Time Enough for Taimanov

Even though I spend more and more of my chess time on chess960, like most players I still enjoy preparing traditional chess openings. For the last few years my focus has been on the Sicilian ...e6 openings. I wrote about it once in Will the Real Taimanov Please Stand Up, where I mentioned Taimanov's book 'Sicilian Defense: Taimanov System'. Since then I've discovered that he also wrote the bulk of the B4x chapter in both the first and second editions of ECO volume B, and that half of his book 'Winning with the Sicilian' also deals with ...e6 systems.

I've evolved to the Sicilian ...e6 complex because of its connection with the Scheveningen (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 or 2....d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6), which I've played for years, and the Najdorf (2...d6 & 5...a6, followed by ...e6 in many lines), which I've played for decades. The Paulsen/Taimanov ...e6 complex suits my style because it is less theoretical than the others -- some Najdorf theory goes to 30 moves -- meaning there is more scope for creativity, and because Black usually survives into an endgame where there is always hope of taking the full point. Along with the Taimanov references, I've collected three other books published in the 2000s that treat the system:-

• 'The Taimanov Sicilian', by FM Graham Burgess (2000)
• 'The Safest Sicilian: A Black Repertoire with 1.e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6' by GM Alexander Delchev & IM Semko Semkov (2006)
• 'The Taimanov Sicilian' by IM James Rizzitano (2006)

While preparing this post, I spent some time looking for the relevant volume in Khalifman's series on the 'Opening for [blank] according to [blank]'. After some effort, I located it in volume 9 of the 'Opening for White according to Anand'. I might have overlooked an obvious resource, but it appears this series is not well documented anywhere. I'll come back to it in the future.

The introduction to Taimanov's 'Winning with the Sicilian' starts with the following excellent paragraph by the author.

One cannot just consider the role and significance of the opening stage of a game in the modern chess struggle in isolation. Experience has shown that the results of the opening battle, with one of the sides winning even a small positional or material advantage in the early stages, can be transformed by the pure technical equipment of the skilled chessplayer to be a determining influence on the whole course of subsequent events, carrying on into the middlegame, and at times, the endgame. Figuratively speaking, the opening is the seed, the shoots of which grow on every part of the chessboard and yield the harvest in complete dependence on the original groundwork.

I didn't transcribe that excerpt myself. I found it on a WordPress post titled My Friend The Sicilian, where you can read the rest yourself. The title of that post also happens to be the title of Taimanov's introduction, although you would never guess it from the page at etarn.com, where the entire excerpt is unattributed. Time enough to copy but no time to give the source?

International Chess Journalists

Before starting today's post, I should follow up my recent post CJA in Transition, where I mentioned,

Awards: '[Ramon] Hernandez has resigned as chair of the CJA Awards Committee and Chief Awards Judge. [...] Stay tuned to [the CJA] website for additional information on the Annual CJA Award competitions.'

Although there is no further info to be found on the CJA website, the May 2012 Chess Life (CL) had a full page on '2011 Chess Journalism of America Awards' by Joshua Anderson. You need to be a USCF member to access the online version of CL, so I'll copy the most important info here:-

Submissions must be received by June 15, 2012. [...] CJA is online at http://chessjournalism.org; for additional information on the awards or in joining CJA, please contact CJA Awards Committee Chairman Joshua Anderson at [email address removed] or visit www.cjaawards.org. Our CJA President Al Lawrence and I look forward to seeing you -- the CJA members -- at our annual meeting (held concurrently with meetings at the USCF U.S. Open) this Summer 2012.

That cjaawards.org address leads to a page that says only, 'For additional information on the Annual CJA Awards Competition please visit the Chess Journalists of America'. The associated link points back to the CJA website, which, as I mentioned in my previous paragraph, has no further info. The unmistakable message is that the CJA is primarily a sock puppet for the USCF, tasked with recognizing CL contributors.

As far as I can tell without doing a full comparison, the 2011 award categories are the same as last year and can be found on the page CJA Awards. Last year's awards are titled '2011 Awards', the same year as in the title of this year's CL announcement. That, unfortunately, is typical of the CJA. And, yes, the 'Best Chess Blog' category is still last on the list, but at least it's present.

***

While I was writing the original 'In Transition' post, I wondered if there are any international groups for chess journalism. I had a hazy recollection of a group active some years ago, but couldn't remember the acronym. A group called the International Association of Chess Journalists (Association Internationale des Journalistes d'Echecs, AIJE) looked promising, but going further required a userid/password and there was no other info to be found. After the AIJE, I found another International Association of Chess Journalists, this time 'AIPE', where the acronym stands for Association Internationale de la Presse Echiquéenne. French spelling can be just as obtuse as English spelling, and some sources, like Chess.com's Chessopedia, give 'Echiqueene' (one 'n'), as in

The Association Internationale de la Presse Echiqueene (AIPE) was the International Association of Chess Press. It was an organization of chess journalists founded in 1967 by Jordi Puig of Barcelona, Spain. AIPE awarded the Chess Oscars from 1967 (first won by Bent Larsen) to 1988 (won by Kasparov for the 7th time in a row) to the outstanding male and female players of the year. AIPE dissolved in 1989. The Chess Oscar was revived in 1995 (won by Kasparov). • AIPE

Note the translation of the French to 'International Association of Chess Press' instead of 'Chess Journalists'. No wonder the group folded in 1989; nobody knew what to call it. Other sources say the AIPE was founded by Jorge Puig, rather than Jordi Puig.

The group is mentioned several times in the indispensable reference Chess Periodicals: An Annotated International Bibliography, 1836-2008 by Gino Di Felice (where the spelling 'Échiquéenne' and the translation 'Chess Journalists' are used).

AIPE Chess News [Association Internationale de la Presse Échiquéenne] (1977–1982) Vol.1, no.1 (1977)–Vol.6, no.22/24 (Dec 10, 1982). Irregular. Editors Kevin O’Connell, later Thorbjorn Rosenlund. Woodford Green (Essex), later Viby. England, later Denmark. 21 cm. Bulletin. General. English. Note Later with title Chess News / AIPE. Later incorporated in International Players Chess News (The). Resumed by? World Chess Review: Official Publication of the International Association of Chess Journalists (AIPE).

International Players Chess News (The) [Players Chess Association] (1983–1985) Vol.4, no.2 (Jan 10, 1983)–Vol.5, no.13 (Dec 26, 1983) [= No.38-63]; [PCN. Theory and Analysis] No.64 (Jan 9, 1984)–no.89 (Jan 7, 1985). Bi-weekly. Los Angeles, CA. USA. 38 cm. Bulletin. General. English. Note Incorporating AIPE Chess News. From vol.4, no.10 [= no.47 (May 16, 1983)] with subtitle “Official Publication of the Committee on Publications of F.I.D.E., the World Chess Organization.” From no.84 (Oct 29, 1984) with subtitle “Games and Events.” Continues Players Chess News (The), with the same numbering. Continued by PCN: International Players Chess News: Theory and Analysis.

World Chess Review : Official Publication of the International Association of Chess Journalists (AIPE) (1988?–?) Fortnightly. Editor Timothy Hanke (in 1988?). Publisher World Chess Review. Cambridge, MA. USA. 28 cm. Bulletin. General. English. Note Supersedes? AIPE Chess News.

It's a coincidence that the alphabetical order of the publications coincides with the chronological order, but so it is.

Been There, Done That at Last

My last action for Been There, Done That was to record the links of the recently converted articles in the index of Feature Articles:-

• 2002-2003
• 2004-2005
• 2006-2008

Next, I'll run through those three pages one more time to see if there's anything else worth addressing.

A Chess Popularity Contest

Are you looking for a chess topic to write about, but are stuck for an idea? Before you give up completely, take a look at Wikipedia's WikiProject Chess/Popular pages, with statistics on page views for Wikipedia's numerous chess pages.

The current version lists stats from March 2012 on 1500 pages, including 'Views per day', 'Assessment', and 'Importance'. Three of the top five pages are only tangentially related to chess (e.g. no.1 'Benjamin Franklin'), as reflected in their 'Importance = Bottom' (speaking chessically I assume). The first of the real chess pages is the topic 'chess' itself (>5000 views per day), followed by 'Bobby Fischer' (>2600) and the 'Elo rating system' (>1800).

Curious about the data, I scraped the page and dumped the results into a database. My first query was a look at 'Assessment' and 'Importance'. The 'Assessment' field shows seven different values: FA (4), GA (14), B (72), C (217), Start (774), Stub (379), & List (40); the number in parentheses is a count of how often the value appeared on the page.

The value 'FA' means featured content and applies to four pages: 'Chess', 'The Turk', 'First-move advantage in chess', & 'George H. D. Gossip'. What's Featured content?

Represents the best that Wikipedia has to offer. These are the articles, pictures, and other contributions that showcase the polished result of the collaborative efforts that drive Wikipedia. All featured content undergoes a thorough review process to ensure that it meets the highest standards and can serve as the best example of our end goals. A small bronze star in the top right corner of a page indicates that the content is featured.

The featured content Gossip page received an average 16 views per day, about what you would expect for a page marked 'Low Importance'. The 'Importance' field shows five different values: Top (50), High (163), Mid (512), Low (717), & Bottom (58). Somewhat curiously, Fischer, Kasparov, and Anand, three of the four world class players falling in the top-15 pages by views are all ranked 'Top Importance', while Carlsen, the fourth player, is only rated 'High' despite his world no.1 ranking. How often is 'Importance' updated? Not too often, it would appear.

Highbrow or Lowbrow?

Take your pick...

Highbrow

Galleri Magnus Karlsson - A Game of Chess (1:02) • 'Marcel Dzama, A Game of Chess, 2011'

***

Lowbrow

HH-TV Sport Chess Napolean vs. The Mechanical Turk (1:37) • 'Horrible Histories CBBC'

...Or maybe it's the other way around?!

Learn from Your Draws

A brief item on Chesshistory.com,

A remark by Walter Browne in an interview with Mary Lasher on page 10 of Inside Chess, 10 February 1988: 'My motto is: when you win you earn, when you lose you learn.' (7621. Motto)

made me wonder, 'What about a draw? Do you earn or do you learn?' The logical answer is you half earn and you half learn. GM Browne, a six-time U.S. Champion, had more opportunities to earn at chess than I could ever dream about, while I have more to learn about the game than he could ever imagine.

The topic is more than a one sentence poem, because the difference between a win and a draw is frequently the difference between success and failure. I recently finished a nine-player correspondence event where the first two players qualified into the final stage of a four stage qualifying event. I finished +2-0=6 ('plus two'), which was good enough for a shared 3rd/4th. The two players who qualified for the final finished 'plus four' and 'plus three'. If I had managed to win one of my drawn games, I might have qualified on tiebreak.

A few years ago I wrote a post titled Learn from Your Losses, and followed it up with another titled Two Types of Losses. This eventually led to further analysis in Learn from Your Engines and Drifting vs. Maneuvering. I concluded that I had a tendency to drift in equal, unclear positions and that my drifting was the prelude to a loss. Since realizing that weakness, I've managed to avoid drifting to the point where I lose much less frequently. Can I learn something similar from my draws?

First observation: the categorization of draws is more complicated than in 'Two Types of Losses'. Draws with White and draws with Black have to be mapped against draws against a much higher rated opponent, against a much lower rated opponent, and against an equal opponent. Within these boundaries there are four kinds of draws:-

• Short draws
• Long draws with equal chances for both sides throughout
• Draws where I battle back from an inferior position
• Draws where my opponent battles back from an inferior position

I rarely play short draws, but when I do, they are always as Black against a much higher rated opponent who offers a draw in a dead-even position or forces a triple repetition. Of the six draws in the event that I recently finished, four were long draws with equal chances throughout and two were draws where my opponents battled back. I was never in real trouble in any of the games.

The two games where my opponents battled back from an inferior position would be the best candidates for finding a win. In both games I was a Pawn ahead, but the games eventually ended in theoretical draws where there was too little material to seek complications. This analysis tells me that I need to pay more attention in not allowing Pawns to be exchanged unnecessarily.

A handful of games in a single tournament is not a large sample, so it might be worth extending the analysis to events from the last few years. I wouldn't be surprised to find a similar pattern.

FEB in May

Almost certain that I had already written about the first of May, I found a post from 2007, M'aidez, M'aidez. That post reminded me that today is the anniversary of this blog, so Happy Birthday, CFAA!

What to write about on a day when I have no time to write? How about a plug for The Full English Breakfast [TheFeb.com]. If you've never listened to it, you're missing something completely different. • Facebook.com: TheFEB.