1966 Piatigorsky Cup

A few days after posting about the 1966 Spassky - Larsen game from the 2nd Piatigorsky Cup, I discovered the following video.

Jacqueline Piatigorsky - Chess Renaissance Woman (32:45) • 'Through her love of the game, innovative ideas, and deep involvement in chess philanthropy, Jacqueline Piatigorsky revolutionized American chess.'

The description continued,

A talented player herself, Jacqueline created the Piatigorsky Foundation in 1961. The organization soon began sponsoring chess activities on the local, regional, national, and international levels. IM John Donaldson discusses how Jacqueline's efforts transformed chess in the United States, supporting chess efforts aimed toward women, youth, and underserved populations; her organization of international grandmaster tournaments; and her assistance of top American players, including Samuel Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer.

At about 20 minutes into the clip, the lecture turns to the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup. Along with other anecdotes, IM Donaldson mentions the tournament book.

In the contract the players received, there was a condition that all players must annotate both games. [...] On many moves you'll have both grandmasters annotating the game. There could be big differences of opinion and it makes for very interesting reading to have two strong players look at the games.

Two players didn't annotate all of their games. One was Donner, who annotated all but one game that was such a horrible, painful loss that he couldn't bear to see it again [Donner - Ivkov, round 17]. One other player only chose to annotate one game, because he thought he only played one good game in the tournament. That was Bobby Fischer.

The game was Fischer - Najdorf from round 16, which also appeared in Fischer's 'My 60 Memorable Games', along with Portisch - Fischer from the same tournament. A third player declined to annotate all of his games : Reshevsky annotated only six games, including two of his losses.

For more about the exhibit, see Jacqueline Piatigorsky: Patron, Player, Pioneer (worldchesshof.org)

Carlsen's Record 2015-16

Continuing with Carlsen's Events 2015-16, I started with the events listed in that post. To each event I then added World Champion Carlsen's final standing, W-L-D record, and TWIC reference. The results are shown below.

Too small to read? For the next step I'll include PGN info and add the data to my page on Magnus Carlsen's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (TMER; 2000-).

Transfer in Chess Learning

Continuing with 'Chess in Primary Schools' Studied, my previous post -- Does Chess.com Make You Smarter? -- looked at Chess.com's take on the recent English study and ended with

Chess.com isn't the only chess organization looking at the EEF study: more about that in my next post.

I imagined that Chess in Schools & Communities (CSC; chessinschools.co.uk) would have something to say about the study, but as of today there is only an 'EEF Project' link in their left navigation bar that goes directly to the relevant EEF page (see that first 'Studied' post for subject matter background including links).

Richard James, another expert on English school chess, weighed in with two posts on Chessimprover.com:-

• 2016-08-07: Chess Doesn’t Make Kids Smarter

Perhaps you saw the recent headlines here in the UK. It's now official that chess doesn't make kids smarter. [...] While there is much that is excellent about CSC, there has always, it seems to me, been a conflict between two very different aims which would involve approaching chess in very different ways: chess as a non-competitive learning tool and chess as a competitive activity, and they've been trying to do both at the same time instead of just concentrating on one aim.

• 2016-08-14: I’ve Got a Little List

I've always been sceptical about the research concerning chess making kids smarter. Apart from whether or not 'making kids smarter', whatever that means, is as desirable an aim as it sounds (I think it's not) I have two problems...

Add to this a brief discussion on the English Chess Forum -- Chess and schools (ecforum.org.uk) -- which points to another brief discussion, where we learn,

Stewart Reuben: 'Malcolm Pein says the CSC will give a response in due course. He feels the results were disappointing but the methodology flawed.'

Perhaps the best general take on the controversy is from several years ago in a non-English publication: Do Music Lessons Make You Smarter? (scientificamerican.com; March 2013).

Practice makes progress, if not perfection, for most things in life. Generally, practicing a skill -- be it basketball, chess or the tuba -- mostly makes you better at whatever it was you practiced. Even related areas do not benefit much. [...] That said, some learning does transfer from one skill to another. [...] But experts have long debated the effects of any of these or others on general intellect. That is, does engaging in these optional activities really build the brain in any fundamental way?

Keyword: 'transfer', as in 'The learning would indeed transfer to a broad set of other tasks and people would consider the activity particularly worthwhile.' Most criticisms of the EEF study amount to tacit support of the concept of transfer. Who is going to study that?

2016 Olympiad Opening Ceremony

Here's a short version.

Baku Chess Olympiad Opening Ceremony (11:07) • 'The 42nd Chess Olympiad was opened with a solemn but highly entertaining ceremony, held at the Baku National Gymnastics Arena. Players, captains and delegates of the 176 participating federations filled the National Gymnastics Arena to enjoy a wonderful evening. The President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, declared the 42nd Chess Olympiad open. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and Women’s World Champion Hou Yifan joined the Chief Arbiter Faik Gasanov on stage for the drawing of colors.'

For a longer version, see Opening Ceremony of 42nd World Chess Olympiad (1:11:15).

1966 Olympiad, USSR Winners

Whoever invented live chess on the web gave us both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it used to be nearly impossible to witness world class events while they were happening -- you had to be there. A curse because it can be a time waster second to nothing -- except blogging in my case.

While watching round six of the Baku Chess Olympiad (that link is to the official site), I suddenly realized that it was getting late and I hadn't started my daily blog post. Even worse, I hadn't decided what to write about. What to do?

I searched my archive of chess images on the key word 'olympiad' and found about 350 candidate images. Many of these weren't interesting on their own -- pictures of coins, medals, lapel pins, that sort of thing -- and the best of the bunch I had already used earlier this year: 1966 Olympiad, USSR & USA. The best of the rest is shown below.

The auction description said,

Up for auction is this ORIGINAL Photo, which shows the WINNER of the XVII CHESS OLYMPIAD in Cuba - World CHESS CHAMPION Tigran PETROSIAN from Soviet Union (Armenia), dated November 1966. This VINTAGE PHOTO measures app. 8" x 10" inches and is still in GOOD condition: some edge and margin wear.

The description went on to copy some basic information about Petrosian, probably from Wikipedia. The other players in the photo were not mentioned. I'll overlook that the auction seller didn't understand that the Olympiad is a team event -- we can't expect everyone to be up to snuff on chess history -- because the photo was his/her contribution to the field.

The Havana Olympiad took place 50 years ago and I expect we'll come back to it later this year for an 'On the Cover' post (that link is to the September 1966 edition). In the meantime, see the 'USSR & USA' post for an identification of the players and a link to Olimpbase. The 1966 event might have been the most iconic Olympiad in history; after all, Iconic Is Awesome (December 2015).

1966 Spassky - Larsen

Last week's post, September 1966 'On the Cover', harked back to the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup, won by Spassky despite a strong second-half surge by Fischer. According to the Chess Life report I quoted, 'Spassky was rarely in danger of losing a game'. Thanks to the tournament book, where

Most games were annotated by both players. World Champion Petrosian annotated every game he played in the event; ditto for his title challenger of a few months earlier, Spassky.

we know that isn't true. For three consecutive rounds -- Rd.4: W vs. Larsen, Rd.5: B vs. Portisch, Rd.6: W vs. Najdorf -- Spassky got into trouble and narrowly escaped losing each game. I decided to take a closer look at the Larsen game, because the Dane was a tough opponent, one of those players who makes his opponent earn every half-point.

The diagram below shows four critical positions from that game. In the first position, Spassky played 24.Bb3, and wrote 'The beginning of an incorrect plan after which White loses his advantage. The correct continuation was 24.Bf3'. Larsen agreed that 'the Bishop might be better off on the other diagonal'. The problem with White's move is that the Bishop will be shut out of play on b3.

This is shown in the second position, where Larsen played 28...d5!. The point is that the move 29.Rc6, forking two undefended Pawns, is countered by 29...Re4! 30.Rxe4 dxe4. Spassky, who calculated that the move was only good for a draw (29.Rb4 also draws), was looking for more and played 29.Rd4. He later wrote,

Black's chances appear more favorable after my move. The chief shortcomings of White's position are passiveness, the absence of counterplay, and the unsatisfactory position of the King.

Black was now somewhat better.

Spassky - Larsen, 1966 Piatigorsky Cup, Rd.4

The game was adjourned in the third position. Both players noted that White had a draw with 41.axb5+ axb5 42.Bxc4 dxc4, but Spassky sealed 41.Rc8+, and noted,

After the text Black's chances for a win become quite real.

When the game was continued, White's position steadily worsened, eventually reaching the fourth position. Note that White's Bishop has no moves and keeps the White King confined to the first rank, where it is subject to back rank mates. Both players agreed that 55...f5 would win for Black, but Larsen instead played 55...Kc7, and wrote,

After the text move White can probably hold the game.

The word 'probably' leaves the door open and I'm not convinced that Black played the best moves, but the game was drawn after 80 moves. To play through the entire game or to download the PGN, see...

Boris Spassky vs Bent Larsen; Second Piatigorsky Cup (1966)
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1128690

...on Chessgames.com. CG tells us,

Classical games: Boris Spassky beat Bent Larsen 19 to 6, with 17 draws

including +4-1=3 in the semifinal of the 1967-69 Candidates Matches.

Carlsen's Events 2015-16

The 2016 Carlsen - Karjakin World Championship match starts in about two months, making this a good time to update my page on Magnus Carlsen's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (TMER; 'Last updated 2014-10-06'). I combed through about 100 editions of Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess, and located 282 games that Carlsen played since the last update. The following table summarizes the most important events, with the number of games shown in the last column.

Carlsen is also playing in the 2016 Olympiad, which is due to finish next week. I'll add those games when the full event is available. This digression to update the Carlsen TMER leaves a number of pending series to be reopened when the time is right.

• 2016-08-29: Korchnoi's Events 1998-99 / 2014-15
• 2016-06-13: GM Karjakin's Early Career
• 2016-03-21: PGN Files for Book Reviews

Most of the older series are finished, except for one that I marked with '(*)'.

• 2016-03-07: Instructional Videos : the Candidates
• 2016-01-04: Chess Engine Summary (incl. TCEC Season 8)
• 2015-09-07: Other Shareaholic Services
• 2015-08-03: Early Computer Chess Ratings (rgc = rec.games.chess)
• 2015-06-15: Going Mobile : CFAA Site
• 2015-05-11: Label 'Engines'
• 2015-03-02: FIDE Federation Codes (*)
• 2015-01-26: TMERs: Kasparov Wrapup
• 2014-10-27: TMERs: Carlsen - Anand Missing Fields

That last entry is for the previous series on the Carlsen TMER, bringing us full circle.