Korchnoi Busted

The latest episode of the Full English Breakfast (see FEB in May for links and whatnot), featured the recent Aronian - Kramnik match: no.21 - The Big Boys. The image accompanying the audio clip (do people still call them podcasts?) pictured the heads of the 'big boys' immortalized as bronze busts. The credit accompanying the image led to the home page of Bertrand Freiesleben, sculptor of köpfe. The photos accompanying the home page included the following image, which I've captured for posterity.

Korchnoi contemplating the bust of Kortchnoi

Although I found nothing more about the Korchnoi / Kortchnoi seance on the Freiesleben site, Google will lead you to various accounts after you supply the appropriate keywords. The Kramnik seance, which made the cover of NIC, is documented on the sculptor's site: Titelstory "New in Chess": Weltmeister Kramnik trifft Bildhauer Freiesleben ['World Champion Kramnik meets sculptor Freiesleben'].

When Does the Game Start?

As you might expect, portions of the live broadcasts from the 2012 Anand - Gelfand match have been made available on Youtube. I watched the first four games on the official site, which prompted some reminiscing about World Championship Chess on TV, then missed all but the first few minutes of the fifth game, mainly because I first had other things to do and the game ended so quickly.

I was happy to see the start of that broadcast appear on my short list for this current episode of my Video Friday series. As in the first four games, the fifth featured host Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam of New in Chess. This time he was accompanied by GM Joel Lautier, who discussed the opening of the game.

Anand - Gelfand FIDE World Chess Championship 2012 Game 5 Part 1 (14:30) • 'Excerpts from the video broadcast'

At around 11:45 into the clip, ten Geuzendam mentions Lautier's involvement with Kramnik.

Q: You've also been involved in preparations for World Championship matches. People are often guessing how deep things go. How deep do things go these days? Is it possible to give an indication of what's going on behind the scenes?

A: Opening preparation has become extremely important. It started with Fischer and then Kasparov certainly strengthened that trend. With the advent of computers it's become critical, because you can analyze so many positions now with a computer. In a way it's even levelled the difference between players, because if you analyze for weeks with a computer then an average grandmaster can product high quality analysis as long as he's methodical and does a good job.

There's a tremendous amount of opening preparation that's been going on over the last 15 years. The difficulty is not to find new ideas. The difficulty is to remember all that you're preparing. The amount of variations is so huge. Obviously your oponent will keep trying to put you off track by playing some offbeat move at some point to get you out of your preparation. The pressure to remember the theory is enormous during games.

A recurring theme in the commentaries for all games has been guessing when each player starts to make original moves. When does the home preparation end and when does the real game start? Since each player can only guess about his opponent, I doubt that anyone knows for sure. • See also Part 2 of the same broadcast.

The Man Who Put Chess on Television

After posting the reminiscences about World Championship Chess on TV, I went back to learn more about Shelby Lyman, the original promoter of chess on TV. The first interesting article that popped out was from People magazine, October 1986. I was unaware that Lyman had continued with his broadcasts after the 1972 match:-

Thanks to Lyman, the finale of the Karpov - Kasparov contest will be played out this week and next over 120 public TV stations. His show, which may comprise the two funkiest and intellectually demanding hours on TV, is taped at tiny WNYE-TV in Brooklyn, with a colorful cast ranging from 8-year-old, World Under-10 champ Jeff Sarwer to International Grandmaster Edmar Mednis, 49. Lyman has been doing chess shows ever since he covered the Bobby Fischer - Boris Spassky battle move-by-move for PBS in 1972. • Knightly Newsman Shelby Lyman Makes Chess a TV Spectator Sport

Because the broadcast seemed so natural in 1972, when chess fever swept across the 50 states, the audacity of Lyman's performance could only be understood in retrospect. From the Houston Chronicle, September 2002:-

How's this for must-see television? A chess match between two geniuses. The match itself wouldn't be shown. Instead, a 35-year-old sociology professor and chess master who had never appeared on television, never watched television, never cared about television, would replay the moves on an oversize demonstration board in an Albany, N.Y., studio - 2,500 miles from the match site. That's the leap public broadcasting took 30 years ago this summer, when WNET in New York aired the world championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. • All the right moves / Fischer-Spassky chess match 30 years ago put Shelby Lyman on the board

Lyman, of course, was not the only person involved in the series of broadcasts. From Chessbase.com, January 2003, by Rudy Chelminski:-

If someone had called [Fred] Waitzkin's attention to the article I wrote for the American magazine Wired in October, 2001, he would have been able to trace the epochal show not to Lyman but to a gangly, affable young television executive named Mike Chase. Son of a playwright and a theater specialist himself, Chase at the time was Director of Operations for the New York City TV network of SUNY, State University of New York. He was also an ardent chess amateur and a member of the Marshall Chess Club. • The man behind the Fischer-Spassky show [see also the links at the end of the article]

Chelminski's account doesn't square completely with Lyman's recollections. From NYTimes.com, January 2008:-

Q: How did you get involved in the coverage? A: As I remember it, I was giving chess lessons to Mike Chase, who had a very important job with PBS then, who ran the facilities for half a dozen stations. He was very enamored by chess and he was very excited by the teaching I did. One day I suggested, with the Fischer-Spassky match coming up, would it be possible to put something on PBS. Between the two of us, we got this thing going. • Fischer’s Epochal Match, Shelby Lyman’s Star Turn

There's much more detail about the ground-breaking broadcasts in each of the articles I've cited. As for Lyman today, he carries on popularizing chess in a regular column: Shelby Lyman site:dispatch.com.

Openings According to Khalifman

In a recent post, Time Enough for Taimanov, I became frustrated with a particular bit of research and wrote,

While preparing this post, I spent some time looking for the relevant [Sicilian 2...e6 Taimanov / Paulsen] 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.

Afterward I learned from Chessmix.com that the Sicilian 2...e6 system spans volumes 8 & 9. Here is a summary of the theory covered by each volume, as determined by following the site's Anand Chess Books Collection on the series 'Opening for White According to Anand'.

• 01: 'various rare openings after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3, but the focus is on the Petroff Defense and the Ruy Lopez without 3...a6'
• 02: 'Ruy Lopez'
• 03: 'Caro-Kann'
• 04: '1.e4 d6, or 1.e4 g6'
• 05: '1.e4 with 1...Nc6, 1...b6, 1...a6, 1...Nf6'
• 06: '1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 de4, 3...Nf6 and other moves'
• 07: '1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4'
• 08: '[Sicilian] seldom played lines on move two for Black; 2…a6; rarely played lines after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4; Paulsen - Kann [Kan] system, 2...e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6'
• 09: 'variations arising after the moves 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6, especially the Kalashnikov; 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e6'
• 10: 'Sveshnikov (Chelyabinsk)'
• 11: 'Dragon'
• 12: '1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6'
• 13: 'Najdorf / Scheveningen'

The same site also has a Kramnik Chess Books Collection. Unfortunately, it's not complete and since I'm not a 1.d4 player, I decided not to spend time assembling a similar summary from another source. Because it's a single volume, the 'Opening for Black According to Karpov' offers no such difficulty. Volume one of the Anand series starts,

This publication is a logical sequel of the five volume study "Opening for White according to Kramnik - 1.Nf3". However I am fully aware that my current undertaking requires even more effort and responsibility than the previous one.

A little later it quotes volume one of the Kramnik series, giving the raison d'être for the work.

Take as your ideal model someone of today's leading grandmasters, whose style is akin to yourself and whose successes you admire. Then try to build your opening repertoire according to his.

Khalifman discussed the series in an interview published on Chessintranslation.com: Khalifman: "Anand’s a genius. He emanates light".

Q: Both of your series of books – "Opening for White according to Anand" and "Opening for White according to Kramnik" have quite a specific title and purpose. Why did you decide in favour of exactly those two chess players?

A: Firstly, no-one can argue that Anand and Kramnik aren't very serious and significant figures in the chess world. On the other hand, if a chess player at the level of candidate master starts to play the opening "according to Kasparov", then either I'll have to deceive him, because it'll be the opening according to someone else, or he'll simply get lost in the wilds of opening variations and complications and there'll be nothing but trouble. Therefore it was exactly because there's some sort of healthy positional basis to the opening repertoire of Anand and Kramnik that I chose them as models.

I doubt that many people have acquired all books in these series. To help choose the relevant volumes, it would be useful to have reference scans of the table of contents for each book. I found scans for different volumes, but not for the entire series in one place.

Been There, But Haven't Done That

Continuing with Been There, Done That at Last, I took another (last?) look at my About.com archives to see if there remains any more material which might be converted. I came up with the following list:-

• 2004-08-07: Chess Quizzes for Beginners : Notation, Setup, and Moves (2012-06-04)
• 2004-08-28: Opening Repertoire : View Example Games> (2012-07-16)
• 2004-09-18: Chess Quizzes for Beginners : Check and Checkmate (2012-06-11)
• 2005-01-15: Fischer - Spassky Games Revisited (2012-07-30)
• 2005-09-24: Chess Glossary : Clock Terms
• 2006-02-04: Positional Terminology in Chess
• 2006-04-01: Chess in the Balkans (2012-08-06)
• 2006-07-29: Advanced Positional Terminology in Chess
• 2006-12-16: Beginner's Guide to the Six Chess Pieces
• 2006-12-30: How To Win at Chess
• 2007-02-24: The Chess Pieces Explained ['Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived'; same for both '/b/' URLs]
• 2007-12-29: The Most Frequently Asked Questions
• 2008-03-22: The Breadth and Depth of Chess ['Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived']
• 2008-05-05: A Structured Introduction to the Openings
• 2008-05-12: Chess Tips for Specific Pieces

It's a real mixed bag, half of which I'll probably reject on a second, longer look. I also looked at the stats for material already converted and, while there were no real surprises, I noticed that the section on traps -- Chess Traps : View Full Games -- received more than its fair share of visits. These pages are implemented somewhat primitively, so I'll see if I can improve their overall structure.

Mice for Mom

Of all the items I considered for this current edition of Top eBay Chess Items by Price, the only one that looked suitable for a Mother's Day gift is pictured below. Titled 'Wee Forest Folk - Complete chess set', it sold for US $3499.99, receiving one bid the fourth time it was listed.

The description said only,

WFF Wee Forest Folk - complete chess set - amethyst and green sets. Never displayed. Out of boxes only for pictures. Pieces will be shipped INSIDE of the chess board box inside their slots. Total of 32 mice. Mint condition.

For more on WFF, see Wee Forest Folk. And 'Happy Mother's Day!' to all you Moms out there.

Endless Diversion

As you would expect, this is also one of hundreds of paintings to be found on the excellent page Tableaux Échecs - Chess Paintings.

Repose - A Game of Chess - Henry Siddons Mowbray © Flickr user BoFransson under Creative Commons.

See also Wikipedia's Henry Siddons Mowbray (American, 1858-1928). Following the image also led me to chess @ Tumblr, which is, like chess, another endless diversion.