How To Use Rybka?!

'While Rybka 2.2n2 serves as a basic computer chess program for beginners, Rybka 3 has an extensive database that can analyze opening game moves in near infinite permutations.' The corresponding section of the video shows a chess960 position.

How To Use Rybka (1:53) • 'Rybka is a chess-playing computer software engine created by an MIT-trained computer scientist. If you have Windows, you can play this top-ranked chess program.'

Howcast's Channel: Youtube.com/user/Howcast.

La Fin de la Quête Chirurgicale

Illustration: Guy Froment • From: 'La Fin de la Quête Chirurgicale ou ... Quand Pierre Mendes da Costa Raccroche les Gants' (Bruxelles 2010, p.40)

Les mains dans l'environnement du chirurgien

See also: Eméritat du Prof. Pierre Mendes da Costa : séance scientifique (22/10/2010) - CHU Brugmann.

Three Fischer Games Uncensored

In my previous post, Gligoric - Fischer, Bled 1961, I happened to notice that the Chessgames.com page on that particular rivalry -- Robert James Fischer beat Svetozar Gligoric (+7-4=8) -- mentioned three training games played in 1992. I finished the post with one of my typical promises, 'I don't recall ever seeing the training games, so I'll look at those in a separate post.' This is one promise I'll fulfill ASAP. I didn't have to look far. The source was revealed in comments to the first of the three games: Svetozar Gligoric vs Robert James Fischer (1992).

Oct-08-10 TheFocus: I and parisattack submitted these three training games. Originally they appeared in Bobby Fischer Uncensored by David DeLucia. [...] There were ten games in all. Each player White 5 times. In his next book, perhaps DeLucia will release the other seven.

The best summary of 'Fischer Uncensored' that I could find is in the June 2009 archive of Chess Notes by Edward Winter.

6189. Bobby Fischer Uncensored: One of the most extraordinary of all chess books has just been published: Bobby Fischer Uncensored by David and Alessandra DeLucia (Darien, 2009). A richly-illustrated 394-page hardback of supreme quality, it presents hundreds of items from David DeLucia’s collection of Fischer material, including photographs, game-scores, correspondence, contracts, books and ephemera. [...]

A page from Dutch bookseller Van Stockum, Bobby Fischer Uncensored - DeLucia, D. & A. DeLucia, appears to be taken from the book's introduction.

When Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008 I decided to write a book on him, similar to my prior books on my chess library, which would encompass only Fischer items from my collection. Altough my chess collection has evolved in many ways over the past 25 years, I have always had a keen interest in certain players like Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Fischer. Today, the collection houses close to 4000 items from these five great chess masters, the vast majority of which are signed by, written by or were personal possessions of these extraordinary players. The Fischer collection consists of approximately 1600 items, excluding books written on him, which span his entire life.

That page also links to scanned photos from the book. A few other references worth mentioning are:

• Piece By Piece: Searching for Bobby Fischer’s Stuff; Anatomy of a great collection as told by its creator • 'Here the Connecticut native, who says his favorite chess opponents are his son and daughter, divulges how he built this collection and his plans to share it in the future.'
  
  
• Auction No. 24, 20-22 May 2010 • 'Lot 33. Bobby Fischer Uncensored, by David DeLucia. 2009. A fabulous book full of Fischer's one-time possessions, letters by him, some hitherto unpublished games, examples of his hysterical ranting and raving against his enemies, real and imagined. Some great photos. In red cloth with gilt spine and upper cover. Mint. One of 105 copies for sale (total printing 135). Sold for €300'
  
  
• New In Chess Magazne 5-2010 • Cover photo & summary of 'The Finest Chess Collection in the World'.

I mentioned the training match itself in a recent post on my chess960 blog, The Rampant Expansion of Theory.

Gligoric: [In preparation for his 1992 match with Spassky], Bobby asked if I could play a training match with him. At first I didn’t want to, but I had to give in to his wishes. He was panicking about how theory had developed during his twenty-year absence from chess. That was why he came up with his own version of chess, where the starting position would be determined by the drawing of lots. And he began to torment me with persistent requests to write a book about it.

These training games were indirectly related to the creation of chess960. Who could have guessed?

Gligoric - Fischer, Bled 1961

In the game I discussed previously -- Improving on Fischer, Geller, and Kasparov? -- Fischer overlooked the best continuation and the outcome was clear. Chess GMs play so well that games between them often turn on a single move. That might also be the case in the next game. No.30 in Fischer's 60 Memorable Games and no.64 in Kasparov's Predecessors IV, here is the PGN with Fischer's and Kasparov's punctuation.

[Event "Bled"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1961.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Gligoric, S."]
[Black "Fischer, R."]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "E98"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 e5 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.Ne1 Nd7 10.Nd3 f5 11.exf5 Nxf5 12.f3 Nf6 13.Nf2 Nd4 14.Nfe4 Nh5 {KAS: '?!'} 15.Bg5 Qd7 16.g3 {KAS: '!'} 16...h6 17.Be3 c5 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '?!'} 18.Bxd4 {KAS: '!'} 18...exd4 19.Nb5 a6 {KAS: '!'} 20.Nbxd6 d3 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 21.Qxd3 {KAS: '?!'} 21...Bd4+ 22.Kg2 {KAS: '?'} 22...Nxg3 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 23.Nxc8 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!?'} 23...Nxf1 24.Nb6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 24...Qc7 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 25.Rxf1 Qxb6 26.b4 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 26...Qxb4 27.Rb1 Qa5 28.Nxc5 {KAS: '!'} 28...Qxc5 29.Qxg6+ Bg7 30.Rxb7 Qd4 31.Bd3 Rf4 32.Qe6+ Kh8 33.Qg6 1/2-1/2

The key sequence in the game appears to be the moves starting 17...c5, where the 11th and 13th World Champions differ on the evaluation {FIS: '!'; KAS: '?!'}, due to missed opportunities on White's 21st & 22nd moves.

After Fischer - Gligoric, CT 1959, this is their second game in my series titled 18 Memorable Games. Gligoric was one of three players in 60 Memorable Games to be featured in four games. The other two were Keres and Reshevsky, while Petrosian and Tal were both featured in three games.

Chessgames.com notes that Robert James Fischer beat Svetozar Gligoric 7 to 4, with 8 draws (+7-4=8). If we exclude three 'training' games played in 1992, the score was (+6-4=6), and we see why GM Gligoric was considered one of the best players in the world in the 1960s. To play through the current game, see...

Svetozar Gligoric vs Robert James Fischer, Bled 1961
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044007

...on Chessgames.com. I don't recall ever seeing the training games, so I'll look at those in a separate post.

Kasparov Passes the Salt

Chess Diner © Flickr user Mikey Angels under Creative Commons.

Caption: 'Inspired completely by this joke by the late, great Tommy Cooper: "So I was having dinner with Garry Kasparov and there was a checkered tablecloth. It took him two hours to pass me the salt."'

White Christmas on Ebay

Maybe it's me, or maybe it's because we're approaching the Christmas season, but my series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price is starting to assume a life of its own. In my previous post, Wiener Werkstaette Postcards, I remarked that I had found more items to choose from than ever before. For this post, I can say the same. Here are a few of the items I considered.

• Chess - Essais sur les echecs by Grondijs -SIGNED- # 5/10 • Bid history: 9 bids, Winning bid: US $965.00; 'Essais sur les echecs by Harrie Grondijs. It is SIGNED, of course, and is # 5 of only 10 copies printed. Again, Mr. Grondijs' fascination with the Chapais manuscript is evident. This was published in 2009 with 32 + vii + 523pp. The 32 pp. are an introduction by the famed French collector, Jean Mennerat and comments by Mr. Grondijs. The remaining pages are the reprint of the Chapais manuscript.' • See also my previous post Saavedra and Grondijs.
  
  
• Twiss 1st Edition Chess 1787 Benjamin Franklin Essay • Sold For: US $950.00; 'Twiss, Richard. "Chess" First Edition. G.G.J. & J. Robinson and T. & J. Egerton, 1787. An interesting and entertaining collection that comprises a "Compilation of all the anecdotes and quotations that could be found relative to the game of chess; with an account of all the chess-books which could be procured." Notably contains the first appearance of Benjamin Franklin's "final and possible greatest contribution to Chess; his essay on "The Morals of Chess," in book format! The actual first appearance of this essay was first published in the December 1786 issue of "The Columbian Magazine."'
  
  
• Antique c1890 Federation Chess Clock: Fattorini & Sons • Bid history: 30 bids, Winning bid: GBP 585.00 (Approximately US $927.52)
  
  
• Mens 1910's Zenith Vintage Watch Dial w/ Chess Figures • Bid history: 43 bids, Winning bid: US $865.00 • This item was very similar to the watch I featured in Time Is on My Side. The biggest differences were that here it was marked 'Zenith' instead of 'Tissot', and the small dial to count seconds was positioned at 6 o'clock instead of 9.
  
  
• Novag Diablo Chess Computer • Bid history: 21 bids, Winning bid: US $813.00; '1991 Novag Diablo chess computer great condition, the unit works and looks great.'

Instead of those items, where I could have worked with any one, I chose Chess - Christmas Series - Roi Accule - HC - 1905 - Rebound. It received 10 bids and sold for US $814.00.

Like many players, I'm not particularly interested in chess problems (in contrast to endgame studies, which I find fascinating), but I've seen references to Alain White's work so many times that curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know a little more about who he was and why his 'Christmas Series' is so popular for collectors.

The description said,

Roi Acculé Aux Angles par Alain C. White. Published in 1905 as a HC as far as I know. This copy has been re-bound and the cover material (not the cardboard) of the original covers was attached to the new covers. Thus, the front cover and back cover and most of the spine material has been glued professionally to the new covers. Quoting from Ken Whyld, supposedly 200 copies only were printed. xi + 224pp.

The second Christmas Series book published although in the check list published by Ken Whyld, it says this is the truly 1st Christmas Series book, although Chess Lyrics is considered elsewhere to be the 1st issue. He says that Chess Lyrics took three years to finish, maybe that is why. This is a stubby little book that weighs a pound or so!

According to Great Chess Composers, by Bill Wall,

Alain Campbell White (1880-1951) was an American problem composer and chess patron. For 32 years, from 1905 to 1936, he published the Christmas series of chess problems. He did more than any other player to promote worldwide interest in chess problems.

The German version of Wikipedia has a page on White -- Alain Campbell White -- with links to other resources, including a Czech language page (Chessbookshop.com) on the A. C. White Christmas Series, listing 44 different titles.

What does 'Roi Acculé Aux Angles' mean in English? Although I speak some French, I'm not sure how to translate it. Google Translate says it means 'King Cornered In Angles', a literal translation that doesn't make a lot of sense. One page I looked at described the book as '200 direct mates featuring a cornered Black King'. At $814 for the book, that's more than $4 per mate. I'm still not sure why White is so popular with collectors. I'll report back here if I ever find out.

From the Mark-Weeks.com Team

A few days ago I received this email...

Subject: Report
From: Automatic Email Delivery Software
To: wcc@mark-weeks.com
Date: Saturday, October 16, 2010, 2:06 PM

Dear user wcc@mark-weeks.com,

Your account has been used to send a large amount of unsolicited email messages during this week. Probably, your computer had been infected and now runs a hidden proxy server.

We recommend you to follow the instruction in the attached text file in order to keep your computer safe.

Best wishes,
The mark-weeks.com team.

...The email address wcc@mark-weeks.com is the contact address I use on my World Chess Championship site. It is an alias for another mailbox and is never used to send mail of any type. As for the mark-weeks.com team, it consists of me, myself, and I. All three of us agreed that the email message was some kind of a fraud. The exact kind of fraud wasn't too difficult to determine...

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

***************** VIRUS REMOVED *****************

An attachment has been removed because it contained a virus.

***************** VIRUS REMOVED *****************

Virus name: [W32/Sality.AD]
Virus scanner: [Authentium]
Attachment name: [wcc@mark-weeks.com]
Attachment type: [application/octet-stream]

...While I'm on the subject of egregious attempts to infect my system with malware, almost every day I get hundreds of hits on my server looking for files that have something do with PHP, for example:-

• GET //~/admin/config/config.inc.php?p=phpinfo(); HTTP/1.1
  
• GET //mysqladmin/config/config.inc.php?p=phpinfo(); HTTP/1.1
  
• GET //phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/config/config.inc.php?p=phpinfo(); HTTP/1.1

I shudder to think what would happen if the perpetrators actually found such a file. Would my site become a command & control center for an Elbonian botnet?

***

In case you came to this post looking for something that had to do with chess, I don't want you to leave disappointed. While I was looking at the server stats, I noticed traffic from a domain I had never seen before: 14th WMCCC, Gunadarma University, Jakarta, Indonesia, October 8-15, 1996. That particular page has all sorts of info on the 14th WMCCC (World Microcomputer Chess Championship) and I assume the other pages in the domain are equally detailed. The index page is at Chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Tournaments.

Improving on Fischer, Geller, and Kasparov?

The key position in Fischer - Geller, Skopje 1967 is shown in the following diagram (see that previous post for the PGN and a link to Chessgames.com). Fischer played 20.a3, where Fischer, Geller, and Kasparov all gave the move a '?', suggesting 20.Qf4! instead.

Skopje 1967
Geller, Efim

Fischer, Robert
After 19...Nxe4

My engine finds 20.Qf4 better for White at depth 13, giving 20...cxb2 21.Rh5 Nf6 {FIS: 21...Nc3+} 22.Rh6 Rxf7 {GEL: 22...d5} 23.Bxf7 Be4 24.Bb3 d5 25.Bxf6 Bxc2+ {KAS: 25...gxf6}, as best. I've indicated where the machine deviates from the published analysis of the three GMs, who each in turn improved on the other's previous analysis.

Now the machine comes up with 26.Bxc2 Qxf4 27.Rxh7+ Kg8 28.Rxg7+ Kh8 29.Rh7+ Kg8 30.Bxe7 Rc8 31.Rh3 Rxc2 32.Kxc2 Qc7+ 33.Kb1 Qxe7 34.Rxd5 Qe4+ 35.Rdd3 Qe1+ 36.Kxb2 Qb4+ 37.Kc2 Qc4+ as best. I've left out side variations that, although significant, don't change the course of the game dramatically.

In the final position, Black is behind in material with 2R+3P vs. Q+P, but the White King has difficulty finding shelter from the Queen's checks without dropping a Pawn. I abandoned the analysis here because I was far from the diagrammed position ('long analysis, wrong analysis') and finding a technical win for White would take more time than I had available. While Black is behind materially, it's worth remembering that 2R+P vs. Q is often a theoretical draw.

Olympiad Last Round

Ponomariov: 'In general I think the Olympiad was run at a high level. The hotel was quite good; the food was quite good; the organizers provided good transport so we can play concentrated on our games.'

2010 Chess Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk - Day 11 Report (3:06) • 'For results, pairing and live games please visit www.pakchess.org'

The Market Demands It!

In a number of posts I've expressed my admiration for old BBC chess programming -- see BBC: The Master Game -- with special interest in shows that spotlighted the World Championship: Karpov - Kasparov (Moscow 1985, Game 16) and 1993 Kasparov - Short on BBC. After the BBC itself, the common denominator in the programming was one William Roland Hartston [Wikipedia].

In today's democratic climate, where the requirements for Grandmaster titles are much relaxed, Hartston would easily be a GM, but in the old days he had to settle for IM. The Streatham & Brixton blog did a series on Hartston a few months ago, starting with

• Bill Hartston Speaks • 'Didn't They Use to Put Chess on the Telly? It was clearly our greatest era and nobody, aside perhaps from a certain R.D. Keene, could challenge Bill Hartston’s claim to be television’s “Mr. Chess”. Although no longer actively involved in the game, back then, some tournaments broadcast late at night on ITV aside, if chess was being televised Hartston would inevitably have his fingers in the pie. I caught up with him for a chat about his appearances on TV and why the game has all but disappeared from our screens. Our story begins, as many chess narratives do, in Reykjavik forty years ago...'

and continuing with loads of links to YouTube clips.

• Bill Hartston Speaks II: Chess on the Telly
  
• Bill Hartston Speaks III: What Bill Did Next
  
• Bill Hartston Coda: The Master Game 1981

The Coda summarized 'The Master Game' with

It was a memorable show. I would always be amazed that my schoolfriends, who to my certain knowledge were not players, would watch the programme and then come to me and talk about it the following day. But that was an index of how good it was. The world has changed since then, but I do not see why something a little like it would not be good again.

Not everyone was so impressed by Hartston's work. Here is former World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 'From Baguio to Merano' by Karpov and Baturinsky, commenting on his 1978 title match against Korchnoi (p.73-74):

Many of those who came to Baguio as correspondents for their papers had altogether not the slightest connection with our game, and in fact this is one field where it is extremely difficult to get by without a minimum of specialist knowledge. [...] And those of them who had no knowledge of our game described in especially vivid terms and pronouncements by the grandmaster who had defected from the Soviet Union -- since this in itself was a sensation, and everything associated with it was readily published by the papers. But where does chess come into all this?

There is another, perhaps even more refined method of forming public chess opinion. Immediately after the match, in fearful haste dictated by purely opportunist considerations (the market demands it!) a whole series of books devoted to the match were written. The quality of the overwhelming majority of them leaves a great deal to be desired. [...] I made the acquaintance of an analysis of the match games in a book by William Hartston, and it immediately became clear why this player, who for a long time promised to become the first English grandmaster, continues to remain an ordinary master. The superficiality of his subjective comments is beneath all criticism.

What are the characteristics of superficial and subjective comments? I'm not sure I can tell, so in another post I'll look at notes by both Karpov and Hartston to some games from that memorable match.

Olympiad Records

A few weeks ago I received an email saying,

The reason I'm writing is to find out more about an article at Susan Polgar's blogspot website. She writes that Kramnik is "closing in on a record" of consecutive Olympiad games without a loss. She didn't say who has the current record, in the Men's, or how many games is the record??

Closing in on the record
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/10/closing-in-on-record.html

Do you know who holds the current record for this, in the 'Men's' division, and how many games it is?? I was thinking Tal, or Portisch maybe?

Having no answer, I forwarded the message to Olimpbase.org, who promptly replied,

Before 2010 Kramnik's score was 32,5 of 47 (18 wins 29 draws, no loss) so he played 55 games overall (stats after 2010 Olympiad). In fact, he is the one to have played most games ever at the Olympiad and lose none.

Men's Chess Olympiads' Overall Statistics
http://www.OlimpBase.org/statistics/all_id09.html

That's the Record no. #1. As for record no. #2 (longest no-loss run) he is far behind current holder Tigran Petrosian, who conceded no loss on his first 7 appearances on the olympiads (1958-1970) only to lose once in 1972, in his game #96. His loss to Hubner is actually the sole one among 103 games!

Petrosian, Tigran
http://www.olimpbase.org/players/ikkqkgyh.html

Read more Olympic trivia here:

Men's Chess Olympiads Trivia
http://www.olimpbase.org/articles/trivia.html

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: Thanks, Olimpbase!

Fischer - Geller, Skopje 1967

Continuing with 18 -> 21 Memorable Games, here is the PGN game score showing the punctuation from the game that was no.58 in Fischer's 60 Memorable Games, no.100 in Kasparov's Predecessors II, and no.99 in Geller's Application of Chess Theory.

[Event "Skopje"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1967.08.??"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Fischer, Robert J"]
[Black "Geller, Efim"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B57"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Bc4 e6 7.Be3 Be7 8.Bb3 O-O 9.Qe2 Qa5 {KAS: '?!'} 10.O-O-O Nxd4 11.Bxd4 Bd7 12.Kb1 Bc6 {KAS: '?'; GEL: '?'} 13.f4 Rad8 14.Rhf1 {KAS: '!'} 14...b5 15.f5 {FIS: '!!'; KAS: '!'; GEL: '!'} 15...b4 16.fxe6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 16...bxc3 17.exf7+ Kh8 18.Rf5 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 18...Qb4 {KAS: '!'; GEL: '!'} 19.Qf1 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 19...Nxe4 {KAS: '!'} 20.a3 {FIS: '?'; KAS: '?'; GEL: '?'} 20...Qb7 21.Qf4 {KAS: '?'} 21...Ba4 {FIS: '!!'; KAS: '!!'; GEL: '!!'} 22.Qg4 Bf6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'; GEL: '!'} 23.Rxf6 Bxb3 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'; GEL: '!'} 0-1

By any standards, there are a lot of '!'s in this game. It might be more interesting to look at the '?'s, especially to see whether the mean machine can find any resources that three top GMs missed. I doubt it, but it's worth a try. If nothing pops up, I'll return to the series last seen in Fischer - Geller, Bled 1961.

To play through the complete game, see...

Robert James Fischer vs Efim Geller, Skopje 1967
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044020

...on Chessgames.com.

There's Something About Alice (*)

Are all the pieces different? If so, it's a good thing the bases are marked with the chess piece represented. I wonder where the set is located geographically. Has anyone here seen it?

Alice in Wonderland Chess Set Sculpture © Flickr user koontzb under Creative Commons.

(*) Last spotted at Alice in Lumberland.

Wiener Werkstaette Postcards

For the next post in the series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, I had the largest selection of items that I can remember. I could have chosen from any one of the following:-

• Chess computer Mephisto exclusive Lyon 32-bit • Bid history: 28 bids, Winning bid: GBP 1,019.00, Approximately US $1,622.45
  
  
• Mens 10k yellow gold round diamond chess cross pendant • Sold for: US $1,170.00
  
  
• Harry Potter movie 'Final Challenge' zinc chess set & board • Sold for: US $999.99 (two of these sold for that price)
  
  
• Huge Dresden Lace Plateau Lady & Man Playing Chess 17" • Sold for: Original price US $1,195.00, Discounted price US $750.00
  
  
• Dave Matthews Poster - Wrigley Field 9/17 Chess Series • Sold for: US $700.00; 'Selling the entire chess series (5 posters) from the Dave Matthews Band tour of 2010. All posters are IN HAND and are MINT! London, Hershey, Flushing, Louisville, and Chicago!'

Instead I chose '1911 Wiener Werkstaette, Wiener Cafe - chess match!', pictured on the left. It received 21 bids and the winning bid was US $925.00.

Why choose this particular item? First, I had no idea that a postcard would attract such competitive bidding. The 21 bids included 12 different bidders. Second, I had no idea that a postcard would sell for so much. The second highest bid was $915.00, when the item started at $9.99! There are some serious postcard collectors competing on eBay.

The item's description said,

Here is an Investment Grade 1911 Wiener Werkstaette No. 531 Art Postcard titled “Wiener Café: Die Schachspieler.” The artwork is by Moritz Jung. The card shows a nerve-wracking game of chess with several men watching through the café’s window. The card is postally unused and in fabulous condition.

A single page of search results convinced me that the auction's result was not at all unusual; see Wiener-werkstaette-postkarten.com for lots of examples. Looks like I should have spent my hard-earned Euros buying postcards instead of chess books.

Critiquing the CNC

Earlier this year I wrote a couple of posts about the mysterious CNC -- What's the CNC? and That's the CNC! -- aka 'Chess News Corporation'. It looks now like the CNC is officially in service, except it has metamorphosed to become the Chess Network Company, allowing it to keep the same domain name: Chessnc.com. Here, for the benefit of future chess historians researching the history of FIDE, is an image showing the home page.

If you're like me, the first thing you probably noticed was that big image that dominates the center of the screen. If you're even more like me than I am, you probably asked, 'What's that big image got to do with chess?' That artists rendition of whatever-it-is (New England autumn foliage?) appears on every page in the site, at least all of the pages that I looked at, and sports the informative name 'banner.jpg'.

I once worked for a company where the president liked to walk around saying, 'The most expensive real estate in the world is the top of an engineer's desk.' He was talking about computers and everything behind them, but he might as well have been talking about the computer screen itself, our window to the magical world of information systems, the internet, the web, the cloud. Nowadays he's probably walking around saying, 'The most important marketing resource in the world are the eyeballs looking at our company's web site.' Whatever he's saying, he's definitely not giving his visitors fields and rolling hills.

On top of the wasted space, I noticed a few other things. See those two round, blue buttons ('<<' & '>>') in the lower right of the big image? When you click on them, they don't do anything. Believe me, I tried several times. I even turned Flash on, but the result was the same. Worst of all is that big blue bar in the lower left of the big image. It says, '29.10.10 - KIRSAN ILYUMZHINOV RE-ELECTED FOR FIDE P', i.e. it starts with the wrong date and ends with a truncated headline. Here's the first paragraph of the news article behind that link:-

Few days before the elections the Lausanne Sport Court declined the case brought up by Karpov and Kasparov against FIDE (and legitimacy of Ilyumzhinov's tion from the side of Russian Chess Federation). These year’s elections were marked with a scandalous pre-election campaign movements – Anatoly Karpov and his team accused FIDE in being corrupted, that has never been proved. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had an idea to sue the opponent for such accusations.

I could start by asking, 'What's a tion?', then move on to more subtle points, but why bother. At least they spelled 'Ilyumzhinov' right. This is a news site? TWIC, Chessbase, Chessvibes, and Chessdom have nothing to worry about here.

18 -> 21 Memorable Games

While flipping through one of the Predecessors volumes for the Nth time, I noticed that the famous game Fischer - Geller, 1967 Skopje, was included in the Volume II section on Smyslov. It then occurred to me that the game wasn't on my list of 18 Memorable Games, the collection of games annotated by both Fischer and Kasparov. It turns out that I had overlooked Fischer's draws and losses recorded in sections of Predecessors on the other World Champions. After locating three more games and adding them to my list of 18, I decided that the 1967 Skopje game would make a good followup to the posts on Fischer - Geller, Bled 1961, especially since the 1961 game was unusually one-sided.

Geller has made several appearances in this blog -- Geller and the World Championship, Kasparov: '[Geller had] a positive or equal score against nearly all the World Champions!'; A Small Error in Wade & O'Connell, Fischer was +3-5=2 against Geller; and Soviet GMs on Fischer's Style, Geller: 'Both in the opening and in the middlegame, Fischer's main strength is that he quickly and excellently solves simple functions. He does not devise deep plans, but leaps from position to position.' -- and it turns out that, along with his four other wins against Fischer, he also annotated the 1967 game in his book 'The Application of Chess Theory'. I'll look at the Skopje game in my next post in this series.

La Mesa Middle

'For the kids at La Mesa Middle School, the game they look forward to is chess. That's all because of one man, long time San Diego resident Richard West.'

Chess at La Mesa Middle (3:57) • 'Chess coach Richard West attracts players to his tables for lunchtime games.'

Where is La Mesa Middle? Here: Retiree Is Chairman of the Boards at La Mesa Middle.