Is Adorjan OK?

After the series on Practical Evaluation, what's next? One idea comes from the last post in that series, A Pawn Equals 200 Rating Points, where I estimated,

The value of the first move is 40 rating points (1/5 of a Pawn). Going back to the table from 'Chess Ratings' (rating expectancies vs. differences), a difference of 40 rating points gives the higher rated player a little less than a 0.56 chance of winning the game. This means a 56% expected score for White, and a 44% expected score for Black, which is close to the result derived from databases of historical master-level games.

How does that square with the 'Black Is OK' books by GM Andras Adorjan? Here are the publication dates and titles of the three books in the series:-

• 1988: 'Black Is OK!'
• 2004: 'Black Is Still OK!'
• 2005: 'Black Is OK Forever!'

I once reviewed the last title, Black Is OK Forever!, and have since acquired the first two titles, so I'm ready to roll.

Practical Evaluation

It's time to wrap up this series on 'Engine Evaluation' and 'Material Imbalances'. Here are the posts to date:-

• 2012-12-13: Engine Evaluation
• 2013-01-15: Kaufman's Material Imbalances • Kaufman 1999
• 2013-01-22: Notes on Material Imbalances
• 2013-01-29: Soltis on Kaufman's Material Imbalances
• 2013-02-07: One Imbalance Leads to Another • Kaufman 2003
• 2013-02-14: Piece Values Are Relative • Soltis on Spielmann
• 2013-02-19: A Pawn Equals 200 Rating Points

For more on 'Engine Evaluation', see Evaluation on chessprogramming.wikispaces.com; a site search on 'evaluation' also yields many other useful pages. In several games I've already used the knowledge acquired -- especially with regard to a more accurate evaluation of Rook vs. minor piece exchanges -- and am certain that my understanding of chess has deepened noticeably.

All TMERs Converted

Taking a break from the Carlsen series (where the previous post was Carlsen TMER TWIC Refs) I went back to the About to Tripod conversions and finished converting everything I intended to do for Chess History on the Web : Support material. The last two TMERs were

• Ponomariov's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record, and
• Staunton's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record

Not only did I add the two new pages to my Chess History index, I also tweaked the other six TMERs linked from that page to make them all consistent. Then I altered links to point to the converted material from the 'career' page on my World Chess Championship site : Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Records.

Sources of Inspiration

The topic I had planned for today's blog post crashed and burned just after takeoff. Since damage repair will take some time, I had to scramble to find another topic. My first idea was a topic I've had on the backburner for a few months, but it turned out to be too heavy for the time I still had available. My second idea, another backburner topic, was to analyze the chess links I collected during the full year 2012.

I spend some time every day, totaling a few hours each week, going through various web based resources keeping up with chess news and reading posts of interest on the various chess blogs I follow. Anything of particular interest gets bookmarked and added to an archive of links that dates back ten years or so. In 2012 I bookmarked nearly 1200 web pages.

I isolated the 2012 portion of the archive, loaded it into a database, and ran various queries against it. The 1200 links represented 243 different domains, 79 of them with more than one link. These don't include World Championship or chess960 links, which I split off early in the process and handle separately for my other blogs. Of the 243 different domains, the ten resources I found most useful in 2012 are shown in the following list. (The list has 12 domains because of a tied count on the last item.)

• 106 www.chessbase.com
• 99 www.chessvibes.com
• 72 www.uschess.org
• 59 www.google.com [search on a topical chess phrase]
• 40 groups.google.com [mainly rec.games.chess]
• 39 www.fide.com
• 35 main.uschess.org
• 35 www.chessblog.com
• 33 tartajubow.blogspot.com
• 31 blog.chess.com
• 31 www.chessdom.com
• 31 www.whychess.org

Not surprisingly, the news resources Chessbase and Chessvibes head the list. Chessbase covers all of the most important news items, while Chessvibes typically has many comments from informed chess fans. The two USchess.org domains are a mixture of U.S. chess news items (both www.- and main.-) and the members-only forum (www.-). The Chess.com count would be higher if it included the www.chess.com resource, while Whychess.org would be higher if it included Whychess.com (I had never noticed before this exercise that there were two Whychess domains).

The blogs I bookmarked most frequently were Chessblog.com and Tartajubow.blogspot.com. The first is Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog and the second is by a blogger who prefers to remain anonymous ('Tartajubow') and who has many of the same chess interests that I do: correspondence play, engines, and history. After these two, the blogs I bookmarked the most were:-

• 19 kevinspraggett.blogspot.com
• 17 chessexpress.blogspot.com
• 16 streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com
• 14 stevegiddinschessblog.blogspot.com
• 12 jimwestonchess.blogspot.com

I also bookmarked nearly 20 pages on my own CFAA blog, but this was mainly to flag actions, like follow-ups, for a later time. Looks like I might need an even bigger backburner.

Chess for Preschoolers

Project 366 2012 - 286/366: Chess tournament © Flickr user Rrrodrigo under Creative Commons.

The caption said, 'Otwarte Mistrzostwa Malopolski Przedszkolaków w Szachach', which Google translates as 'Open championship of Malopolska chess preschoolers'.

Putting Faces to Names

Remember this list of Chinese players from my post Putting Names to Numbers, where I identified world top-100 players? China (CHN):-

• 14: 2752 Wang Hao
• 33: 2709 Ding Liren
• 46: 2702 Wang Yue
• 60: 2688 Yu Yangyi
• 73: 2675 Bu Xiangzhi
• 74: 2674 Li Chao b

The first number is the player's world rank as of 1 January 2013. Can you match the name of the star to his face in the following composite image?

Sources: All images from Wikipedia

For the solution, see the comments to this post. For more photos, use Google Images.

A Pawn Equals 200 Rating Points

Continuing the discussion of Kaufman's Material Imbalances, there are two methods of estimating the value of an imbalance in chess. The first method that all chess players learn is the 1/3/5/9 scale, where the unit is the value of a Pawn. Kaufman frequently resorts to another method, estimating an imbalance in terms of a rating difference. For example, here's a passage from 'The Evaluation of Material Imbalances':-

In case you are wondering what the study showed the rating equivalent of a Pawn to be, I must point out that it is a tricky question. The problem is that when one side is up in material, sometimes it's because he's just outplayed his opponent, but other times it's because the opponent has sacrificed the material for some compensation.

If we make the fair but arbitrary assumption that on average the player who is behind in material has 50% compensation for it, then the rating value of a Pawn (without compensation) works out to about 200 points. In other words, if you outrate your opponent by 200 points but blunder away a Pawn for nothing in the middlegame, the chances should be equal.

In other words, a Pawn is equivalent to a 200 point rating difference. In my page on Chess Ratings, I copy a well known table that equates a 200 point difference to a 0.76, i.e. 76%, chance of winning. To keep it simple, we can round this to 75% for easier mental calculation. The Kaufman paragraph that I just quoted is followed by a discussion of the value of a tempo.

Statistics show that in (international) master play White is worth about 40 rating points; since White's advantage is a half tempo, that means a tempo is worth about 80 points in the opening position. Gambit theory suggests that at the start a Pawn is worth between two and three tempi, so if we use 2 1/2 times 80 we get the same 200 figure.

That squares nicely with a calculation from Kaufman's later article, the one I discussed in One Imbalance Leads to Another. Here a tempo is defined in terms of a Pawn.

• 0.4 - Value of a tempo
• 0.2 - Value of first move

As a practical example, consider the following;

Black(!) to move

This diagram is not the result of 1.e4 e5, but rather 1.e3 e5 2.e4. White started with a first move advantage of 0.2 (of a Pawn), then squandered a tempo to lose 0.4, giving him a net result of -0.2, i.e. 0.2 for Black. A lost tempo on White's second move means the first move advantage passes to Black -- exactly what we expect to happen.

***

Later: Another practical example is to combine the observation

• 0.2 - Value of first move [as a fraction of a Pawn]

with

• A Pawn Equals 200 Rating Points

This implies that the value of the first move is 40 rating points (1/5 of a Pawn). Going back to the table from 'Chess Ratings' (rating expectancies vs. differences), a difference of 40 rating points gives the higher rated player a little less than a 0.56 chance of winning the game. This means a 56% expected score for White, and a 44% expected score for Black, which is close to the result derived from databases of historical master-level games.

Carlsen TMER TWIC Refs

After releasing the game file described in Carlsen TMER PGN, the next step was to create the TMER itself. I took the base data from the PGN file, added references to TWIC (Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess), uploaded the page to Carlsen's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record, and added a link to my page on Chess History.

I was pleased to see from my stats that the carlsen.zip file had more downloads during its first week than the other TMER PGN files had since they were first loaded some weeks (and months) ago. That indicates some demand for the games. I don't usually release my references in a TMER file, but made an exception here since the file is 'under construction' and it will be some time before the final page is ready.

(TMER = Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record)

Fischer's Doodle

It goes without saying that my fortnightly series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price depends on one key resource being available: eBay. While I was reviewing items sold in the last fortnight, eBay burped and decided that the only search results it would give me were '0 results found for chess'.

Luckily I had already looked at one item, pictured below, that would have been a strong candidate for this post even if everything had been working normally. It reminded me of the previous post, Beating Dr.Lasker in a Simul, where I mentioned that Fischer items are 'the most frequently seen grandmaster items of yore' and which also featured an autograph.

The current item was titled '3 BOBBY FISCHER vs SPASSKY AUTOGRAPHED CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TICKETS 1972' and sold for US $1083.99 after three bids. By eBay standards that's not a lot of bids, but this is not a common item.

The description said,

These 3 tickets belong to my sister-in-law's sister from Iceland. In 1972 she worked in the Hotel Loftleidir gift shop where she met Bobby Fischer and he signed the backs of her 3 tickets.

The tickets are a large size 2 3/4 x 6 3/4". The tickets are folded down the center. He also made a drawing of a chess strategy? on one of the tickets.

These tickets are ultra rare and likely the only ones in existence. I decided to auction these tickets together rather than auction them seperately keeping them together for presitge for the winning bidder.

Also interesting was the 'Question & Answer' section.

Q: I have been collecting, selling and showing chess items related to the match here in Iceland for many years. I would advice you not to sell these tickets below 1400-1600 USD. I have sold signed envelops by Bobby and I have a minimum price of 450 USD. Signed tickets are rare and there are many who like them so I would value them higher than 450. if your sister in law lives in Iceland I would gladly advice here. [R.S.], a member of the Icelandic Chess Federation Chess Museum.

Q: Do you guarantee these autographs will pass JSA or PSA certification? Why is the strategy drawing in blue ink while his autograph is in black ink? • A: Certification is not a problem because I know from my sister-in-law and her sister that they are authentic, Bobby signed them in front of her when she worked in the gift shop, she kept them all these years. I will ask her about the blue & black ink/only she would know. I will probably have to add this info to the auctions description and soon. • Later ('Seller added the following information'): Concerning why he signed in blue and drew the checkmate in black: she met Bobby more than once when he came in the gift shop to buy gifts and they were acquainted, she asked him to sign her tickets and he did with his own blue ink pen, then he used her black ink pen to highlight the drawing from his name making a point.

Q: I have the largest collection of Fischer material in the world. I wrote a book showing some of my Fischer items that I've accumulated over the last 30 years. The book is titled, Bobby Fischer Uncensored. I have sold over 300 copies at $350-$450 each. I was wondering if you would consider selling them to me so I can add them to the collection. I would also give you a copy of the Fischer book so you could see the many wonderful items in my collection.

It's curious that the tickets sold for less than what the first questioner advised, but that's eBay. As for the 'chess strategy' shown on the back of the first ticket -- after taking a good look at it, I decided that it could be a doodle about nearly anything.

Play Against Bobby Fischer?

Have you ever wanted to play chess against Bobby Fischer? A few months ago we saw The Match That Never Was, brought to us by Facebook's Chess Club Live. The group has since expanded the concept.

Introducing Chess Time Machine (3:20) • 'We digitized every position played by chess legends [...]'

'[...] so that their play can be simulated and not only can you or I now play them indeed, they can play each other!'

Near the end of the clip, which is a montage of Fischer photos, we are invited to 'Play him in digital! (He is open for play right now!)'. I haven't tried it yet, but you can bet your last dollar that I will.

Piece Values Are Relative

I ended Soltis on Kaufman's Material Imbalances with two further leads for investigation. Last week's post One Imbalance Leads to Another discussed Kaufman's second Chess Life column. This week I'll look at the Spielmann connection.

In 'Rethinking the Chess Pieces', GM Andrew Soltis quotes or paraphrases Spielmann more than 20 times, never giving his source. As I quickly discovered, most, if not all, of the references are from Spielmann's classic book 'The Art of Sacrifice in Chess'. The second, shorter section of the book, titled 'Sacrificial Values', discusses the value of the pieces, without which we wouldn't be able to identify a sacrifice when it happens. Values are also useful to quantify the size (Spielmann's word) of a sacrifice.

The longest discussion of Spielmann's ideas is in Soltis's first chapter (p.12).

STATIC, ABSOLUTE, AVERAGE

The various charts depict the "absolute" value of the pieces, or their "static" value, their "exchange" value and that old standby, their "relative" value. The terms change but the point in all of them is to draw a line between a piece's theoretical value and its worth on the board now. Spielmann wrote:

"All chess units have, in the language of the stock exchange, two prices, the par value and the quoted rate. The par value represents the absolute, the price from day to day the relative value."

Spielmann recognized that the relative value of the pieces is in flux during the course of a game, just as value of a Pawn structure changes. As pieces are traded off, a strong Pawn center means less and less, as Bobby Fischer noted, and by the ending the hanging Pawns, "turn out, as a rule, to be weak," as Boris Spassky put it.

Lasker created his chart to address the early part of the game but he spoke of "endgame value." This term may be best because it is in the ending that pieces are nearest to their "true" value. Endgame value is what counts in chess (unless the game is over in the middlegame). In the opening a Rook Pawn may only be worth a quarter of what a center Pawn, as Lasker claimed, or half a Pawn, as Spielmann suggested. But in the ending a Pawn is a Pawn is a Pawn.

When there are fewer pieces and Pawns on the board, their value is less dependent on their location. "The simpler the position, the more absolute value carries weight," Spielmann said.

Here I have to admit to a misunderstanding. I have always used the term 'relative' value to mean the piece values relative to each other or, as I wrote in Relative Value of Chess Pieces, 'relative to the Pawn'. Both Soltis and Spielmann define it another way.

The par value represents the absolute, the price from day to day [i.e. move to move] the relative value.

I don't know how widespread their definition is. I am fairly certain that few chess writers or players use the phrases 'par value' or 'absolute value' to describe the material relationship of the pieces. I'll keep a lookout for other uses of the terms.

Other FIDE Titles

While I was working on the post about Countries with World Top-100 Players, I noticed there was a new field in the FIDE rating data that I hadn't seen before: 'Other Titles'. These are titles beyond the familiar GM, IM, etc. I wondered how many of these other titles there are and made a little query to count them. The results are shown in the table on the left.

What do the acronyms in the table stand for? The last letter tells us the type of title (I'm working from memory here):-

• A : Arbiter
• I : Instructor
• O : Organizer
• T : Trainer

The first letter tells us the level of the title:-

• F : FIDE
• I : International
• N : National

From this we can work out that FA means 'FIDE Arbiter' and IO means 'International Organizer'. A couple of the titles don't fit the pattern. DI means 'Developmental Instructor', while FST means 'FIDE Senior Trainer'.

What do these titles mean in terms of knowledge? A web search on 'chess fide' plus the relevant title leads to an explanation. As for the difference between an instructor and a trainer, I'll work that out some other time.

Which federations are pursuing these titles? Here are the top ten of the 117 federations with at least one title:-

• RUS : 112
• GRE : 108
• IND : 103
• ESP : 88
• TUR : 82
• HUN : 63
• SRB : 54
• GER : 53
• FRA : 50
• USA : 48

These counts are subject to the same problems I discussed in the 'Countries Top-100' post; entire countries are missing from the rating lists. Some players / officials have more than one title, with 11 currently having three. These people are counted for their federations once for each title.

Carlsen TMER PGN

Once I had created the Carlsen TMER Index, the next step was to include the PGN file itself. Here I had to sort out a few technical details.

The first issue was the file structure. For the other files in the TMER series -- the most recent on this blog was Karpov TMER (1985-) -- I created one PGN file per event for the player. Then I bundled them all into a single ZIP file. This simplifies maintenance, but takes an additional step to load all of the games into a single database. I can do this easily, but other people might not have the tools or know the technique. For this first release, I kept all of the games in a single PGN file.

The second issue was how much data to carry in the PGN headers ('[Event "Candidates match"]' etc.). I'm a minimalist, but the modern tendency is to load every bit of known data about a game into its headers. Although this keeps everything together, the cost is huge files that are more 'machine friendly' than 'people friendly'. An XML-style approach would be more appropriate and I should investigate what has been done for chess software. In the end I decided to go with the basic seven-tag standard roster plus an ECO tag.

While I was doing this I encountered some format issues in the game scores when my software complained about some strange use of the '#' (checkmate) character. I left the problems in the file and will come back to them later.

The PGN file, along with a text index suitable for a database, is available at carlsen.zip. I'll also add a pointer to my first post on the subject, A Magnus Carlsen Game Collection.

(TMER = Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record)

Dilbert on Mastering Chess

Chess is often used as an example of the ten thousand hour benchmark for attaining mastery in some activity. The last time I encountered it was in posting Fischer Psychobiography, where Joseph Ponterotto wrote in the section 'How did Bobby Fischer Get so Good',

A general consensus is that it takes about 10.000 hours of deliberate study often accrued in about ten years to reach elite performance status, regardless of the activity (chess, violin, math, computer programming, music composition, and so on).

Here's a different take on the same subject.

Puts an entirely different light on chess mastery, doesn't it? For the original comic and related comments, see Dilbert comic strip for 02/07/2013 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. For more about 'chess 10000 hours', search on that phrase.

Dr. Kasparov, I Presume

I like this photo for the art as well as the personalities. The photo's caption said,

President Jacob Zuma meets Dr. Garry Kasparov, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, widely regarded as the greatest chess player of all time and his wife Dasha Kasparova at his residence, Mahlamba Ndlopfu, in Pretoria. 23 March 2012.

Has Kasparov been awarded an honorary doctorate? It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Zuma meets Kasparov © Flickr user GovernmentZA under Creative Commons.

The artwork's inscription says,

Thank you, President Zuma, for supporting chess on behalf of the children of South Africa.

Elsewhere we learn that the former World Champion was there to launch the 'Kasparov Foundation' in Africa.

One Imbalance Leads to Another

Strictly speaking, chess isn't infinite, but writing about chess might very well be. Whenever I'm working on a new post, I take notes of related ideas, many of which pop up during research. For my recent post, Soltis on Kaufman's Material Imbalances, I noted 'The many references to Spielmann need to be pursued, as does the Kaufman article in the January 2003 Chess Life.' I'll tackle the Kaufman article in this post and return to Spielmann some other time.

'Initial Values of Pieces and Pawns' by IM Larry Kaufman (now a GM) appeared on p.48 of the January 2003 Chess Life. It was a follow-on to his original article 'The Evaluation of Material Imbalances' in the March 1999 issue. I covered that topic in a recent post titled Kaufman's Material Imbalances. For 'Initial Values', Kaufman abandoned his database in favor of engine vs. engine competition, where he altered the initial setup of the pieces, set the engines against each other, and recorded the results. This allowed him to calculate the theoretical values of the various pieces before any moves are made.

The major/minor piece values that Kaufman calculated in 2003 were so close to the 1999 values that it gave him a defacto confirmation of the methodologies used in both exercises. On top of that, he derived a new set of values that I haven't seen anywhere else.

• 1.1 - d/e-Pawn
• 1.0 - c/f-Pawn
• 0.9 - b/g-Pawn
• 0.6 - a/h-Pawn
• 0.4 - Value of a tempo
• 0.2 - Value of first move
• 1.0 - Value of castling

With those values as a reference, Kaufman then analyzed some well known gambits. For example, he determined that the Benko Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.cxb5 a6 5.bxa6 Bxa6) gives Black a better value than at the start of the game before any moves have been made. It might be interesting to try a similar analysis on one or two of the gambits in my Guide to Chess Gambits (Part 1). There I go again -- one post leads to another.

***

Later: Re '[Kaufman] derived a new set of values that I haven't seen anywhere else', there is some overlap with Lasker's Table of Opening Values. Lasker's values were, however, estimates not based on objective criteria.

Putting Names to Numbers

In Countries with World Top-100 Players, I identified those countries having the most world class players as of January 2013. Who exactly are those players? The following lists show top-100 rank and FIDE rating for each player as of January 2013.

Russia (RUS); >2700, plus 13 other players on top-100

• 02: 2810 Kramnik, Vladimir
• 06: 2780 Karjakin, Sergey
• 11: 2764 Grischuk, Alexander
• 12: 2758 Morozevich, Alexander
• 15: 2747 Svidler, Peter
• 20: 2734 Jakovenko, Dmitry
• 22: 2727 Andreikin, Dmitry
• 27: 2722 Tomashevsky, Evgeny
• 34: 2709 Malakhov, Vladimir
• 40: 2705 Riazantsev, Alexander
• 42: 2703 Nepomniachtchi, Ian

Ukraine (UKR)

• 13: 2758 Ivanchuk, Vassily
• 21: 2733 Ponomariov, Ruslan
• 28: 2722 Volokitin, Andrei
• 29: 2720 Areshchenko, Alexander
• 43: 2703 Moiseenko, Alexander
• 52: 2696 Efimenko, Zahar
• 56: 2690 Korobov, Anton
• 69: 2678 Eljanov, Pavel
• 79: 2666 Kryvoruchko, Yuriy

France (FRA)

• 30: 2713 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
• 38: 2706 Fressinet, Laurent
• 44: 2703 Bacrot, Etienne
• 64: 2686 Edouard, Romain
• 83: 2661 Gharamian, Tigran
• 92: 2654 Istratescu, Andrei
• 102: 2650 Tkachiev, Vladislav

China (CHN)

• 14: 2752 Wang, Hao
• 33: 2709 Ding, Liren
• 46: 2702 Wang, Yue
• 60: 2688 Yu, Yangyi
• 73: 2675 Bu, Xiangzhi
• 74: 2674 Li, Chao b

I could probably identify around half of those players from photos, with the Chinese players presenting the biggest challenge. Perhaps I should do some work to improve that score.

Carlsen TMER Index

Taking a side trip from the project detailed in About to Tripod, I returned to A Magnus Carlsen Game Collection, brought it up to date with games played through January 2013, and uploaded the index of games (1602 by exact count) to carlsen.zip, suitable for import to a spreadsheet or database. For more about Magnus, see Carlsen Plays Everything.

(TMER = Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record)

Beating Dr.Lasker in a Simul

In this series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, a lot of eBay auctions cross the CFAA radar. After Fischer, the most frequently seen grandmaster items of yore feature Capablanca, followed by Alekhine. For some reason, Em.Lasker doesn't appear very often. The item pictured below, titled 'Emanuel Lasker World Chess Champion Signed Letter, Admits Defeat, Super Rare', was on auction for '$1,000.00 or Best Offer'. Judging by its place in the list of items by descending price, I assume it sold for exactly $1000.

The item's description explained,

The letter is written on Chicago City Club letterhead, dated and signed by Emanuel Lasker. The auction includes the newspaper article, glued to cardstock for protection, which tells of the chess exhibition, how my grandfather Robert Stephan beat Lasker, and it directly mentions the letter itself. The letter was given to my grandfather by Emanuel Lasker, for beating him in a 'hard game of chess'. I have done some research, Lasker's autograph is fairly rare. But what's very rare is him admitting defeat in a game of chess.

This letter is guaranteed 100% genuine, by me, grandson of the recipient of the letter. It has been in family since it was written by Lasker those many years ago, and has always been well taken care of. This letter is absolutely positively guaranteed 100% genuine.

My grandfather took over a game that a player gave up on. He took over the game down a Pawn and a Knight. Thats what makes it all the more amazing that my grandfather actually beat Lasker, and probably why Lasker felt compelled to write the letter. I am told there are no other letters known in which Lasker admits defeat in a game of chess.

The caption on the photo, which appeared in the Chicago Sunday Tribune on 27 April 1924, said,

Dr. Emanuel Lasker, former world's champion and winner of the recent international chess masters' tournament in New York, revisited Chicago yesterday after an interval of eighteen years and gave an exhibition at the City club. The photo shows the master with a cup of coffee by his side, playing C.N. Owen, while to Owen's right Don Levi is getting ready for the next move. Owen and Levi both got draws with Dr. Lasker. Dr. Lasker played thirty-seven simultaneous games, winning twenty-nine, drawing six, and losing two.

An accompanying article said,

Robert Stephan, a 16 year old Hyde Park high school boy, yesterday jumped into the elite of Chicago chessdom when he vanquished Dr. Emanuel Lasker, former world's champion and winner of the recent international chess masters' tournament in New York.

Dr. Lasker spent the day in Chicago and in the afternoon gave an exhibition at the City club, playing 37 games simultaneously. Stephan, a spectator, was given an opportunity of finishing one of the games when another player had to leave, and to the surprise of everyone, beat the master. [...]

After the match the former champion sent a short note to young Stephan seeking an opportunity to compliment the young man in person.

Imagine beating Lasker from a deficit of Knight and Pawn!

Chess Sells Supply Chain Logistics

Dematic - The Chess Game (1:53) • 'Material Handling & Logistics Conference, Sponsored by Dematic'

'Supply Chain Advantage - The knowledge to give you an unfair edge'