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.