Esports Yahoos

By the guiding principle of consistency, the title of this month's Yahoos post should have echoed the title of last month's post, World Championship Yahoos 2025 1/? (January 2025), where '1/?' was supposed to mean the start of a new series of undetermined length centered on a dispute:-

The dispute is about FIDE's claim to have the exclusive right to any 'World Chess Championship'.

I should have written '1/1' or omitted the numbering completely, because the dispute evaporated as quickly as it had developed. For the nitty-gritty on its resolution, see FCPC Backs Down (February 2025; 'Freestyle Chess Players Club') on my WCC blog.

Back to this month's Yahoos post (see the footnote for an explanation of 'Yahoos'), Google News returned 101 stories, of which three were old stories from previous months. The only stories receiving special mention from Google News were three grouped under a heading titled, 'Magnus Carlsen talks about chess and life', e.g. 'World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen cannot beat his smartphone in chess'. Neither can anyone else, so what's the news? More interesting were several news stories like the following.

• 2025-02-06: Chess Makes Historic Debut At Esports World Cup 2025 With $1.5 Million Prize Pool (chess.com) • 'Chess.com and GM Magnus Carlsen have announced a major partnership with the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), which means that competitive chess will be featured for the first time in the 2025 Esports World Cup (EWC), the world’s largest gaming and esports festival. The prestigious event is set to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from July 31 to August 3, 2025 and the partnership means the world’s top chess players will be competing for a massive $1.5 million prize pool. It’s a significant deal for the chess world as the game for the first time will be showcased to a new generation of esports enthusiasts.'
  
  
• 2025-02-21: Carlsen wins again as he qualifies for the $1.5m Saudi Esports World Cup (theguardian.com; Leonard Barden) • 'The Norwegian world No 1 beat Hikaru Nakamura twice at the Chessable Masters despite endgame lapses'

Neither story gave any details about the future event, so let's switch to an older news item that reads like a press release.

• 2024-12-17: It’s Official: Chess is Coming to the Esports World Cup 2025 (esportsworldcup.com) • 'Chess is one of the world’s most popular and enduring strategy games. And now, with its addition to the Esports World Cup [EWC] 2025 lineup, we are settling the debate: It’s officially an esport, too! [...] Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is joining Esports World Cup Chess as a Global Ambassador.'

The article also informed,

Esports World Cup 2025 Chess Format • Chess at the EWC will be played in a rapid 10+0 chess format. [...] Twelve players hoping to compete at the EWC will qualify through the Champions Chess Tour, which will host two online tour events in February and May of 2025. A final Last Chance Qualifier will take place in Riyadh to select the final four competitors.'

The following infographic, from the same article, summarized the most important info.

The headlines of other Google News stories mentioned more top players besides Carlsen: GMs Caruana, Nakamura, Nepomniachtchi, and Yu Yangyi. It's not completely clear what sets this event apart from the other online events with the same players. Maybe it's the prize fund.

Another event had even more stories than the EWC. The most recent story at the time of this post was:-

• 2025-02-26: Three-way tie sets up explosive final round at FIDE WGP Monaco (fide.com) • 'With three players -- [Kateryna] Lagno, [Aleksandra] Goryachkina, and [Batkhuyag] Munguntuul -- now sharing the lead, the final round of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix in Monte-Carlo promises a dramatic showdown. [...] The ninth and final round of the third leg in the 2024/25 Women’s Grand Prix series starts on February 27th in Monte-Carlo, Monaco.'

For the full, final crosstable, see Monaco FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2025 (theweekinchess.com).

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

What Is Dadaist Chess?

In the previous post for the series inspired by AI Comics, Cubist Chess (February 2025; 'Marcel Duchamp plays cubist chess.'), I wrote,

Cubism I understand -- at least I think I do -- Dadaism is a mystery. Let's go with what I understand. [...] Next on the agenda: dadaist.

First and foremost, what's Dadaism? In Dada (wikipedia.org), we learn,

Dada or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War [aka WWI] and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had spread to New York City and a variety of artistic centers in Europe and Asia.

To explore its relationship to chess, I'll use the same Google search technique last seen in 1992 Fischer - Spassky 'Under the Weather' (September 2022), i.e. a composite image.

Google Image search on 'chess dadaist'
[Call the rows 'A' to 'C' (from top to bottom) and number the images in each row '1' to '8' (from left to right).]

More than a third of those thumbnails show chess sets and half of those are the 'Man Ray chess set', most prominently in dead center of the composite at B4. Another third have something to with Marcel Duchamp, including his 'Portrait of Chess Players' in A6 and C2. Both artists are seen playing each other in A5.

As for his several mentions in this blog, Marcel Duchamp made a Chess Review cover appearance in November 1968 'On the Cover' (November 2018; 'Marcel Duchamp died at 81 last October 1st, in Paris. [...]') I can't imagine what 'Marcel Duchamp plays dadaist chess' ('anti-establishment art'?) will look like. We'll find out in the next post in the series.

Cubist Chess

The title of the previous post on AI Comics, Surrealist, Cubist, Dadaist Chess (February 2025; 'Marcel Duchamp plays surrealist chess'), suggests the theme of this current post. I ended that post saying,

That gives me at least two more avenues to explore -- (1) conceptual art and (2) Salvador Dali, not to overlook cubism and dadism.

Cubism I understand -- at least I think I do -- Dadaism is a mystery. Let's go with what I understand.

'Marcel Duchamp plays cubist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

So cubist means breaking up surfaces into a patchwork of smaller, rectangular pieces. A chessboard is inherently cubist; chess pieces are not. Next on the agenda: dadaist.

More Text to Art

While creating the short list for this month's Flickr Favorite post, I saw many photos similar to the one in the upper left of the composite image below. See, for example, the photo directly beneath it (leftmost image second row). When I tried to look at that family of photos together, I discovered that the photographer frequently used 'chess' as a theme. The image in the lower right looked familiar and, sure enough, I had 'faved' it sometime last year.

Upper left: Chess-esque © Flickr user Leo Reynolds under Creative Commons.
Bottom right: Chess mosaic © [same as upper left]

The descriptions of both photos were identical:-

Artwork created by Midjourney from a sequence of text.

No prizes for guessing that Midjourney (wikipedia.org), is an AI image generator. That Wikipedia page starts,

Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Francisco-based independent research lab Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. It is one of the technologies of the AI boom.

The last time we saw a Flickr chess image of this genre was No Hunk-o'-Junk Here (April 2024). Although the generator of that image wasn't explicitly identified, a piece of additional info informs,

This photo is in 1 album: AI Gen Sci-fi (Midjourney).

Midjourney again. So there we have it.

February 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover'

The leading American chess magazine -- both 50 years ago and 25 years ago -- featured the American Open. For last month's post in the series, see January 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover' (January 2025).

Left: '?'
Right: 'The Beauty of Chess'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Kim Commons, left, and Peter Biyiasas, co-winners of the American Open. Story [inside]. Photo by Carl Budd.

The 'story [inside]' by Carl Budd, 'Vice President, Santa Monica Bay Chess Club', was titled '10th American Open'. It started,

The tenth anniversary of the American Open resulted in co-champions for the first time since its inception. Kim Commons, formerly a California Champion, and Peter Biyiasas, current Champion of Canada, led the field after the eighth and final round to tie for top honors. [...]

Altogether there were 168 entries in the Championship Section. And with 300 entered in the Amateur Section, the grand total of 468 players makes this American Open the largest rated tournament ever held in California and the third largest open tournament co-sponsored by the U.S. Chess Federation. It is surpassed only by the U.S. Open in Chicago in 1973 with 778 players and the U.S. Open in New York in 1974 with 549 players.

For the previous edition of the American Open, 51 years ago, see February 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover' (February 2024; 'James Tarjan, winner of the American Open in California').

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Again we thank Steven Seward for his excellent work, providing us with a cover portrait of the winner of the 35th American Open, Grandmaster Eduard Gufeld. Jerry Hanken's happy recap begins on [inside] and is followed by an interview with Gufeld. Keeping with the theme of the interview, Gufeld's "Artistic Beauty in Chess" begins [inside].

That's a lot of Gufeld for one issue of CL: cover portrait, winner of the 35th American Open (four page story), interview (two pages), essay on beauty in chess (five pages). The 'On the Cover' introduction continued with a Gufeld anecdote:-

You should also note that Bobby Fischer's last sacrifice -- was Gufeld. When Fischer forfeited his match against Karpov in 1975, the Soviets were desperate to prove that Karpov was worthy of the title. Gufeld was scheduled to travel (a rarity) to Ljubljana for the Third Vidmar Memorial, a super-strong event. That's right, Eddie got bumped -- sacrificed if you please -- in order to allow Karpov to participate (Karpov won, ahead of Gligoric, Ribli, Furman, Hort, Parma, Portisch, et. al. [June 1975, Karpov: +7-0=8]).

By some unusual coincidence, the February 1975 issue of CL&R had news about the Fischer - Karpov match, so I'll come back to that story after finishing with Gufeld. The tournament report was titled 'Gufeld Tops 35th American Open' by Jerry Hanken. It started with a bit of chess history:-

A little over a year after Lyndon Johnson announced his "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" and 14 months before Super Bowl I, the American Open was born. A brainchild of Al Bisno of the Santa Monica Bay Chess Club and USCF Executive Director Ed Edmondson, this tournament became part of the original "Triple Crown" (along with the U.S. Open and National Open). The first running drew over 200 players to the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica and was won by then-super GM (twice a world championship candidate in the 50's and 60's) Pal Benko. [...]

In 1979 the American Open achieved "American Classic" status (marking the difference between a National and one run by a local organization which has drawn over 400 players three years running). And in 1989 it was awarded the "American Heritage" designation for lasting 25 consecutive years. Only one other tournament holds both these distinctions — the World Open, of course.

This information is for historical perspective in reporting on the just-completed 35th Annual American Open, held Thanksgiving weekend at the spacious LAX Sheraton Gateway.

The report then turned to a discussion of the winner.

Quite fittingly, the tournament, an eight-round Swiss, was won by a grandmaster whose career and accomplishments span the last 35 years! In a mild upset, the American Open champ of 1999, the last of the millennium, was Eduard Gufeld! I use the word "upset" because Eduard was only the ninth highest USCF-rated player in the event, and many thought that at 63 years of age he was simply too old and too outclassed to win such an event. After all, there were three GMs (Pavel Blatny, Sergey Kudrin, and Alex Yermolinsky) among those seeded ahead of him.

Since he recently settled in the Los Angeles area, Gufeld has been known as a fine teacher and lecturer, but not a great tournament player. Well, he certainly struck a blow for us old folks! Not only did he become the champion, but he won with a clear half-point advantage at 6 1/2 of 8.

I'll skip both the Gufeld interview and his essay and return to the phantom 1975 Fischer - Karpov match. Burt Hochberg described the status in his monthly column for February 1975, 'The Editor's Page - News & Views'.

The FIDE Bureau meeting in Panang, Malaysia, December 15-18 [1974], resulted in some very discouraging news. The most pressing matter was the World Championship Match for 1975: by a narrow 5-4 vote the Bureau reluctantly declined to consider changing the Regulations adopted last June by the General Assembly at Nice.

President Euwe expressed the hope that the Chess Federation of the USSR would now, in a grand gesture designed to demonstrate the sportsmanship it has so long professed, announce that Karpov would agree to the match conditions proposed by Fischer. If the Soviets do not make this gesture -- and several Bureau members consider it unlikely -- only an Extraordinary General Assembly could make any changes in the Regulations.

After more bad news involving the 1975 World Student Team Championship and the 1976 Olympiad, Hochberg returned to the title match.

Some hope remains, however, that the World Championship may yet be saved. The Chess Federations of Japan, Iran and the Philippines have called for an Extraordinary General Assembly, as provided for in FIDE statutes. For this meeting to be held -- it must be done before April 1 -- 29 of the 87 member federations must support the call.

On January 1, the bids for the Match were opened at FIDE headquarters in Amsterdam. There were only three: Mexico City $387,500; Milan $426,250; and the Philippines $5,000,000. According to FIDE regulations, the match winner gets five-eighths of the purse and the loser three-eighths. Details of the bids have been sent to Karpov and Fischer, each of whom must list the bids in order of preference and notify FIDE of their choices not later than February 17. If the two players do not agree, FIDE President Euwe will choose the site.

For the previous major development involving the 1975 match, see August 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover' (August 2024; 'The [1974] FIDE Congress was shaken by several controversial decisions.').

Surrealist, Cubist, Dadaist Chess

Continuing to explore the bizarre, parallel world of AI chess comics, it's been a month since the post on Surrealist Chess (January 2025; 'Rene Magritte plays surrealist chess'). Perhaps the best known chess artist is Marcel Duchamp, so let's see what the AI software thinks about him and his work.

'Marcel Duchamp plays surrealist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

While that's unmistakably Marcel Duchamp, the images aren't nearly as compelling as those in the Magritte post. What went wrong? Wikipedia, in Marcel Duchamp (wikipedia.org), says,

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art.

There's no mention of 'surrealism' there, so maybe I got my wires crossed. The rest of Duchamp's Wikipedia page mentions variations of 'surreal' more than a dozen times. One of the first mentions says,

The [Dada] movement influenced later styles, such as the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art, and Fluxus.

The most recent post on this blog featuring Duchamp was Conceptual Artist and Surreal Artist (March 2024). There I quoted the UK Royal Academy of Arts,

Take another look at two artistic giants: father of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp, and larger-than-life surrealist Salvador Dali.

That gives me at least two more avenues to explore -- (1) conceptual art and (2) Salvador Dali, not to overlook cubism and dadaism -- in the bizarre, parallel world of AI chess comics.

DGT Enschede NL

Of the 22 clips on this month's short list for featured video of the month, 14 were for the first leg of the 2025 FCGST (December 2024; '2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour') in Weissenhaus, Germany. Since I'll be discussing that event on my chess960 blog -- to which that FCGST link goes -- I picked another clip for this post.

A tour of the massive DGT office | World's most loved chess boards and clock brand (38:08) • '[Published on] 8 Feb 2025'

Once again, the video is from ChessBase India. The description said,

DGT is a very well known name for any professional chess player! Almost all of the top FIDE events have their chess boards and pieces used. Even the clock that is used across all FIDE events is the DGT clock. Seeing the huge scale of presence that the company has, we were of course curious about the office of DGT. Sagar [IM Shah of ChessBase India] was in the Netherlands for the Tata Steel Chess 2025. He travelled to Enschede from Wijk Aan Zee to bring you this DGT office tour.

For the previous post featuring DGT, see A Special Chess Board (September 2019).

New Players under the FIDE Flag

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this blog's annual discussion of international ratings, FIDE Rating List - January 2025 (January 2025). I ended it saying,

Last year's only followup post, Players under the FIDE Flag (January 2024), might be worth a revisit because FIDE's (FED = 'FID') percentage increase was the fourth highest [2025 over 2024].

Here are the numbers for FIDE again:-

Fed 2024 2025 Incr
FID   798 1008 26.32%

That means the list had 210 more 'FIDE' players (i.e. listed without a national federation) at the start of 2025 than at the start of 2024. The 2024 FIDE Flag post (*) also listed the total number of FIDE players for each of the last five years. Here's a continuation of the same list, adding the count for 2025:-

2023 : 394
2024 : 636
2025 : 766

Why the difference between 1008 players in the first table and 766 players in the second? It's probably because I eliminated players registered only to play on the FIDE Online Arena (FOA). I don't think it was a good idea for FIDE to mix online players with OTB players, but that decision was made some time ago.

Of those 766 FIDE players in 2025, 130 appear to be new FIDE players (766 - 636 in 2024). When I searched for the *names* of new FIDE players in 2025, I found 124. The difference of six players isn't trivial, but I decided to ignore it for now. The 124 new FIDE players in 2025 were listed under the following federations in 2024:-

Fed : Ct
RUS : 114
BLR : 8
FID : 1 [family name changed for a woman; marriage?]
WLS : 1

The table shows clearly that that most of the new FIDE players were from the two federations -- Russia and Belarus -- which have been restricted by FIDE as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. I looked at the rating records of a handful of those players (ratings.fide.com) and discovered that their games were played in Russia and Belarus.

Of the more than 40.000 players on the 2025 list marked with federation RUS or BLR, about 2% also played games in the period covered by the rating list that I used. I don't know why some players are marked 'FID', but most players aren't. Maybe it has something to do with FOA.

(*) Players under the FIDE Flag (January 2024)

Breaking the 3800 Barrier

This is post no.3800 on this blog, meaning that it's time for another 'Breaking the Barrier' post. The previous post, Breaking the 3700 Barrier (February 2024), was a little more than a year ago. At that time I noted,

We have one engine [rated] over 3800 (Stockfish 16), 15 engines over 3700, and (not shown) 11 engines over 3600. [...] See you a year from now for the '3800 Barrier'.

The chart below shows the current ratings of the top engines as calculated by the same source.

CCRL Blitz Rating List (Feb 2025)
(computerchess.org.uk/ccrl)

Now we have two engines rated over 3800 (Stockfish 17 and Torch v2), 29 engines over 3700 (not all shown), and 14 engines over 3600. If I keep posting to this blog at the current frequency, I'll be able to do 'Breaking the 3900 Barrier' in a year. Given that Stockfish, the top engine (rated 3817), has only increased 11 points since last year, I don't expect to see any engines over 3900 anytime soon.

Human players have reached a so-far insurmountable barrier of 2900. Are engines facing a similar barrier of 3900?

Playing Chess with Money

One of the insights from my recent explorations into AI Comics was that people's likenesses are best rendered using the '3D Render' style. Consider the images produced for the recent post Color the Proteins (January 2025; 'Demis Hassabis plays chess ...').

Another insight was that AI Comics are perfectly happy to create images of inanimate objects playing chess. Consider the following images inspired by the world of economics and finance.

'Kenneth Rogoff plays chess with money.'
AI Comic Factory

Now I don't know what you think, but I think those are pretty good likenesses of one of the most famous GMs who became much better known in a real world profession (is there another?). Photos of {GM/Dr./Professor} Rogoff have appeared many times on this blog.

The earliest appearance was Kenny Rogoff as You've Never Seen Him (February 2012). Note the contrast between the photo of young Rogoff in that post and an older Rogoff in Wesley So & Kenneth Rogoff (February 2015). Since there are many more photos of the older Rogoff on the web, it's those photos that have been used as the base for the composite image shown above.

As for 'plays chess with money', the only frame where money is obvious is the lower left. The round thing behind the board looks to be based on the seals you find on U.S. dollar paper bills.

***

Later: I received a message from A.L. saying, 'In the upper right frame, he appears to be tossing a gold coin.' It took me a few minutes to see it, but yes indeed, there is a gold coin near the center of the upper right frame. I missed it before because it is nearly the same color as Professor Rogoff's tie.

A Sammarinese Artist

Several months ago, in Incarcerated, Self-taught, and Legally Blind (July 2024), I wrote,

When there are several choices on the short list for a new month's edition of Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), I almost always go for any artwork.

Here's that link again -- Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010) -- and here's another example of artwork, one of two I had on the short list. The item pictured below was titled 'Nicoletta Ceccoli Limited Edition Print FOR YOUR EYES ONLY Signed by the Artist!'. It sold for 'US $375.00 or Best Offer', and as far as I can tell that US$ amount was the final selling price.

The description said,

Released in 2014
Signed by the Artist Nicoletta Ceccoli!
Unframed dimensions: 19 x 20"
Edition Number: 78/100
Edition size: 100 + 10 Artist Proofs (AP)
Medium: Archival Pigment Ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Paper 308 g/m

Short Bio: Nicoletta Ceccoli was born in San Marino Italy and graduated from the Institute of Art in Urbino. Her paintings are beautiful and intriguing, consistently striking a delicate balance between disturbing and enchanting. At first glance, her work masquerades as youthful and innocent but a darker narrative inevitably unfolds.

Each painting is rife with symbolism that sparks the viewer's imagination and inspires a deeper level of consideration. Ceccoli's work has been exhibited worldwide including solo exhibitions in the US, Italy and France. The artist works in seclusion deep within the Italian countryside.

Re 'rife with symbolism', 'sparks the viewer's imagination', and 'inspires a deeper level of consideration', I don't get it here. Maybe I'm just too close to the subject of chess. For more about the artist, see Nicoletta Ceccoli (wikipedia.org; 'Nicoletta Ceccoli (born 1973) is a Sammarinese artist who is known for her richly detailed, dreamlike work.').