago inChess Torrents.

Given that the Seagate HD currently sells for about $70, the seller is making an easy $400 per auction. I have no idea how much Chessbase pays the GMs featured on the DVDs, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's in that ballpark.You can get more info about the various Fritz Trainer DVD titles on theTrainingpage at Chessbase-shop.com.

Meet Olivia

2011-11-29T15:47:00.000+01:00

Born 26 November 2011

She isAlessia's little sister. My only hope of getting these two girls interested in chess will be to locate aHello Kitty chess set.A Dora set might also work, but I'm afraid she's too outdoorsy to be caught playing board games.

Been There, Done That with the FIDE World Championship 2004

2011-11-28T17:52:00.000+01:00

Today is Monday, which means a little more work onBeen There, Done That.I added two pages about the FIDE World Championship 2004,

Background and
Results,

to my page on Chess History. For a more recent treatment of the event, held in Tripoli, Libya, seeThe Worst World Championship Ever.

Occupy the Center

2011-11-25T10:13:00.001+01:00

We are the 99%.

46.OccupyDC.McPhersonSquare.WDC.8November2011© Flickr user ElvertBarnes underCreative Commons.

The caption explained,

Chess at Occupy DC at McPherson Square Park between K and I and 14th Street and Vermont Avenue, NW, Washington DC on Tuesday afternoon, 8 November 2011 by Elvert Barnes Protest Photography

They are the 1%:USCF Rating Distribution.

Averbakh's Convekta

2011-11-24T16:12:00.001+01:00

After writing the post onAverbakh's Endings,I became curious about the digital version of 'Comprehensive Chess Endings' (referred to below as CCE). Originally published by Convekta, there's a product page on their site titledComprehensive Chess Endings.

FOREWORD by Yury L. Averbakh: The first English edition of Comprehensive Chess Endings was published almost twenty years ago. Much water has flowed under the bridges since that time; swift computerization has caused many changes in all realms of human life. Chess is no exception. The computer program has already defeated the world champion, and there exists a stage of the game where the computer is infallible. That stage is the endgame with few pieces left on the board.

The new time control has led to a drastic acceleration of play taking away both adjournments and resumptions into the past. If one could previously adjourn a game and analyze a certain position calmly, now everything is to be done right at the board and in a short time. This makes a good fundamental knowledge of basic endgames all the more important.

The main objective of this new edition is to unite the experience accumulated by many generations of chess players with the latest computer technologies. So no wonder that it is not released as a printed book but as a software product, prepared in co-operation with the famous chess software company Convekta.

I managed to procure a copy of the software, installed it on my laptop, and was disappointed to discover that it wouldn't execute. That same product page mentions that the software is compatible with Convekta's 'Chess Assistant Light', a product that I also have, although I haven't used it much. Sure enough, it worked without a hitch and even allowed me to extract the CCE data into an external PGN file. The PGN text format is useful for loading header data (event, players, etc.) into standard database software for further analysis.

For example, Averbakh claims that CCE includes 'over 4100 examples in total'. More specifically, I counted over 2100 studies and over 750 games. The other examples are mainly the sort of fundamental theoretical positions covered in all instructional endgame texts along with a generous number of schematic explanations. Of the studies, nearly 300 were composed by Averbakh himself, with over 200 by V.Khenkin and somewhat less than 200 by N.D.Grigoriev.

Of the games, Averbakh was one of the players in almost 50 of them, with nearly 30 each by Alekhine, Keres, Botvinnik, and Smyslov. Capablanca and Rubinstein break the dominance of the Soviet School with 20 and 19 games respectively.

Along with the digital version of Averbakh's texts, the software includes almost 3000 complete games (the 'Examples' database) illustrating various endgame themes in practice.The Convekta manual (see the GoogleHTML version)mentions a limitation here:-

If you have Chess Assistant installed on your computer, you can load the Averbakh and Examples databases, as well as the classifier, and operate them in all CA modes. In this case, however, you will be unable to use a unique feature of Comprehensive Chess Endings, which is not available in Chess Assistant. This is jumping to referenced games, described in Section 3.4 View Mode.

Maybe I'll eventually figure out why the CCE software won't run on my laptop. In the meantime I have a powerful tool for further exploration of endgame themes.

Morphy, Loewenthal, Young Man, and Lady

2011-11-22T16:21:00.001+01:00

Here's a little mystery that I haven't been able to solve. The image on the top is a well known photo of Paul Morphy playing Johann Loewenthal (1810-1876). I've seen it several times on eBay, the last time with the description

Here's a copy from an 1860's stereoview of a young man and older gent, perhaps his father playing a game of chess. Note that this is a high quality pair of photos created from the original 1860's stereoview and affixed to a period mount.

The image on the bottom, which I've also seen before, was offered on eBay by the same seller at the same time. Its description said,

Here's a copy from an 1860's stereoview of a young man and his lady playing a game of chess.

plus the same note about being 'created from the original', etc.

Looking at the images separately, I had never noticed the similarity, but, viewed side-by-side, it's obvious that they were taken using the same setting. Although the angle of the camera (or whatever they used in the 1860s) is slightly different, the chess table is the same and the urn-shape behind the heads of the players sitting to the right is the same object.

Are the 'young man and his lady' related to or somehow connected to Morphy (or maybe to Loewenthal)? If so, how exactly?

Been There, Done That with TWIC

2011-11-21T10:37:00.001+01:00

After I discovered that the next article to be converted on Been There, Done That,namelyImprove Your Chess Game,was already onHow To Improve at Chess,I could have had a day free of blogging. Instead, I addedTWIC 500!to my page onChess History.The TWIC article, which relied already in 2004 on both Archive.org and the Google groups archives, presented a special challenge since the article to be converted was also in Archive.org. After resolving the double archive references, I managed to find all of the original material.

At the time of writing this post, the current edition of TWIC is no.888, meaning that in 112 issues -- about two years and two months -- Mark Crowther will be producing TWIC 1000. Will he reach that milestone? I certainly wouldn't bet against it.

The National Sport of Azerbaijan

2011-11-18T13:00:00.001+01:00

I stopped watching CNN last year when it seemed like they were broadcasting more and more features at the expense of less and less news. The following segment on chess is a good example of one of their features.

Chess: The national sport of Azerbaijan (2:25) • 'The young in Azerbaijan are obsessed with chess. CNN's Jim Boulden reports from the capital of Baku.'

For an introduction to the entire show, seeCNN International - Eye on Azerbaijan.A few years ago, Azerbaijan ran a series of ads on tourism, one of them highlighting chess:Azerbaijan - Leyla Aliyeva.I believe the lovely Leyla Aliyeva is the daughter of Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan.

Real Olympiad Gold

2011-11-17T10:49:00.001+01:00

In this series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price,I've already featured an Olympiad souvenir in1924 Olympiad Gold (sort of)and a gold coin souvenir inGold for Fischer - Spassky. Pictured below is an Olympiad gold coin souvenir which was titled 'Slovenia: 20.000 tolar 2002 PROOF UNC GOLD Chess Olimpics Horse RARE 500 MINTAGE'. It sold for $1800, 'Best Offer'.

The accompanying certificate of authority said,

On the occasion of the 35th Chess Olympiad Bled, Slovenia 2002, the Republic of Slovenia herby issues a gold coin associated with the event (Official Gazette of the RS, no.53/02).Specifications:Denomination 20,000 Tolars.Alloy: 900/1000 gold.Weight: 7 grams.Diameter: 24 millimetres.•BANK OF SLOVENIA

The item's description added,

Full PROOF Uncirculated Coin, DEEP cameo and mirror like fields. Issued to commemorate 35th Chess Olympics held in Bled, Slovenia. On obverse there is a celtic horse and it's mirror look in the lake, reverse chess board and chess figures. MEGA RARE PIECE, mintage ONLY 500 PIECES!

and provided a web address --More on coin-- where we learn that a silver coin with a face value of 2,500 Tolars was also issued.

Averbakh's Endings

2011-11-15T16:21:00.001+01:00

Along with Levenfish and Smyslov's Rook Endings, last seen inThe Bridge, the Diversion, and the Best Defense,one of my favorite endgame references is the multi-voume set by Averbakh, last seen in More R+P vs. B+P Magic.I've encountered several different versions of Averbakh's work, and before referring to it in any more posts, I decided it would be a good idea to catalog the various publications.Here are the sets I know of:-

The original work was published in Russian in the 1950s; I'll call this (A).
Batsford published a translation in the 1970s; (B).
A second Russian edition was published at the beginning of the 1980s; (C).
Pergamon published another translation in the mid-1980s; (D).

Wikipedia, inChess endgame literature,mentions (A), (B), and (D).

Yuri Averbakh published a monumental set of books in Russian in 1956. The works were first published in English as several individual books [list of eight books]and later collected into the five-volume Comprehensive Chess Endings. It was also published in other languages (Golombek 1977). Bobby Fischer had these books sent to him during his World Championship match (Averbakh & Chekover 1977).

Comprehensive Chess Endings, by Yuri Averbakh, et al., 1983. In five volumes. A pretty detailed, advanced, and comprehensive look at various endings. intended for players with a rating of roughly 1880 or higher. Published by Pergamon Press. The work originally appeared as a series of smaller books (e.g. Bishop Endings, Knight Endings, etc.). Out of print in book form, but available on computer CD-ROM. [list of five books]

Three separate volumes made up the first Russian edition (A). I have the second edition (C) and there are five volumes -- B/N vs. same piece, R/B/N vs. different piece, Q, P, and R -- published in that order, one per year starting in 1980.The Pergamon edition (D) followed the same order and schedule, starting in 1983.

As for the Batsford edition (B), Wikipedia listed eight volumes, which I've determined were published in the following order -- P, Q&P, B vs. N, B, N, R vs. B/N, Q vs. R/B/N -- starting in 1974. Wikipedia also mentioned a volume on Rooks alone, but it must be less common than the other seven volumes, because I was unable to locate any info on it while preparing this post. Even the image on the left, from a recent eBay auction, shows only seven Averbakh volumes plus the Levenfish and Smyslov book on Rook endings.

As for the digital version of Comprehensive Chess Endings, the FOREWORD by Yuri L. Averbakh mentions,

Acknowledgements:First of all I would like to remark that the first three-volume edition of Shakhmatnye Okonchaniya, published in 1956-1962, was prepared with the assistance of the Soviet masters N.Kopayev, V.Chekhover, V.Khenkin and the famous endgame theorist I.Maizelis. The first English edition, published in 1983-1987 by Pergamon Press, was based on the second Russian edition, and was translated by Kenneth P. Neat. The latter was published in 1982-1986 by "Fizkultura i sport".

Will there be future hardcopy editions of Averbakh's monumental work? I doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see another digital edition.

***

Later:In that last quote, it's curious that Averbakh mentions, 'the first English edition, published in 1983-1987 by Pergamon Press'. I would have guessed that the Batsford edition was the first in English.

Been There, Done That with Ratings

2011-11-14T14:59:00.001+01:00

Moving along slowly but steadily withBeen There, Done That,I addedFIDE Top-10 Players (1975-2004)to my page onChess History. The year 2004 seems like ages ago and while it might be interesting to bring the page up to date through 2011 (or 2012 in a few months), there are other fish to fry.

Ripollés, Not Picasso

2011-11-11T13:36:00.001+01:00

Place:IVAM(Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno)•Artist:Juan García Ripollés•More:Juan Ripollésfrom Google Images.

Picasso chess© Flickr user boolker underCreative Commons.

There's a post about the set on susanpolgar.blogspot.com --Biggest Chess of Murano in the World-- although the text reads like a machine translation, probably from the Spanish.

Signing Up for Stuff

2011-11-10T17:07:00.000+01:00

A few months ago, in a post titled Spraggett on Smirnov,I wondered about some obvious differences in opinion between those two GMs, one a former World Championship candidate, the other a purveyor of chess courses using online marketing. Curious about the chess courses, I followed the link from the video that was the source of the disagreement, found Smirnov's home page at Chess-Teacher.com,and signed up for the 'FREE video course'.

Since then, I've received about 15 email messages from GM Smirnov. The first few were about the promised free video course, the rest were a mixture of links to new videos and promotions for the not-so-free courses, e.g. 'The Grandmaster's Opening Laboratory'.While I'm not willing to sign up for any of the not-so-free courses, the free videos I watched were all of a reasonable quality, comparable to the one that first caught my attention.Smirnov knows what he's talking about and although his English is far from perfect, it's good enough to get his points across.

One problem I had while working on this post was to understand exactly what was being offered and by whom. Emails link to pages that link to other pages that offer discounts on products that don't seem relevant to the original email.The original video that got my attention appears to be part of an affiliate program.Would I run those affiliate links on this blog or on my own site? No, not yet, but I'll keep it in mind.

***

As I once explained in a post titledApples to Apples,I use Google AdSense as a cheap source of statistics. Lately I've been seeing a proliferation of ads on my pages like this:-

Hottest Brazilian Girls
Connect with 100s Brazil Beauties Find your Perfect Match & be happy!
[domain name]

Are these services legitimate? To find out, I signed up for membership on three of these sites. I know, it's a thankless job, but someone has to do it (and, no, I didn't tell my wife). I never heard again from one of the services, while the other two were obviously part of a network of related sites, probably run by the same promoter.

For those two sites I was immediately bombarded by several email messages every day. The emails were links to the sites where I could read messages from the 'ladies', send them virtual gifts, etc. etc. Of course, none of this was free. I was expected to buy credits that could be tapped for each message I read or each gift I sent. After a few weeks, I got tired of these emails and tried to remove my pseudonym from the sites. The unsubscribe options led to dead ends -- one of them was a captcha that displayed no garbled text to copy -- so I was eventually forced to enter a bogus email address that wouldn't come anywhere near me.

Google AdSense has a function to 'Allow & Block Ads' and lists these sites, collectively known as 'Dating' sites, under 'Sensitive Categories' along with 'Cosmetic Procedures & Body Modification' and 'Ringtones & Downloadables'. Should I turn them off? No, not yet, but I'll keep it in mind.

The Bridge, the Diversion, and the Best Defense

2011-11-08T17:46:00.000+01:00

One of the quirks of blogging is that you don't have to follow an idea from start to finish, in chronological order, whether as writer or reader. Earlier this year I started a series onLevenfish's Rook Endings, the well known endgame book by Levenfish and Smyslov. After a few related posts using tablebases I dropped the topic to move onto other subjects, but recently returned to it for a deeper insight into a couple of Rook & Pawn endings I'm currently playing.

At the end of that initial post I listed the general conclusions from the last chapter of Rook Endings and am just now starting to appreciate how helpful they can be in a practical context. One of the conclusions, however, baffled me...

11. With two disconnected Pawns against one passed Pawn important roles are played by the bridge and diversion.

...because I didn't take the time to study the text of the book:-

In no.11, I'm not sure what is meant by 'bridge and diversion', so I'll come back to this and other points in a future post.

Ten months later, I'm coming back to it. As you would expect, both terms are illustrated in the position accompanying that 11th point.

Levenfish & Smyslov no.314
After 2.e6-e7

The 'bridge' is illustrated in the continuation: 2...Re6 3.Rf7 (bridge) 3...Kb4 4.g4 a3 5.Rf4+ Kb5 6.Rf3 a2 7.Ra3. White uses his own Rook to shield his King from checks by the opponent's Rook. The maneuver is best known in the 'Lucena position', a technical procedure for winning with Rook & Pawn vs. Rook.

The 'diversion' is illustrated in the continuation 2...Rf6+ 3.Ke3 Re6+ 4.Kd3 Rd6+ 5.Kc3 Re6 6.Rg5+ Kb6 7.Rg6 (diversion). White's Rook pins the opponent's Rook against its King, eliminating the attack on the White Pawn and allowing it to promote.

Black avoids both of these attacks by playing 2...Rc8! 3.Rg5+ Kb4 4.Re5 Re8 5.g4 a3. When behind in material, a passed Pawn rushing to promote is the weak side's best defense in Rook endgames. I don't know if this concept also has a term to describe it, but it should.

***

Later:This post appeared inHappy Birthday, Carnival!,the last of the blog carnivals organized by Confessions of a Chess Novice [chessconfessions.blogspot.com].

Been There, Done That with Steinitz

2011-11-07T11:36:00.000+01:00

Continuing withBeen There, Done That,I addedSteinitz on the 'Relative Value of the Pieces'to the 'Advanced Beginner' section of Learn to Play Chess.That Steinitz page is an introduction to a much longer excerpt from Steinitz's Modern Chess Instructor :Relative Value of Pieces and Principles of Play.

Life's Too Short for Chess

2011-11-04T14:09:00.000+01:00

Here's another candidate for the 'Not Everyone Likes Chess' department (*):-

Chess is a quite repulsive game. ♪
Fills me with such frustration. ♪
And in the end my patience runs out. ♪

Life's too short for chess. ♪
Cold and calculating, such a boring mating. ♪
So give me a game of chance and there's romance.

That's Life! N°10 Stephanie De-Sykes (2:58) • 'That's Life! (1974) "World Chess Championship"'

Near the end, I don't get it at all:-

Some girls try to stay cool and play it by the rulebook. ♪
They just wind up in the end a talemate, stalemate.

Or maybe it's 'a tail made, stale maid'. ♫ La di da di da... ♫

***

(*) Last seen inNot Everyone Likes Chess.

Chess Art? Amen!

2011-11-03T15:48:00.000+01:00

In the previous edition of Top eBay Chess Items by Price,I featured aBarleycorn Chess Setand mentioned,

The set received 41 bids from 15 bidders, and the winning bid was GBP 2527.00 ('approximately US $4000.49' according to eBay). In the year and a half that I've been tracking Top eBay Chess Items by Price, I don't recall another chess set selling for so much.

By some sort of a blogger's application of Murphy's Law, along the lines of 'An unequivocal statement in writing is always proven wrong', I could have featured a 'Pulpit set' in this post. The very attractive set ('could have been made by a French prisoner of war') received 15 bids from six bidders and sold for GBP 6,100.00 (approximately US $9,742.92). That's more than double the barleycorn set. Featuring the pulpit set would have meant three chess sets in a row -- the first was Tweezer Chess-- so I chose instead an item from my favorite category, chess art.

The painting shown below, titled 'Original Irving Amen Large Oil on Canvas Pensive Girl', sold for US $1697. The auction didn't have any bidding information, so I guess it went to the best offer.

The description said

Title: Next Move (untitled on canvass)•Date: 1970s•Medium: oil on canvas•Dimension: image (76 x 101 cm or 30 x 40 inch), frame (84 x 109 cm or 33 x 43 inch)•Credit: Irving Amen (original artist)•Special Attributes: artist signed (bottom right corner)

This original painting was done by Irving Amen (1917 ---, an influential and well-respected American artist and printmaker) around 1970s. Amen was particularly known for his distinctive artworks via woodcut, etching, lithograph, and many other media depicting various human subjects/activities in the 40s - 70s. Very prolific and active even in the late 1990s, his artworks are widely collected by individuals and institutions in the United States.

Popular Amen subjects are girl or young woman in pensive mood, music activities, and chess scenes. Highly decorative yet sensitively treated, the current painting had combined all these elements together and depicted a young woman contemplating her next move (in chess or life) with a balalaika or a book as her opponent (she might have made a wrong move as she was touching the pawn, hence, forgoing the opportunity of a draw, though the board and chessmen depicted were irregular as usual). A rare and original Amen item indeed.

For more of Amen, see Google Imageschess Irving Amen.

No Nose for Navigation

2011-11-01T13:08:00.000+01:00

At the same time I looked at Chessnc.com in my postNo Nose for FIDE News,I took screenshots of three of my favorite chess news sites with the same software used for the images inThe Longest Sidebar.I did this because, unlike my other favorite news sites TWIC & Chessbase, all three of these sites have new designs (Whychess is completely new since some time before this past summer), that I really don't like very much.The screenshots are shown below, side by side.

Chessdom.com	Chessvibes.com	Whychess.org

The two sites that have been with us for a few years both announced redesigns within a few of weeks of each other.

The new Chessdom is here! [22 August 2011]
ChessVibes redesign [7 September 2011]

As for Whychess, Google digs up a few odd posts from April & May,

Why is there no sex in chess? [April 18, 2011]
1st World Chess Beauty Contest [May 17, 2011]

but the floodgates opened some time in June.

I congratulate everybody on launching a website WhyChess.org! Starting from this week we’re going to record regularly the best novelties of the week at the same time remembering not very successful ones.•Top-10 Theoretical Novelties. TWIC 867[18 June 2011; author unknown]

So why don't I like the designs of these sites? Because I don't know how to navigate them efficiently. I'm the type of person who reads a newspaper (remember those?) from front to back.

It's well known that most people scan a newspaper the same way they read -- for English that's top to bottom, left to right -- which is why newspaper layouts have the most important story in the upper left corner of the page. I start on the front page, scan the headlines, then start reading the stories that interest me most. Then I turn to the second page, using the same technique, third page, etc., stopping for a bit longer on the editorial page, the finance page, the sports page, and the comics.On these chess news pages, I haven't yet found a comfortable way to read them. I didn't have this problem with the old layouts of Chessdom and ChessVibes, and I'm really not sure why it changed with the redesigns.

One problem might be the column sizes that change arbitrarily. The Chessdom page starts with two columns (plus a column for the ads; I have no problem with that) then shifts to four columns, where the four columns vary in size. Looking at the page as a whole, like I've captured it in the image, it seems obvious where to jump to the top of the next column, but when I'm scrolling down a screen at a time (the Chessdom page is about four screens long on my laptop), I don't have that complete overview to guide me.On top of that, I often find that the same story is linked multiple times from the same page. Can you imagine a newspaper doing that -- 'Please turn to page two for the full story' -- printed in different places on the front page for the same story?I find it all very disconcerting.

Maybe the problem will disappear as I use these sites more, but it's already been a few months and I just can't shake the feeling that I'm not getting as much from these sites as I should.

The ABCs of English Speaking Champions

2011-10-31T15:36:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I added U.S. Champions(aka American Champions) and theU.S. Championships (Closed/Invitational)to my page onChess History.Now I've addedBritish and Canadian Champions,plus the British ChampionshipsandCanadian Championships.

Some time after I first created those pages, similar lists were added to Wikipedia:British Chess ChampionshipandCanadian Chess Championship.The index of all national championships on Wikipedia is atChess national championships.

The Story of Marostica

2011-10-28T14:08:00.000+02:00

Poster displaying the biannual human chess match in Marostica© Flickr user Alaskan Dude underCreative Commons.

From Wikipedia'sMarostica:

After the Second World War, the comedy writer Vucetich Mirko authored a play in which "Two noblemen, Renaldo D'Anganaro and Vieri da Vallanora, fell in love with the beautiful Lionora, daughter of the local lord, Taddeo Parisio. As was the custom at that time, they challenged each other to a duel to win the hand of Lionora. The Lord of Marostega, not wanting to make an enemy of either suitor or lose them in a duel, forbade the encounter. Instead he decreed that the two rivals would play a chess game, and the winner would have the hand of Lionora.

"The loser of the chess game would also join the family, through marrying her younger sister, Oldrada. During the play the game takes place on the square in front of the Lower Castle with supporters carrying the noble ensigns of Whites and Blacks, in the presence of the Lord, his noble daughter, the Lords of Angarano and Vallonara, the court and the entire town population. The Lord also decides the challenge would be honoured by an exhibition of armed men, foot-soldiers and knights, with fireworks and dances and music".

More images:'chess Marostica'

82nd FIDE Congress

2011-10-27T17:29:00.000+02:00

The 82nd FIDE Congress, which I mentioned inNo Nose for FIDE News,is over and while it might be a few months before we see an official report from FIDE, there are unofficial reports available from several sources. A glance at the agenda --Executive Board 2011 Agenda and Annexes(7 September 2011) -- reveals dozens of topics ranging from the Commission on Modernisation to bids for future FIDE events like the annual World Youth Championship.

The Congress had its own website,82nd Fide Congress, 15-22 Oct 2011, Krakow(fidecongress2011.pl).There I was particularly pleased to find a page on the History of FIDE Congresses,including a list of FIDE Congresses 1924-2011 (PDF),which I once constructed myself as support for my zonal project (seePosts with label Zonalson my World Chess Championship blog.

The U.S. sent a large contingent, all of whom reported on the USCF's own site. In chronological order:-

Bill Hall on the FIDE Congress in Poland•Hall is the USCF's Executive Director.
Francisco Guadalupe on the FIDE Congress•Guadalupe is the U.S. Zonal President.
Tony Rich on the 82nd FIDE Congress
Walter Brown on the 82nd FIDE Congress
Sophia Rohde on the 82nd FIDE Congress
According to Kirsan: A Billion Clever People•By Michael Khodarkovsky, FIDE Delegate for the USCF.
USCF President Ruth Haring Wraps Up 82nd Fide Congress

Hall's report starts with a photo of six of the seven delegates and lists their names and functions. Sevan Muradian was another attendee from the U.S. For various reasons, he is not a typical USCF representative and I mentioned him in a report on the most recent USCF election,Odd Man Out,where he eventually failed in his bid.Muradian also issued a series of reports on the Congress, but posted them on the 'USCF Issues' section of the 'USCF Forums', which is open to USCF members only. I list them here because they are generally more informative than the reports from the USCF delegates and provoked more online discussion.

Off to Krakow for the FIDE Congress
FIDE Congress: Day 1,Day 2,Day 3,Day 4 - Meeting Overflows
FIDE EB Meeting: Day 1 Part 1,Day 1 Part 2,Day 2

The 'FIDE EB' is the Executive Board. Muradian mentions that he filmed the EB meeting and promised to upload it to Youtube. One of FIDE's current initiatives is the imposition of new fees for various services. As far as I can tell, little progress was made during the latest Congress.

82nd FIDE Congress: Dutch fears allayed•Chessvibes.com

It's an issue which is sure to return for the 83rd Congress, which will be held at the same time as the next Olympiad, scheduled for Istanbul, Turkey, starting August 2012.

***

Later:I overlooked at least one new fee. From the chessexpress blog,FIDE Arbiter Fees:

One thing that was passed at the recent FIDE Congress was fees for Arbiters. Not fees that Arbiters receive, but the fees arbiters have to pay to receive their accreditation.

The post later notes that the 'fees don't come into effect until the 1st January 2013'.

Blue Ribbon Chess Books 2010

2011-10-25T16:15:00.000+02:00

Time stands still for no one and a year after my post onBlue Ribbon Chess Books 2009,I'm ready to add the 2010 'Book of the Year' awards to my page onAward Winning Chess Books.Following up a comment to last year's post, I also added awards issued by Guardian News. The first such award was made in 2007 and, as the 2011 award will be the fifth, it looks to be a fixture in the world of chess book publishing.

In a curious case of symmetry (or is it nationalism?), Yasser Seirawan's 'Chess Duels' won both 2010 awards by American sources, while Jacob Aagaard's 'Attacking Manual' won both awards issued by British sources.Two of the awards for 2011 are already known -- three in fact, as there were two Cramer awards this year -- so I might start posting the next annual roundup when the last of the awards, ChessCafe's in February, is known.

Chess Clocks

2011-10-24T10:50:00.003+02:00

Next on the list for Been There, Done Thatis a piece onChess Clocks.After converting it, I added the link toChess for Fun.Clocks definitely make chess more fun.

Today's Winning Canadian Chess Film

2011-10-21T06:52:00.000+02:00

A few months back, in'Korchnoi = Don Quixote',I featured a clip titled 'An old segment on a younger Korchnoi', which appeared to be a segment of a longer documentary. The full film has recently surfaced on YouTube and is even better than the 'Younger Korchnoi' extract.

The Great Chess Movie (1/3) (30:46) • 'A Canadian chess documentary featuring Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Tal, Anatoly Karpov, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Vassily Smyslov, Lajos Portisch, Anthony Miles, and many other historical grandmasters.'

The most recent events discussed in the documentary were played in 1981. The credits start 40 seconds into the clip: 'Starring Karpov, Korchnoi, Fischer, ...; Direction: Gilles Carle, Camille Coudari; Production: Hélene Verrier'.

A Barleycorn Chess Set

2011-10-20T11:38:00.000+02:00

What does a $4000 chess set look like? Like this...

Titled 'Antique Large Bone Barleycorn Jaques Chess set' on eBay, the set received 41 bids from 15 bidders, and the winning bid was GBP 2527.00 ('approximately US $4000.49' according to eBay). In the year and a half that I've been tracking Top eBay Chess Items by Price,I don't recall another chess set selling for so much. The description was unusually informative.

Antique Bone Barleycorn Chess set, Attributable to Jaques of London; 19th century•Excellent condition. No damage, no replacements, no missing pieces. King size 5,5 inches (14 cm). Made of very high quality white ox bone. Attributable to Jaques of London by Knight design and according to surviving pages of the Jaques Pattern Book. Please refer to Alan Fersht, "Jaques and British Chess Company Chess sets" (Cambridge 2010), page 44. This is a top-notch Barleycorn set of large size. They do not get much better, although some very rare larger examples of this design do exist.

I know that some sources prefer the word 'barlycorn' instead of 'barleycorn', but I'm not sure why. There are a number of other English Barleycorn Setspictured on Crumiller.com and a description on the Anonymous Chess Collector blog:Barleycorn sets.Unfortunately, that blog is not updated frequently. Judging by the number of emails I receive on the subject (even though I state frequently that I'm not a collector), I'm surprised there aren't more blogs on the topic of chess collecting.

No Nose for FIDE News

2011-10-18T14:58:00.000+02:00

The 82nd FIDE Congress,underway this week at Krakow, Poland, reminded me about FIDE's Chess News Corporation (or is it Chess Network Company?) that I wrote about a year ago in Critiquing the CNC.Although, at that time, the CNC's news site looked more like a pilot than an active site, I developed the habit of checking once or twice a month on its evolution.

In fact, the site never changed during the months after my Critiquing post, until July, when a completely redesigned site suddenly appeared. I've captured the current home page in the following image.

Chessnc.com:Chess Network Company

If you look at that page today, you'll see the same 'news' that appeared in July -- 'World Cup 2011 List of players and Round 1 pairings' -- even though the seven round event ended almost a month ago.

I've already mentioned several times on my blogs that the main FIDE site, Fide.com, has long been stripped of all meaningful news, unless you consider the comings and goings of the FIDE President to be newsworthy.

The FIDE President met this week with the Arch-Vice Minister of Belugastan. After bows and the exchange of traditional dairy products, it was announced that FIDE is considering the construction of a chess school in the form of an extra-terrestrial spaceship.

Now that the CNC news site has also turned out to be a dud, how does FIDE intend to communicate with the many chess fans around the world? Maybe an answer will emerge from the 82nd Congress, but something tells me this won't happen either. Did someone mention modernization?

Kasparov - Deep Junior, 2003

2011-10-17T17:47:00.000+02:00

Continuing withBeen There, Done That,I addedKasparov - Deep Junior, New York, 2003to my page titledImprove Your Chess Game. As it turned out, the year 2003 was the last year where the best human chess players had a chance of drawing a match against the best computers.

21st Century Caissart

2011-10-14T12:25:00.000+02:00

A few months ago, inChess & Iphoneography,I spotlighted iPhone chess photos. For this post, I have iPad chess art.

life scene 687, chess or no© Flickr user patricio villarroel underCreative Commons.

More info from the artist:

This photo also appears in:iPad, iPhone and iPod touch finger painters group,Brushes Gallery – iPhone/iPad Art,iPad Paintings, andArtrage ('the stylish and easy to use painting package for Windows and OS X')•Tags:fingerpainting, mixedapp, mixedevice

There's another piece from the same artist using the same techniques atStorm over the chess master home.

The Longest Sidebar

2011-10-13T15:53:00.000+02:00

Here's a little quiz to test your knowledge of chess blogs. What do the following three blogs all have in common?

If you answered, 'They're all pretty good blogs', no points for you. I wouldn't have listed them if they weren't a cut above your average chess blog.

If you answered, 'They're all administered by women', you get one point. Even if you'd never heard of Alexandra Kosteniuk and Susan Polgar, both former Women's World Champions, their first names should be a strong clue.The third blog is a little more challenging, but it doesn't take a genius to guess that a blog with the word 'Goddess' in its title isn't run by a 'dude' (as the blog's webmistress likes to call us guys).

If you answered, 'They all have incredibly long sidebars', then you win the jackpot. Their sidebars -- if you're not up on the lingo, that's the bar on the side -- go on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

I've long been curious which of our three women's blogs had the longest sidebar, but couldn't figure out how to measure it. Counting the number of times it takes to 'Page Down' from top to bottom doesn't seem very scientific and wouldn't be accurate enough to break a close contest. Then I found the programWeb Screen Capture,and knew that I had the answer. This program doesn't just capture the part of a web page visible in your browser -- that can be done in many ways -- it captures the image of the entire web page from top to bottom. All you do is feed it the page's URL and the rest is magic.

Armed with my new tool, I pointed the software at a recent post in each of the three blogs and captured the full page image to a file. Then I loaded the images into image processing software and recorded the number of pixels in the vertical direction. Then I reduced the width and height of the images by a factor of a ~~1000~~ 100 and displayed the images side by a side to get a visual comparison. That's the picture you see on the left.

Blog no.4 is the 'Chess for All Ages' blog that you are currently reading. At 4487 pixels long, my blog's sidebar isn't even in the competition.Blog no.3, at 11770 pixels, is more than two and a half times as long as mine, but no.3 is less than half as long as no.2, at 25623 pixels.The winner, as can clearly be seen in the picture, is no.1, a whopping 30532 pixels long!

Which of the three women's blogs is the winner? It's not hard to work that out for yourself, so I'll leave it as an exercise. And what's the longest sidebar managed by a 'dude'? I have no idea, but if you know of a candidate, leave a comment or shoot me an email at the address under my profile (located on the sidebar, of course).

Garry's Games

2011-10-11T13:06:00.000+02:00

In a recent post,Garry's Story,I linked to a series of videos on YouTube that cover a set of five DVDs titled 'Garry Kasparov, My Story', originally issued in 2000. While I was watching the clips, I noted the games that Kasparov analyzed together with GM Plaskett, the host of the series. Here they are, with links to the corresponding games on Chessgames.com.

Part 1 - Teenage Prodigy

Kasparov vs E Kengis; Riga 1977
Kasparov vs A Roizman; Minsk 1978
Kasparov vs Palatnik; Daugavpils 1978
Kasparov vs Pribyl; Skara 1980
Kasparov vs Csom; Baku 1980 [more kibitzing than in the duplicate: Kasparov vs Csom; Baku it, AZE 1980]
Kasparov vs R Akesson; Skara 1980
Kasparov vs Marjanovic; Malta 1980

Part 2 - Joining the Elite

Part 3 - Rebels and Renegades

Part 4 - Hitting the Wall

Part 5 - Rite of Passage

In a future post I'll discuss one or two of these games in more detail.

***

Later:This post appeared inNovember Chess Improvement Blog Carnival -- The Get 'er Done Version!.

U.S. Championships

2011-10-10T16:29:00.000+02:00

Getting started withBeen There, Done That,I addedU.S. Chess ChampionsandU.S. Chess Championships (Closed/Invitational)to my page onChess History.I wanted to tackle British and Canadian championships at the same time, but Archive.org was offline for maintenance, so my time was limited.Their error message pointed to a related resource which I hadn't seen before --Internet Archive Blogs --'A blog from the Collections Team at Archive.org'.

SNL's Profiles in Sports

2011-10-07T15:47:00.004+02:00

'For half a century, dozens of world grandmasters have come out of America's high school chess clubs. Most of the credit for that belongs to the unsung hero of chess, the high school chess coach'

SNL High School Chess Coach Parody (3:10) • 'Found this on an old VHS tape recently. Picture & sound quality are pretty poor but you get the point of the sketch.'

Transcript:Profiles In Sports(Saturday Night Live; Season 10, Episode 5).

Tweezer Chess

2011-10-06T11:03:00.000+02:00

The most expensive auctions in this week's edition ofTop eBay Chess Items by Pricewere all chess sets, most of which didn't sell. I even saw a few unsuccessful auctions listed twice, where the second listing had a higher 'Buy It Now' price than the first. What's the logic behind that?

The item pictured below, which is also a chess set, was far from the most expensive item sold, but it was by far the most unusual. It was titled 'Miniature Artist Signed CHESS SET Geoffrey Wonnocott', received 20 bids from seven bidders, and sold for US $520.22.

The description said,

Spectacular artisan dollhouse miniature. This is a chess set on pedestal table engraved on bottom G.P. Wonnocott England 1996. If you are familiar with this name, you know this is a rare piece, an authentic miniature by the famous miniature cabinetmaker Geoffrey Wonnocott. You won't find another piece by him anywhere on eBay. If you search the internet for his name you will find some wonderful information about him.

The drawer on this table opens, the top has beautiful inlay design and all the little pieces are there, including 3 extra pawns, it appears. The chess pieces have been secured in place, but a few have come loose. It will be wrapped carefully for shipment with all the little pieces included. Wonderful clawfoot gold gilded design. Table itself measures about 2 1/2" tall. No damage. Wow!

Besides this auction, I didn't find much on the web for 'Geoffrey Wonnocott'. When Google questioned me with 'Did you mean: Geoffrey Wonnacott', I found his personal page atGEOFFREY P WONNACOTT, Miniature Cabinet & Furniture.The page shows a few more chess sets, although none of them are listed with a price.

Chess Improvement Carnival, October 2011 Edition

2011-10-04T15:30:00.000+02:00

If, like me when I first heard it, the phrase 'blog carnival' makes you think of Mardi Gras, Rio de Janeiro, or the Gilles of Binche, you've got the wrong carnival. That carnival is a Christian tradition that precedes the observance of Lent, the pleasures of the flesh that precede the forty days of abstinence.No, our chess blog carnival is what the dictionary defines as 'a traveling amusement show or circus', and this month the show stops here at 'Chess for All Ages'.

When I signed up to host an edition of the carnival I had no idea how it worked. I had submitted a few items in the past and had wondered how they found their way to the other chess blogs that hosted those earlier editions. It turns that the whole process is well automated and even cranks out a draft InstaCarnival that summarizes all of the info provided by the bloggers at the time of their submissions. One of InstaCarnival's functions is to group posts together according to the category chosen by the submitter. Which category to start with? Openings, of course.

Openings

There are at least two major subdivisions of opening theory. The first is how to tackle the huge subject of openings at a meta-level.

ChessAdmin presents Openings Selection: Initial Considerations posted at Path to Chess Mastery.•'Having recently started studying a new opening, I think it's worth spending some time looking at what factors go into selecting and then learning openings.'

The second cover specific openings. The carnival received two submissions covering open games. Here's the timeless Ruy Lopez (aka Spanish Opening), 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5.

James Stripes presents Steinitz Defense posted at Chess Skills, saying, 'Reading Steinitz's own opening manual, I found recommendations that he made, but then rejected in his own practice.'•'Wilhelm Steinitz, the father of chess theory, had some ideas that seem wacky today. In The Modern Chess Instructor (1889), he explains why he prefers 3...d6 against the Spanish Opening, rather than the more common Morphy Defense (3...a6) or the Berlin Defense (3...Nf6).'

And here's the romantic Evans Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4.

Pau Pascual presents Captain Evans posted at Chess.com, saying, 'The legend of Captain Evans'•'We are at the sea. Between Milford and Waterford. A grey autumn evening of 1824. It is a windy bad sea, and very cold. William Davies Evans is 34 years old and over 20 years he has spent at the sea. He is playing a game of chess.'

The executive producer of this series of carnivals on the theme of chess improvement is Blue Devil Knight, or BDK, as he's known to the chess blogosphere. He spent some time sifting through the blogs at Chess.com and sent me a few September posts that he thought would be appropriate. Two of them discussed openings at the meta-level.

dpruess (That's IM David Pruess, a Chess.com insider) onFirst-Time Openings•'Looking at my opponent for last night's USCL match, I thought that he was at his best in dynamic positions; certainly positions with a clear imbalance and plan, but in particular those with a somewhat faster pace.'

TigerLilov onHow to Master Chess Openings•'In my first blog post for Chess.com this week, I would like to present you with an interesting video I recorded for GeeksWithChess.com about a year ago.'

Middlegame

There are so many angles to tackle the middlegame, that I wouldn't even attempt to count them. Try to categorize the next submission.

Geoff Fergusson presents Sergey Ivashchenko’s Chess School 1b posted at Empirical Rabbit('The blog that seeks out hard evidence concerning chess training methods for the average player - particularly the not so young average player.'), saying, 'There are two other articles this month. Take your pick!'•'For my next experiment, I used Sergey Ivashchenko’s Chess School 1b, so I will give it a brief review. This book turned out to be excellent for my purposes. Ivashchenko wrote the first three books of the Chess School series: [links to reviews at Chesscafe.com] Over 200,000 copies of the previous edition of this book were sold in the Soviet Union in the late 1980's.'

The following post is from yours truly. After I wrote and posted it, I realized the title was ambiguous. The ex-World Champion is not talking about blunders ('to hang a Pawn'), he's talking about Pawn duos.

Mark Weeks presents Spassky on Hanging Pawns posted at Chess for All Ages.•In my previous post, "This Pawn Is Garbage", I mentioned Spassky's annotations in the tournament book of the Second Piatigorsky Cup, Santa Monica 1966, almost the only written notes I have ever seen by Spassky.

Here's another gem unearthed by BDK.

chessbuzz onWhen You See A Tactic...•'You see a tactical combination on the board and you have the opportunity to play it...you become excited, after all this is your moment to play like Tal, but chances are that you do not play like Tal.'

Humor

Two more of the InstaCarnival's categories are 'Humor' and 'Other'.

Solomon Levy presents Hippopotamus played Beethoven’s Triple Concerto posted at Chess.com, saying, 'why not write a few blogs just to humor opponent while at the same time show off a little, bragging rights rightfully earned.'•'Ludwig van Beethoven's Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major, Op. 56, more commonly known as the Triple Concerto, was composed in 1803 [...] In the game below I played the Hippopotamus Defence against a player and a friend bearing the name of this famous classical tune, Triplekonzert.'

Intermezzo presents The dark art of games(wo)manship posted at Hebden Bridge Chess Club, saying, 'This is more of a short story than a blogpost but this series of articles by our guest writer, Cynthia Blunderboro has proved really popular in the past. Having related various chess related stories from her families rich history in previous efforts, this time she regails us with a salutory lesson from her own experience. She carefully evades the gender debate that she could have become embroiled in and instead reminds us why its most important to play the position infront of you and not your opponent!'•'A couple of weekends ago, as I watched live coverage of the FIDE World Cup Final in Khanty Mansiysk my wife took an interest (most unusual) and asked about the lady commentator, GM Anna Sharevich.'

Other

This 'kitchen sink' category is just too broad to be useful. Here's another post about the female element in chess.

Pau Pascual presents From Shatranj to chess. The female irruption posted at Chess.com, saying, 'Chess history. The new female role in the board.'•'The Queen is the most powerful piece of the chessboard, it is the one that dominates more squares, the one that can arrives to any place in only one or two moves.'

And here's a post on sportsmanship, from the winner of the most recent CJA Best Blog award (see2011 Awards Committee Report; PDF).

Hank Anzis presents Stinging losses posted at Broken Pawn.•'Twice on Sunday, I got to see Americans lose chances at what passes for sports immortality. [...] At last week’s chess camp, I told the kids that losing hurts but as long as you can learn from the defeat and become a better player it’s OK to lose since they all have at least 50 years of chess playing ahead of them.'

A good part of sportsmanship is realizing that even when the outcome is not what you wanted, there are lessons to be learned.

Robert Pearson presents Willpower, Decision Fatigue and Practical Chess posted at Robert Pearson's Chess Blog.•'In my last post, I reviewed a game where I played at quite a high level through the first time control, then made a string of weak moves before being offered a rather generous draw. This scenario, pretty strong play through 20-30 moves, an excellent or winning position followed by "blowing" a win or draw, is more common in my career than I would like.'

Some blog posts make you wonder. Here's one from an Asian-based blog.

yullian bei presents Red and White Chess: The Muggles of the Chess Wizardy World posted at Red and White Chess, saying, 'light notes on asian descendent to play chess in the west'•'Blitz story on Asian descendents chess player in the western hemisphere.'

Others leave you with a feeling of déja vu.

Floris Schleicher presents Kasparov is back! posted at Chess.com.•'A new video on a short return of former World Champion, #1 of the world, record rating holder and chess legend; Garry Kasparov!'

A few posts were submitted via other means than the submission form. This one came by email. I know from my own experience that there are many ways to walk through a chess game and it's not always obvious which is the best.

Ghuzultyy onMy Annotated Games #2•'This is my second attempt to blog an annotated game of mine. This time I will not use diagrams, see if it is better this way.'

This one came via comment to one of my announcements. The submitter indicated he wanted to send some of his material and when I hadn't received it by the deadline, I chose myself. IM Silman is, after all, one of the superstars of chess instruction.

CalbaMan onFeatured Article: IM Silman Returns•'IM Jeremy Silman has finally come back, and he is ready to write new chess articles and more! After more than four months of inactivity, Silman recently published his newest article: "Recognizing The Big Moment In A Game".'

And, finally, we have two more from BDK. Either would be suitable for wrapping up this carnival, so I'll highlight both.

TheUltimateChampion onGeneral Principles in Chess•'1. The three basic elements to be considered in evaluating a position are Force, Space and Time.The first is more stable than other two.[...]15. Last but not the least, never hurry in the endgame.'

CharlyAZ onTen ways to know when a chess coach is good•'This article is the logical continuation of the previous "10 ways to get free chess lessons from Masters." That article was for those who do not have the financial means to hire a coach. This one, however, is for those who are able, or are saving ferociously, to hire one.'

A Few Omissions

I remember some slight disappointment after one of the first chess blog carnivals where the post I had submitted did not appear in the roundup. I later found out that it had been lost in the shuffle and, to make up for the omission, it was eventually reused in a subsequent carnival. There were a few posts I didn't use in this October carnival. I'll mention them here so that their authors will know that they weren't overlooked and so that future submitters might avoid the same fate. I'm not here to discourage bloggers, I'm here to encourage them.

In the writeup above, I've already featured two posts from Pau Pascual. These were out of a total of 10 posts submitted by the prolific PP, all of them worthy of inclusion. One of the instructions I received from BDK was to use blog posts written 'within a month or so of the carnival'. The bulk of PP's submissions were from 2010 or earlier, and even those I used were written before Summer 2011. Here's another PP post from early 2011 that I could have used, but left out for the sake of compactness.

Pau Pascual presents A living game - Chess.com posted at Chess.com, saying, 'A living game played by Capablanca and Steiner'•'[Unlike a] normal game, where it is played with wooden pieces, in the living game it is played with people only human.'

Here's another very good post on a specific opening -- in fact the entire blog is on that opening -- that I would love to have featured if the post, as well as all other posts, hadn't dated back to 2009.

Joemar Lacson presents A Reason to Play The Accelerated Dragon posted at My Chess Pet the Sicilian Dragon, saying, 'A 62% chance of winning says a lot for Black in this Accelerated Dragon variation 8...d5. So there isn't much to say really than learning this variation as Black is valuable. And that’s what I actually did, I have spent time to study and analyse the position and eventually formed an opening repertoire based on 8...d5 pawn break in the Accelerated Dragon. Along the way too, I have discovered a few moves which I think are much stronger than the moves recommended by popular opening books.'

Except for their dates, those two previous posts were perfectly suitable for a chess blog carnival. The next one is less suitable. Chess plays only a small role in the post and the improvement angle is missing entirely.

Lisa Hood presents 10 Bizarre But Real College Clubs posted at ZenCollegeLife, saying, 'We've all heard of the math club and the chess club, but some colleges take the idea of the club to a whole new level.'

The final omission is a type of spam :Welcome to Chess Thinking Systems.Its only purpose appears to be to sell a commercial product. If you think I'm being too harsh about this or anything else I've written here, just leave a comment against this post (they're moderated, but I accept criticism) or send me an email (address under my profile in the upper right of this page).

Bye For Now!

Before I sign off, I'd like to say thanks to all of the people who submitted material and to wish you well in your future endeavors, blogging or otherwise, chess or real life. There are a lot of perceptive minds working at cracking the mysteries of chess and some of the best are also writing about it. Good luck to you all!

***

Later: Here's some more boilerplate text from InstaCarnival. Looks useful...

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition ofchess improvement carnivalusing ourcarnival submission form.Past posts and future hosts can be found on ourblog carnival index page.
Share|
Technorati tags: chess improvement carnival, blog carnival.

...Especially the carnival submission form and index page.

Been There, Done That

2011-10-03T14:23:00.001+02:00

Having finished withWhere to Go From Here,I developed a new list of old material to be converted. Unfortunately, Archive.org, the underlying resource on which the links are based, was not available while I was creating the list, so I was unable to check if the old material was really suitable for conversion.

2003-01-18: U.S. Chess Champions (2011-10-10)
2003-02-15: Kasparov - Deep Junior, New York, 2003 (2011-10-17)
2003-03-01: Chess clocks (2011-10-24)
2003-09-06: British and Canadian Chess Champions (2011-10-31)
2003-12-20: Steinitz on the 'Relative Value of the Pieces' (2011-11-07)
2004-02-21: FIDE Top-10 Players 1975-2004 (2011-11-14)
~~2004-03-27: How To Improve at Chess~~
2004-06-05: TWIC 500! (2011-11-21)
2004-06-19: FIDE World Championship 2004 : Background (2011-11-28)
2004-06-26: FIDE World Championship 2004 : Results (ditto)
2004-07-10: Guide to Chess Gambits, Part 1 (2011-12-05)
2004-07-31: Guide to Chess Gambits, Part 2 (ditto)
2004-08-21: Chess for Free (2011-12-12)
2004-10-23: 2004 Dannemann World Championship Match (2011-12-19)
2004-10-30: Themed Chess Sets (2011-12-26)
2004-12-11: Tools to Calculate Your Chess Rating (2012-01-02)
2005-03-19: Korchnoi - Kasparov, Olympiad, Lucerne 1982 (2012-01-09)
2005-05-21: Tal - Larsen, Candidates Match (g.10), Bled 1965 (2012-01-16)
2005-06-11: Swiss System for Chess Tournaments
2005-06-18: Getting the Most out of Solitaire Chess
2006-11-11: Chess Tutorial : Bobby's Binds
2007-02-10: ECO at a Glance
2007-02-17: Introduction to Chess Ratings
2007-03-17: Chess Books to Read Without a Board
2007-03-31: The Third Best Player of All Time?
2007-06-23: Chess Top Tens
2007-07-28: The Lesser Moves after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3
2007-09-08: Middle Game Fundamentals
2007-09-15: Endgame Fundamentals
2008-04-19: Catching Up with Kasparov

As announced inOctober Chess Improvement Carnival (Here on CFAA),I'm hosting this month's chess blog carnival tomorrow, so I threw in a couple of my early looks at chess blogs.

2006-05-06: Chess Blogs - First Posts
2007-05-05: Blog Trekking, April 2007 [++]

Old wine in new wineskins? Even so, it should keep me busy for a while.

Asheville Mural Project No.2

2011-09-30T12:02:00.000+02:00

I 'mirrored' this photo so the letters on the ball player's jacket would read 'CH' instead of its mirror image. After I did this I noticed the chess board was set up incorrectly. Sometimes you can't win.

While I was browsing the photographer's other AMP photos, I found the same photo I used a year ago inChess in Asheville.Then I found both AMP chess photos combined in a single image --AMP Asheville mural project projected -- with the ball player sitting in front of Black pieces. Somebody in Asheville likes chess.

Folkestone 1933

2011-09-29T16:43:00.000+02:00

An eBay auction for the photo shown below caught my attention when I recognized Vera Menchik standing behind the table. Was this perhaps a pre-WWII Women's World Championship?I didn't understand the title -- 'Women play CHESS ± 1930 Outremont + Schartzmann' -- so I sent a question asking if the information was on the back of the photo. The seller, located in the Netherlands, kindly attached a scan to his reply. Written in French, it said, 'Women's chess championship. From left to right Mme Lucien D Outremont et Mlle Schartzmann, champion of the tournament. Photo Meurisse.'

On my pageWorld Chess Championship (Women) : 1927-39 Title Tournaments,I have a scanned crosstable of Folkestone 1933, an eight-player double round robin, which Menchik won with a perfect score. The scan, from Kazic's 'International Championship Chess' (Batsford 1974), mentions both D'Autremont and Schwartzmann. It appeared to be the same event recorded in the eBay photo and I decided to bid on it if there was little interest.

The photo received nine bids from six different bidders with a winning bid of US $109.50. The price jumped from $32 to the final bid in the last minute of the auction, indicating that other bidders also recognized its historical importance.While the winning bid won't make the item a candidate for my series onTop eBay Chess Items by Price,it does show that there is serious interest in early women's events.

Garry's Story

2011-09-27T17:58:00.000+02:00

Is there any instructional material by GMs that can equal or exceed the quality that I highlighted inImprove Your Chess with the Master Game?It's a tall order, but in the 30 years since the BBC's legendary Master Game series aired, there must have been some other chess instruction in video format that was both exceptionally interesting and exceptionally entertaining.

Like many players, I'm constantly on the watch for any such video material that I haven't seen before. Last month I was happy to find on YouTube a series of clips taken from Kasparov's 'My Story', a set of DVDs released in 2000. The first clip in the series, on the EpicChess channel, is at

Kasparov - From The Start To The End - Episode 1

Unfortunately, the series did not seem to be complete, meaning it was probably under construction. I had the feeling I had seen the introduction on YouTube before and quickly located a similar series on the NorthernUnion channel starting with

Kasparov, My story, part 1

This second version seemed to be complete, which I confirmed by watching all 36(!) parts in my spare time. The first 34 parts are each about 10 minutes long, while the last two parts are around 90 minutes each, totaling more than eight hours of viewing. Each part is chained to the next by the 'related' mechanism.

If you'd rather have your own real (and legal) copy of the same video, you can find it onAmazon.com: "kasparov my story",and elsewhere.The original set of five DVDs carried the following titles:-

Complete Set, Volumes 1-5
Part 1 - Teenage Prodigy
Part 2 - Joining the Elite
Part 3 - Rebels and Renegades
Part 4 - Hitting the Wall
Part 5 - Rite of Passage

I'll have more to say about this resource in future posts.

Chess Is/Isn't a Sport

2011-09-26T15:35:00.000+02:00

That's a wrap! AddingChess as Sportto my page onChess for Funbrought me to the last article to be converted on the list I developed for Where to Go From Here.What's next for my old About.com articles? After I bring Taking Inventoryup to date, I'll take another look at what hasn't been converted.Anything related to the material identified inImprove Your Chess Gamewould be an obvious candidate.

Chess Merit Badge

2011-09-23T16:45:00.000+02:00

This video clip is from Youtube channel BSAIntComm, 'The Internal Communications Team at the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.'

The Buzz - September 23, 2011, "Chess Merit Badge" (2:16) • 'Jerry Nash from the U.S. Chess Federation shares highlights from the recent launch of the Chess merit badge.'

For the Chess Merit Badge requirements, seeIntroduction to Merit Badges > Chesson Scouting.org.

Capodimonte Figurines

2011-09-22T16:58:00.000+02:00

Whenever I gather material for another post in this series onTop eBay Chess Items by Price,I try to pick something unusual. While chess playing porcelain figurines are quite common, any piece that sells for a three figure price tag is definitely unusual.The figurine pictured below was titled 'Vintage Dresden Lace; Capodimonte Figurines; Playing Chess, Mark Crown N', received 23 bids from six bidders, and sold for US $761.

Capodimonte Figurines Playing Chess

I assume that's a mirror behind the couple to show the back of the piece. The description said,

You are looking at a wonderful example of porcelain artistry at it's best!! This lovely French-looking couple dressed in Dresden Lace is playing a game of chess on an exquisite Louis XIV table.Pink porcelain roses look like they were used to catch layers of lace to make swags ~ her tiny waist is corseted ~ her hair hangs in ringlets. He is dressed in a typical 18th century outfit in beautiful dark lavender colors and gold pants. The Dresden lace can be found on the collar and sleeves of his outfit. They are seated on exquisite French chairs atop a lovely lavender and blue carpet. There are so many perfect details here, that you really have to look well or you can miss it. This must be the very top of the line Dresden Lace Capodimonte.

From what I can determine, the blue mark on the bottom of the piece ~ a crown with the letter "N" is the mark of Italian Capodimonte. I believe it is circa 1910-1950 - maybe older?•Overall, it is in lovely condition. The lace is all intact. I don't see any chips or cracks. This collector really took great care of her collection.•Measures: 10 inches wide, 6.5 inches tall, and 6.5 inches deep. This piece is quite heavy.

What makes it so valuable to collectors? I imagine the name Capodimonte has something to do with it (seeCapodimonte porcelainon Wikipedia for more about the brand), but the key phrase is undoubtedly 'lovely condition, intact' etc. etc. That porcelain lace dress is easily damaged.

October Chess Improvement Carnival (Here on CFAA)

2011-09-20T14:51:00.000+02:00

Yikes! Only two weeks to go before the next blog carnival, to be hosted here on Chess for All Ages, and I haven't a clue what to do. I don't even know what to wear. Where are the blog posts I'm supposed to exhibit?

If you want to submit a post but aren't sure what's required, see the announcement for the most recent carnival atSeptember Carnival is up!If you want to see all previous carnivals, going back to January 2011, there's a complete list atBlog Carnival - Chess Improvement Carnival,under the tab for 'Past Posts'.

Don't leave me hanging! The submission form is here:Submit an Article to a Carnival.And somebody tell me what I'm expected to wear!

Quick Draw McGraw

2011-09-19T16:46:00.001+02:00

For the penultimate post againstWhere to Go From Here,I addedShort Draws : Issues on the Chess Tableto my page titledChess for Fun.The subject of short draws doesn't belong under anything called 'Fun', but I didn't know where else to put it.

Five Hundred Favorites

2011-09-16T12:03:00.000+02:00

A little more than three years after my first Flickr Fridaypost, I've reached the milestone of 500 Flickr favorites. Here's the composite page showing the most recent additions to My favorite photos and videos | Flickr.

The images that I actually used in a post (~75 or so, because I post every two weeks) should show up in this query:About 641 results : site:chessforallages.blogspot.com flickr.~~I don't know why it reports 641 results. After a few pages of Flickr Friday photos, it starts to return diagrams of chess positions that have nothing to do with Flickr~~. Now I get it -- I have a 'Flickr Favorites' widget at the bottom of the sidebar on every page. Good thing Google is smarter than I am.

Spassky on Hanging Pawns

2011-09-15T18:09:00.003+02:00

In my previous post, 'This Pawn Is Garbage', I mentioned Spassky's annotations in the tournament book of the Second Piatigorsky Cup, Santa Monica 1966, almost the only written notes I have ever seen by Spassky. A great example of his objective thinking is in a note to the first game in the book, against Petrosian, their 'first meeting after the [1966] championship match', a match which Spassky lost. Referring to the position in the diagram, Spassky wrote,

The so-called 'hanging Pawns' position was created. The shortcoming of hanging Pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak.

That constitutes the general thinking on hanging Pawns, which experienced players learn early in their chess careers.

1966 Santa Monica
Spassky, Boris

Petrosian, Tigran
After 16...b6-c5(xP)

Spassky takes it further, noting the positive side of the Pawns, which many experienced players might not know.

The power of hanging Pawns is based precisely in their mobility, in their ability to create acute situations instantly. It should be kept in mind that the semi-open files b- and e- are a component of these hanging Pawns, which frequently serve as an excellent springboard for the development of aggressive play on the part of Black.

But generalities aren't sufficient. Along with the hanging Pawns, there are other pieces on the board that require particular attention.

In the situation at hand, there is an essential shortcoming in Black's position. The Bishop is unsatisfactorily placed on b7 and Black is unable to take advantage of the b-file. Thus, the basic failing in Black's formation lies in its passiveness. Of course, White is here in a position to begin a systematic siege of Black's center.

Spassky's emphasis on activity also came through on the Garbage post. To play though the complete game, see...

Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian vs Boris Spassky; Santa Monica (01) 1966
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1128688

...on Chessgames.com.

'This Pawn Is Garbage'

2011-09-13T15:42:00.002+02:00

I've played through a lot of great games annotated by a lot of great players, but one player who hasn't written much is Boris Spassky. His notes, along with those of most of the other players, are in the tournament book of the Second Piatigorsky Cup, Santa Monica 1966, which Spassky won, but I can't think of another source of his annotations. For this reason, it's a pleasure (a word he often uses himself) to listen to him explaining his moves in the 1982 edition of the BBC series that I've linked in Improve Your Chess with the Master Game.

One game that made a real impression on me was Torre - Spassky, played in round 2.1 of that event (see A 'Master Game' Lookalike, Second Attempt for a direct link to the YouTube video). The critical sequence starts at 14:12 into the clip, just after Torre has played 22.Ra1-a3. The image below shows the moment at which Spassky explained the position.

Spassky: My only chance is active play. I need a lot of oxygen here. I don't like the position of my Black Rook on h8. My Rook is just defending the Pawn on h6, but this Pawn is garbage. I give up this Pawn, it doesn't matter. I must do something in the center, intending to play Nd5 or Pd5. Anyway, the first move is good, so Rhc8. • [22...Rhc8]

In other words, the Rook guarding the weak Pawn is passively placed. Giving up the Pawn liberates the Rook for active play. It sounds simple when Spassky explains it.

Torre is oblivious to Black's plan.

Torre: He's attacking my c-Pawn again, but at the moment I can take on h6. If [23...Rxc3 24.Rxc3 Rxc3 25.Rxf6] winning back the Rook, then I will be a piece up. After Rxh6, maybe he can play ...d5. It doesn't matter. I can still play Nb1. Maybe he missed it or what. His last move he played quickly. Maybe he missed this move. I'll take the Pawn on h6. • [23.Rxh6]

Commentators: Spassky will be glad to see the end of the garbage. • There's this nice little tactical point that Torre has just seen. Spassky got rid of his garbage, but it remains to be seen who pays the garbage man.

Spassky: This Pawn is garbage. Now I have some activity. I'm satisfied with my position. I play ...d5. It seems to me a very strong move. • [23...d5]

Torre: As I was planning, I play Nb1 to protect the c-Pawn. • [24.Nb1]

Spassky: Oh, I'm so active just for one Pawn. Ooh! That's a very pleasant surprise for me... Ne4. • [24...Ne4]

Torre: Now he's threatening again my c-Pawn. I play Rb3. This was my intention. • [25.Rb3]

Spassky: That's a very logical move, because in case of [25...Nxc3+ 26.Nxc3 Rxc3 27.Rxb6] White has activity. First, it's very important for me to take the f3 square. My move ...g4 seems very logical. • [25...g4]

Commentators: Now we can begin to see the idea behind Spassky's jettisoning his Pawn on h6 earlier. The Pawn on c3 is under severe attack. The a-Pawn may become weak. Now he's trying to constrain the White King to stop it escaping to f3. He certainly got a strong initiative for the Pawn.

Torre: Ooh, this is very strong. I missed this when I played Rxh6 earlier. I feel I'm worse already. This is incredible. I wish I had played Kd3 instead of taking on h6. How can I miss ...g4? It looks very simple. I miss such simple moves. Unbelievable. I think my position is almost lost already. Missing one simple move and suddenly my position is quite lost. I'll just try to keep on fighting. Maybe I should try to make an early attack on f7. Maybe this is my only chance. • [26.Rh7]

Spassky went on to win in another 20 moves. If you want to play the game, here is the game score from Master Game PGN.

[Event "?"]
[Site "Hamburg-TV (1 h)"]
[Date "1982.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Torre E"]
[Black "Spassky B"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "E13/09"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 b6 3.c4 e6 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 Bb7 7.e3 g5 8.Bg3 Ne4 9.Qc2 Bxc3+ 10.bxc3 d6 11.Bd3 Nxg3 12.hxg3 Nd7 13.a4 a5 14.Be4 Bxe4 15.Qxe4 Ke7 16.Qc6 Nf6 17.Nd2 Qd7 18.Qb5 Qxb5 19.cxb5 Rac8 20.Ke2 c5 21.bxc6 Rxc6 22.Ra3 Rhc8 23.Rxh6 d5 24.Nb1 Ne4 25.Rb3 g4 26.Rh7 Kf6 27.Rh6+ Ke7 28.Rh7 R8c7 29.Kd3 Nxf2+ 30.Kc2 Ne4 31.Rg7 Nxg3 32.Rxg4 Ne4 33.Rg8 Rc4 34.Ra3 Rc8 35.Rxc8 Rxc8 36.Rb3 Rg8 37.Rxb6 Rxg2+ 38.Kb3 Re2 39.Rb5 Nd6 40.Rxa5 Nc4 41.Ra7+ Kf6 42.a5 Rb2+ 43.Ka4 Rxb1 44.a6 Nxe3 45.Rb7 Ra1+ 46.Kb5 Nc4 47.Rd7 Ra5+ 0-1

The game is also available on Chessgames.com...

Eugenio Torre vs Boris Spassky; Hamburg 1982
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1041481

...although there is not yet any kibitzing.

2007 World Championship

2011-09-12T15:37:00.001+02:00

Continuing with Where to Go From Here?, after having converted

I added

Winning the World Championship 2007

to my page on Chess History.

I Just Had Sex Played Chess

2011-09-09T13:16:00.003+02:00

Not 'For All Ages'!

I Just Played Chess (I Just Had Sex Parody) (2:49) • 'G-Fam Clan ft. Bryan Sapp -- TNG Produce'

Here's another one: I Just Played Chess, Lonely Island Parody; 'This is a parody of "I Just Had Sex" by Akon and Lonely Island', with a link to the original 'I Just Had Sex' on YouTube (more than 123 million views since December 2010!).

1924 Olympiad Gold (sort of)

2011-09-08T14:44:00.001+02:00

Continuing with Top eBay Chess Items by Price, the object pictured below was not the most expensive chess item sold on eBay over the past two weeks, but it was certainly the most unusual. The title was 'OLYMPIC GAMES PARIS 1924 CHESS INTERNATIONAL MACH MEDAL' (I'm sure that should be 'MATCH' instead of 'MACH') and it sold for US $565.55 after receiving eight bids from four bidders.

The description said,

INTERNATIONAL CHESS TOURNAMENT IN THE OCCASIONS OF THE VIII OLYMPICS GAMES HELD IN PARIS, FRANCE, 1924 • NAMED TO THE CHESS MASTER KAREL SKALICKA

Karel Skalicka (Carlos Skalicka) (1 November 1896 – 1979) was a Czech–Argentine chess master. In 1924, he won a team gold medal for Czechoslovakia (Hromádka, Schulz, Vanek, Skalicka) in the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad in Paris. He took 3rd in group eliminations (Anatol Tshepurnoff won), and tied for 21-31st in the major tournament (Karesl Hromádka won). The final tournament (Amateur World Championship) was won by Hermanis Matisons.

That second paragraph, taken from Wikipedia's entry on Karel Skalicka. was followed by a list of Skalicka's chess exploits, also from Wikipedia. A further description of the medal said,

Real nice artistic medal plaque signed by the Scuptor Jean-Marie Delpech. • At EDGE: "CUIVRE" and Hallmark. • Golden Copper - 67mm. X 45mm. - 74.14grams. • VISIBLE CONDITION • REAL RARE MEDAL PRIZE

For more about the 1924 Olympiad, see Chess Olympiad: Paris 1924, on Olimpbase.org.

Master Game PGN

2011-09-06T14:37:00.004+02:00

Now that I've worked my way through all of the clips linked from Improve Your Chess with the Master Game, I would like to discuss some of the things I've learned, as in Restraint & Overprotection. The easiest way to do this is to work from existing digital game scores. I gathered all of the 'Master Game' PGN files I could find, added a few games that were missing, and consolidated them into a single file:-

m-w.com/bbc-mstr.zip

The PGN files could still use some work -- ordering the games in the sequence they were played, standardizing names -- that sort of thing, but I'll leave the cleaning for another time or for someone else. The files are certainly usable in their current state.

2006 Unification Match

2011-09-05T13:48:00.001+02:00

Last week I converted 2005 World Championship. This week it's Games from the 2006 Unification Match. Next week it will be the 2007 Mexico City title tournament. After that I'll finish the two remaining items on my Where to Go From Here checklist, then move on to something else.

The latest converted page is linked from Chess History, but perhaps it should be added to a second index page. It is, after all, more about chess instruction than about chess history.

Distant Cousins?

2011-09-02T14:30:00.000+02:00

It's probably just me, but I see a lot of similarities between this image and the previous image on Flickr Friday, Meditation on the Bishop Pair.

Unlike the other photo, which provided no hint where it was taken, this photo had a good clue in the tag 'cartagena'. The tag group had one other photo, of a cathedral, which Google locates in Cartagena, Spain. By deduction, this is a chess sculpture in the same town of Cartagena.

Simple Positions, Pretty Geometries

2011-09-01T15:35:00.002+02:00

In my latest post, A Slippery Opening, I commented on the opening from one of my recent games; in this post I'll give one of my recent chess960 endgames. I had Black in the diagram shown below.

When I first reached the position in my analysis I quickly concluded that, with two extra Pawns, Black wins easily. Black forces White to sacrifice the Bishop for one of the Pawns and wins with the other Pawn. After I played into the variation and received my opponent's reply, I looked at the position a second time and realized the position was not as straightforward as I had initially thought. If White can sacrifice the Bishop for the d-Pawn, the promotion square for the h-Pawn is not the color of Black's Bishop, so Black can't win.

Black to move

After 1.Bf6

After a more rigorous analysis I determined that the position is nevertheless won for Black. The d-Pawn must pass through two squares controlled by White's Bishop -- d2 and d4 -- where Black uses simple maneuvers of his own Bishop to shoo the enemy Bishop off the diagonal.

When we reached the diagram I played 1...Bb4, and the game continued 2.Kf5 Bc3 (first Bishop opposition) 3.Bg5 d4 4.Ke4 d3 5.Ke3 Be1 6.Kf3 Kc3 7.Kg4 Kc2 8.Bf4 Bd2 (second Bishop opposition). White resigned here because of 9.Bd6 Bc1 10.Bb4 Bb2, and with 11...Bc3, Black clears a diagonal for the last time. During the game I was more concerned with 2.Kh6, picking up the second Pawn. Here I calculated a maneuver resembling what happened in the game: 2...Bc3 3.Bg5 d4 4.Kxh7 d3 (I'll come back to this position in a moment) 5.Bf4 Kb3 6.Kg6 Kc2 7.Kf5 Bd2 8.Bd6 Bc1 9.Bb4 Bb2 10.Be1 Bc3.

After the game, I started to wonder how far my opponent was from achieving a draw. After 4.Kxh7 d3, the d-Pawn has only one Black square to cross and the King on h7 is too far from the action. On what squares would the White King have to stand in order to draw?

Since there are only five pieces on the board, a tablebase can answer that question. It turns out that if the White King is on g6 instead of h7, White to move draws, while Black to move wins the same way as in the game. Ditto for King on f7. The sequence to achieve the draw from g6 is 1.Kf5 Kb3 2.Ke4 Kc2 3.Kd5 (only move) 3...Bd2 4.Be7 Bh6 5.Bb4 (only move) 5...Bg7 6.Kc4. The White King arrives on c4 just in time to prevent the Black Bishop from moving to c3. This raised another question.

Since the White King started on g6, which is four moves from c4, why does the same result hold for the King starting on f7, which is only three moves from c4? Even with Black to move, White should have enough time to reach c4. The reason is that Black has a different winning sequence: 1...Kd5 (or 1...Kd4; other moves only draw) 2.Ke7 Ke4 3.Kd7 (not 3.Kd6; do you see why?) 3...Kf3 4.Kd6 Bd4 5.Bd2 Ke2 6.Bb4 Bf2 7.Ke5 Be1. Black had just enough time to oppose Bishops on the other side of the Pawn, where the White King can't help.

Sometimes the simplest positions contain the prettiest geometries.

A Slippery Opening

2011-08-30T16:07:00.002+02:00

Opening transpositions have a natural place in any player's repertoire, but I recently played a game which changed its name on almost every one of the initial moves. The game started 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6, shown in the following diagram. I had the Black pieces and intended to play a Nimzo-Indian, 3.Nc3 Bb4, against my opponent who was rated about 200 points above me.

He headed on another course with 3.Nf3, a common reaction. Here I've played both 3...b6 and 3...d5, but I decided to steer into a Benoni with 3...c5, a system I like but generally avoid after 3.Nc3. I expected the standard 4.d5 exd5 5.cxd5, but my opponent dodged this with 4.Nc3. Although I've played this before, I don't know what it's called, assuming it even has a name. It's usually classified under ECO A32, which makes it a symmetrical English (1.c4 c5).

After the routine 4...cxd4 5.Nxd4, I continued 5...a6, tempting my opponent to steer away from my repertoire with 6.e4, which is exactly what he did. This is the same position that can be reached by 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.c4 Nf6 6.Nc3 (ECO B41), a Sicilian with 2...e6. As noted in a post from last year, Will the Real Taimanov Please Stand Up, I recently added the 2...e6 Sicilian to my repertoire against 1.e4, where it has become my principal system of defense. I especially like its fluidity.

Although we soon reached a position that I had never seen before, I easily achieved a dynamic equality, and the game was eventually drawn by repetition after 30 moves or so. I know of a few other openings that switch between 1.d4 and 1.e4 systems, but there aren't many of them.

2005 World Championship

2011-08-29T17:32:00.002+02:00

Continuing to make progress on Where to Go From Here, I added the 2005 FIDE World Chess Championship, San Luis, Argentina, to my page on Chess History. The next two additions will be for the 2006 and 2007 World Championships.

That's Entertainment!

2011-08-26T15:49:00.002+02:00

The excitement is palpable as Daniel King and Maurice Ashley provide live commentary on an important blitz game between two leading grandmasters.

Anand - Ivanchuk, Intel Grand Prix, 1994 London (10:09) • 'Anand must win this second blitz game to stay in the match...'

To follow the game on Chessgames.com, see Viswanathan Anand vs Vassily Ivanchuk, London GP, final play off, blitz g/5(2) 1994.

World Championship Chess Pins

2011-08-25T12:23:00.002+02:00

No, I'm not talking about Bishops pinning Knights against royalty; I'm talking instead about the sort of pin pictured on the left. Its eBay title was 'FIDE Chess Match Petrosian - Fischer Argentina 1971 Pin' and when I first saw it there were a little more than two hours left for the auction with a high bid around $150. I said to myself, 'That's a lot for a pin', bookmarked it out of curiosity to see the final price, and was surprised to see it pop up on the list of items for my latest post on Top eBay Chess Items by Price.

That little pin received 22 bids from six bidders and finally sold for US $1186. The pin's description said only, 'Pretenders chess match Petrosian - Fischer, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1971', where pretenders match is the Russian equivalent of candidates match, as in World Chess Championship : 1970-72 Candidates Matches.

The astute seller of the item is well known on this blog by his eBay handle bulkcover, last seen in Chigorin Played Correspondence Chess. You can find my previous posts on his eBay activity by using the search box in the navigation column on the right. Something tells me this isn't his last mention here.

And Then There Were Five Six

2011-08-23T15:57:00.003+02:00

I've often remarked that chess and metaphysics don't mix very well; see for example the very first episode in my series titled Video Friday. There are, of course, exceptions, one of which is the recent press release for the 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace (Monroi.com).

The Canadian Centre for Ecumenism is delighted to announce the launch of Youth Chess Tournaments for Peace, in Montreal, on September 7, 2011 in collaboration with MonRoi Inc. and the Canadian Chess’n Math Association. The event will coincide with the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the 2nd Global Conference on World’s Religions After 9/11, a combined initiative of McGill University and the University of Montréal.

When I first saw the announcement for the event I was immediately attracted by the poster showing nine religious symbols, a few of which were unfamiliar to me. You can see that poster here -- 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace -- on USchess.org. With the help of Monroi.com I found an excellent explanation of the symbols on the Collections page of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism (CCE), under Summary Table of World Religions.

You can imagine my surprise when I started to write this post and discovered that the 'same' poster, pictured below, now shows only six religious symbols. A comparison of the latest version of the poster with the Summary Table revealed that Bahá’í, Buddhism, Native Spirituality, and Zoroastrianism were all missing from both versions, while three unidentified symbols had disappeared from the older poster. The disappearance of Buddhism was especially strange, given that the Dalai Lama, mentioned specifically in the press release, is the spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhism.

I trust that the youth tournament will fare better than the poster. For more about the tournament, as well as the '2nd Global Conference on World's Religions', see 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace Home (also Monroi.com). • For more about the historically difficult relationship between chess and metaphysics, see Religion and Chess and Chess Bans Through the Ages, both by Bill Wall.

Introduction to FIDE Zones

2011-08-22T14:51:00.000+02:00

Continuing with Where to Go From Here?, I converted an article titled Introduction to FIDE Zones and added it to my page on Chess History. The article, which was originally a piece I wrote on vacation using FIDE rating data, uses info and stats from 2005, rendering it somewhat out of date. Bringing it up to date would make a simple project at some time in the future.

Meditation on the Bishop Pair

2011-08-19T11:43:00.001+02:00

I have no idea where this was taken. The only clues in the tags were 'Architecture' and 'Spain'.

Spraggett on Smirnov

2011-08-18T13:35:00.008+02:00

A day after posting the latest pick for my fortnightly Video Friday series, More GM Instruction, in one of those strange coincidences that occur so often in the blogosphere, I noticed that the same video was spotlighted on GM Spraggett's blog in a post titled Commercializing chess instruction. While I had chosen the video as the best of the previous fortnight's weak offerings and had ignored the blatant marketing by GM Smirnov at the end of the clip, Spraggett pounced on that marketing as the clip's main message. He's right about that, but carried it farther.

I don't want to criticize Smirnov's efforts to promote chess -- my god, there are so many worse 2nd-rate books, videos and DVDs out there -- but it seems to me that something has been lost along the path that Smirnov started on years ago...

Take a look at this free video that Smirnov has put on Youtube. Although it is filled with useful advice for beginners, it is also filled with cheesey contradictions. For example, Smirnov advises players not to play 'dubious' openings like the Kings Gambit (!), the Center counter (1.e4 e5 2.d4) and the Bird's Opening (1.f4) -- "and stuff like that" as Smirnov puts it. But later on in this video lesson, he suggests that a good way to avoid your opponent's computer preparation against your Kings Indian is to play the Dutch (1.d4 f5)! Go figure that one out!

These comments immediately got me thinking. I had watched the video twice, and although there was nothing revolutionary about its content, I thought it contained a few tips aimed at average club players rather than 'useful advice for beginners'. I was also puzzled by the classification of the Dutch Defense as a dubious opening. After all, Botvinnik used to play it against GM-level opponents in important games. I wasn't aware that, in the 50+ years since Botvinnik's heyday, opening theory had relegated the Dutch to the trash pile.

I watched the video again. Here is the rest of Smirnov's advice after 'Don't play dubious openings':-

Q: How can you detect whether a given opening is good or not? • A: Detect how many players over 2600 rating play this opening.

Q: You are playing a game and your opponent is making his opening moves very quickly. He is obviously using his pre-game preparation. What should you do then? • A: You should not be afraid of an opponent's preparation in strategic positions, but you should break his preparation ASAP in tactical positions.

Q: You have prepared for a game and are ready to play against your opponent's opening. When the game begins, an opponent suddenly plays something totally unexpected. It is obvious that he has prepared this line especially against you. What should you do then? • A: You should not play your usual opening, but turn to something new as soon as possible. Maybe you will play the line you are not well versed in. However, you should not be afraid of it, because your opponent won't know it either.

I'm sure this advice isn't aimed at beginners. They have no idea what distinguishes a 2600 player from a 1600 player; couldn't tell the difference between a strategic position, a tactical position, and a hole in the ground; and would never imagine that players actually prepare specific openings against specific opponents. GM Spragget travels in more elite chess circles than I do and apparently considers any player with a rating less than 2000 to be a beginner. I set the cutoff around a thousand points lower.

As for the classification of the Dutch as a dubious opening, I decided to follow GM Smirnov's advice to 'Detect how many players over 2600 rating play this opening'. This is a technique that I use for my own repertoire -- mainly to keep track of recent theoretical developments -- so I already have the tools. As of mid-2011, I counted over 30 games where a 2600+ player conducted the Black side of 1.d4 f5, and in 2010, over 40. These counts don't include any games where Black chose another move order to avoid the Staunton Gambit (2.e4). This compares to less than a dozen 2600+ games with the King's Gambit in 2010 and 2011 combined, and an equivalent number with Bird's Opening (most of those with GM Nakamura playing White).

The Kevin Spraggett page on Chessgames.com tells us that after the King's Indian and the Queen's Pawn Game, the Dutch is his third favorite defense against 1.d4. The most recent of the games were played in 2008, all of them draws, so the opening was not a youthful indiscretion abandoned after a catastrophic loss. Why is Spraggett so down on the Dutch? It's a mystery to me.

***

Later: This post appeared in the Hebden Bridge Chess Club's Chess Improvement Carnival: September Edition.