May 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover'

The previous post in the 'On the Cover' series, April 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover' (April 2020), featured the American Open, Santa Monica, California, on the CL&R side of the post. A month later we see a report on another of the top three opens in the U.S. of A.

Left: '[...]n Winners Arthur Bisguier (left) and Larry Evans', [...]rr (seated), General Manager of John Ascuaga's Nugget; (Photo: Harvey Presley)
Right: 'The Men Who Would Be King'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

In the more than six years since I've been preparing the monthly 'On the Cover' series -- the first was March 1964 'On the Cover' (March 2014) -- this is the first time I haven't been able to read a cover caption. The left of the CL&R caption was obscured by a mailing label. If it was removed, why isn't the underlying text visible? Whatever the reason, the missing words in the first line are 'National Open'. I wasn't able to determine the missing name in the second line. For more about the playing venue, see Nugget Casino Resort (wikipedia.org; 'formerly Dick Graves' Nugget and John Ascuaga's Nugget, is a hotel and casino located in Sparks, Nevada').

The tournament itself was covered in a report titled 'The National Open' by George Koltanowski. The future Dean of American Chess gushed,

The playing hall at the Nugget is one of the best yet. We had 111 participants with room for at least four times that many. A "kibitzer's room" adjacent, with lighting, tables and chairs, sets and boards enough to play a tournament, too. The air-conditioning was perfect, and even Robert Fischer would NOT be able to complain about the lighting. I am an old hand at directing all kinds of chess events; this one at the Nugget was by far the top.

As for the winners,

In the tournament proper, which was exceptionally strong, it was a rat race until the finish and the air had to clear after the last round before we knew who were the actual winners. When the dust finally did settle, Grandmasters Larry Evans of Reno and Arthur Bisguier of New York had each scored 7-1 to share top honors.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

CL returned to the two races to qualify for a World Championship title match, last seen in November 1969 & 1994 'On the Cover' (November 2019). The cover write-up started,

We know that Gata Kamsky (upper right) will play Anatoly Karpov (center) for the World Championship (administered by FIDE) title later this year, by virtue of their recent victories in Sanghi Nagar. Karpov beat Boris Gelfand 6-3, and Kamsky eliminated Valery Salov 5 1/2 - 1 1/2. We know that Kamsky is currently playing Viswanathan Anand (left) for the right to challenge Garry Kasparov (lower right) for the World Championship (administered by the PCA) even later this year. We also know that in 1996, a unification match will take place, with the following possibilities: [...]

For the scores of those matches, see 1994-96 FIDE Candidates Matches and 1994-95 PCA Candidates Matches on my personal site. As for the 'unification match', my page on the FIDE/PCA Chronology doesn't mention such a match until later in 1995. What did I miss?

TCEC S17 Opening Pairs

Last week's post, Leela Beat Stockfish in TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals, gave the W-L-D score for the TCEC S17 half of the post:-

LCZero beat Stockfish with an S17 final score of +17-12=71 (52.5-47.5).

Given that the TCEC organizers force their preferred openings in every pair of games for a final, I wondered how the various openings fared. I downloaded the PGN for the 100 games in the match, processed them through a few filters and loaded the PGN headers into a database.

For all 50 opening pairs, the chart on the left shows how they fared. The column 'LWhite' shows the result when Leela had White, 'SWhite' when Stockfish had White.

The first row says that there were seven openings when both engines won as White. The second row says Leela won eight games as White when Stockfish could only draw as White in the same opening.

Leela won one opening as both White and Black. That happened in games 95 and 96, where the forced opening was 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 b6. On its first free move, Stockfish played 4.c3; Leela played 4.h4, starting one of its signature plans: the advance of a side Pawn into enemy territory.

For the other opening pairs, I tried to find the PGN in the TCEC wiki, TCEC Season 17 (wiki.chessdom.org), but failed. I finally found it at TCEC 17 superfinal opening PGN available (blogchess2016.blogspot.com), but it was too late to add the file to my database for this post. I'll try to do that some other time.

Georgian Player, Regency Set

The first Sunday of the month means another post in the long-running series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010). Last month, in Pinheads Play Chess, I wrote,

I reckoned it would be a dry month, what with the coronavirus and all. In fact, there appeared to be more activity on eBay than I usually see in a month. Are people taking advantage of the stay-at-home orders to buy stuff online?

This month there was less than the usual activity on eBay. Since many of the stay-at-home orders went into effect mid-March, maybe my reckoning was right after all.

The item pictured below was titled 'Antique English Oil Portrait Painting Chess Player Georgian Man Regency 19th c.' It sold for somewhat under US $2500, 'Best offer accepted'.

The phrase in the title, 'Georgian Man Regency', wasn't explained in the description, which said,

A stunning English Regency era oil portrait of a gentleman playing chess, circa 1830. Unsigned but shows the work of a very skilled portrait painter. Canvas stamped Roberson Miller; National Portrait Gallery illustrates the stamp on the canvas - it was used between 1828-1839.

Condition is good and the original canvas has not been relined. Some small areas of paint loss and in painting as pictured. Craquelure and single patch present to verso. 22.75" x 19.5" framed

The word 'Regency' undoubtedly refers to the set depicted in the painting ; for more, see Regency Chess Sets (chess-museum.com). As for 'Georgian Man', Wikipedia's page Georgian era starts,

The Georgian era is a period in British history from 1714 to c.1830–37, named after the Hanoverian kings George I, George II, George III and George IV.

A phrase from the description, 'Canvas stamped Roberson Miller', leads to Roberson and Miller framed paintings (rootschat.com). That makes a total of three small lessons in history, of which the most interesting for chess history is Welcome to the Chess Museum, a site apparently affiliated with Chess Collectors International (CCI).

The four figure price for a portrait by an unsigned, unknown artist reminds me of the questions I asked in The Value of Art (February 2016). Perhaps it's time to spend some effort in answering those questions.

FIDE Newsletters

I've already followed up last week's post Minutes of the 90th FIDE Congress with a post on my World Chess Championship Blog: 90th FIDE Congress : Whither the World Championship. In that more recent post I noted,

In the past I've been critical of FIDE communication under the Dvorkovich management, and I know I'm not alone. This is being addressed.

More specifically,

90th FIDE Congress; FIDE Extraordinary General Assembly; Abu Dhabi, UAE; 28th February 2020 • 1. FIDE President address [...; FIDE President Dvorkovich] added that FIDE needs to improve its communication practices. FIDE already counts on multiple channels of communication, but it is still not enough. One of the initiatives which will start today is the publication of the electronic FIDE Newsletter.

A few weeks after the minutes were published, FIDE in FIDE Newsletter #003 is out (April 2020) announced,

Welcome to the bi-weekly FIDE Newsletter. The coronavirus crisis conditions most of the content in our third issue: all official competitions have been halted, but the online chess activity never ceases, and in fact, it is thriving.

The first section of the newsletter was included in the announcement:-

Stay home, stay safe, stay sharp! • The UN considers the COVID-19 pandemic the most challenging crisis since the Second World War. Probably it is also the most global event ever experienced in human history, and many think that we will come through the crisis reinforced as a society. [...]

I followed the instructions under 'SUBSCRIBE YOURSELF HERE', then verified that my email address was correct by changing my subscription parameters. So far I haven't received the newsletter. After it shows up, I'll see if I can locate newsletters #001 and #002.

This isn't the first time that FIDE has communicated via a newsletter. A routine search picked up

• FIDE Newsletter June 2017, and
• FIDE Newsletter December 2017

Both are located in the subdomain that I documented in Fide.com Archive (November 2019). Are there other examples from the same time period? Going back even further in time, I have a couple of PDFs in my own archive of FIDE documents:-

• Newsletter, Volume 2009 Number 15
• Newsletter, Volume 2009 Number 16

I'm sure there were other numbers published in 2008/2009, but I don't have copies. Will the latest initiative to produce a FIDE newsletter last longer than the earlier initiatives? Let's hope so.

The Saddest of News

Nine months after the previous Yahoo story, A Cheating Yahoo (July 2019), I thought we had seen the last of the series about chess in the mainstream news. Out of the blue, mixed in with four coronavirus stories and one 'war with Iran' speculation, was: 'World renowned chess master dies at 33'.

From Dylan Loeb McClain of The New York Times:-

• 2020-04-04: Arianne Caoili, Chess Master, Is Dead at 33 (yahoo.com) • 'Arianne Caoili, a chess master and a prominent figure both in the chess world and in Armenia, where she lived, died Monday in Yerevan, the country’s capital. She was 33. Her husband, Levon Aronian, a grandmaster ranked No. 7 in the world, announced her death on Twitter. Caoili died two weeks after being seriously injured in a car crash.'

On that sad start to a sad month, I offer heart-felt condolences to the genial Armenian GM. He and his wife Arianne were by far the most charismatic of the many chess playing couples -- beacons of light.

I intended to use this post to write about how online chess is prospering during the coronavirus lockdown, but it hardly seems appropriate. I'll come back to that topic another time.

Leela Beat Stockfish in TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals

Two weeks ago, in my report on two world class engine vs. engine competitions, the title told the full story: TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals : Leela vs Stockfish. The details were buried in the body of the report.

TCEC: LCZero is currently leading +8-6=25 in the 100-game final match, aka TCEC Superfinal. This extrapolates to a four or five point win for the full match. • CCC: In the 200-game final match, Lc0 has a 10.0 point lead over Stockfish with 40 games left to be played.

Both matches finished as expected.

TCEC: LCZero beat Stockfish with an S17 final score of +17-12=71 (52.5-47.5), just as the extrapolation predicted. The last 20 games had more decisive games than draws, +7-4=9, perhaps due to forced openings that give one side a clear advantage -- in each pair of games the engines play the same opening with colors switched.

TCEC Cup 5 is well underway and has reached the semifinal stage. Stockfish qualified to the final from the first semifinal match, and LCZero is facing Alliestein in the second match. A report for the full event is available on the TCEC wiki, TCEC Cup 5.

CCC: Lc0 beat Stockfish with a CCC13 final score of +19-7=174 (106.0-94.0). Peter Doggers of Chess.com wrote the final report, Leela Chess Zero Beats Stockfish 106-94 In 13th Chess.com Computer Chess Championship. I can't remember Doggers reporting on another CCC event, a reflection on the lack of top-level human events which have been decimated by the global coronavirus COVID-19. His report flagged some of the most interesting CCC13 games.

Since CCC13 ended, the Chess.com organizers have been running a series of exhibition events. A week ago I spotted an event called 'Post-CCC13 CPU Party'. Today I see a notice under the site's Discord announcements: 'CCC13: CPU Semifinal has been abandoned due to lame-ness'. The 'CPU Party' is missing from the archive.

I haven't yet seen any plans for TCEC S18 or for CCC14. I imagine they'll be available, maybe the events will even be underway, by the time of my next report in two weeks. Whatever happens, the crown for top chess engine has passed firmly from the traditional, hand-crafted A/B CPU engines to the 21st-century, self-learning AI/NN GPU engines. There is no reason to expect that the crown will revert anytime soon.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

Commercial Compilations

Magnus Carlsen against himself, Korchnoi against a cow, Anand playing cricket (sort of) -- there are some classic commercials here.

Chess Commercials Compilation | Part 1 (9:41) • '[Published on] Mar 22, 2020'

This is the first of two such compilations featuring chess. The YouTube pages list the commercials in order:-

• Chess Commercials Compilation | Part 1 - Famous Players Edition • 10 commercials
• Chess Commercials Compilation | Part 2 • 15 commercials

How many different languages are there on the planet? How many languages do you have to know in order to understand these commercials? That second question makes these videos a worthy addition to the ongoing series about The Sociology of Chess (November 2016).

There's much more from the same Sync Chess channel. Why 'Sync Chess'?

For the hardcore chess fans, I recommend the "Synchronized Dual Commentary" playlist, which I think is a real GAME CHANGER on YouTube – being able to see in a single video both players describing their moves in real time! It’s like watching a tennis game! Or a sitcom, because chess players have a great sense of humor!

After I finish watching the commercials, I'll watch some of that synchronized commentary. Maybe there is a silver lining to the coronavirus lockdown.