Chess.com Is Ten!

A few months ago I received a comment on a post from May 2008, Chess Networking. Often when I get a comment on an old post, it's from a spammer hoping that no one is monitoring the blog's comment procedure. In those cases I just flag the comment as spam, which automatically prevents it from being seen by anyone else. This new comment was legitimate:-

Where can I find an updated version of excellent The Rise of Internet Chess? Thanks. FP

That page also dates back to another era, May 2007, exactly ten years ago. It triggered a question in my mind: what 'Internet Chess' advances over the past ten years would I mention in an updated article? My first idea was to document the history of Chess.com, which (coincidentally) also started around the time I wrote 'Rise of Internet Chess', but what could I say? Then I saw the following video.

Chess.com's 10-Year Anniversary Live Show Replay (59:14) • 'Published on 19 May 2017 • IM Danny Rensch plays host for Chess.com's Co-Founders, Erik [Allebest] and Jay [Severson], as they relive the "story" of Chess.com, recapping it's best and worst moments along the way to becoming the world's largest chess website and community in the world.'

At one point IM Rensch mentions, 'Wednesday was the official ten year anniversary', marking 17 May as the site's birthday. Happy anniversary, Chess.com! You've had a great ride and a profound impact on chess around the globe. May your next ten years be just as exciting.

Korchnoi's Career 1946-1977, Crosstables

I ended my previous post, Korchnoi's Career 1946-1977, One Table, with an action:-

Merging the two tables left one last set of cross references to be noted: "L&O also has nearly 50 pages of crosstables covering major events. These could be flagged in the TMER." I'll take care of that on my next post, which should be a wrapup for this stage of the series on 'Korchnoi's Career'.

For the meaning of the acronyms, L&O and TMER, see the 'One Table' post. It turned out that the crosstables, of which I matched 175 against the TMER, were in nearly one-to-one correspondence with the L&O game data used to create this portion of the TMER. I noted a few minor discrepancies:-

Crosstable without TMER:-
• 1952 USSR Team Chp., Odessa
• 1976 Leningrad, Spartakiad

TMER without crosstable:-
• 1957 Armenian Chp. (hors concours)

The crosstables also give Korchnoi's final score for many events which were missing this info, e.g. the '1948 USSR Junior Chp., 1/2-final, Tallinn', where he scored +6-1=4 and finished first. Some day I might add add those results to the TMER, but for now it's time to move to another project.

$13.31 Per Half-Move

We don't see many signed scoresheets here on Top eBay Chess Items by Price. One reason is that I don't find many scoresheets that are worth three figures. Another is that they aren't particularly appealing visually. A few years ago we had Mystery Capablanca Letter (July 2015), which was a scoresheet in the context of a letter. Some time before that we had The Great Pretenders (April 2012), from the 1974 Karpov - Polugaevsky candidates match. The item pictured below was titled 'USSR Chess 1975 year score-sheet Karpov Tal TOURNAMENT Russia Spartakiada'. It sold for US $479, 'Buy It Now'.

The description said,

The courses of party are written down by Karpov's hand. RARE Russia soviet greatest Russia Chess 1975 year form scoresheet autograph signed by Anatoly Karpov and Michail Tal. 100% original scoresheet of Chess USSR Tournament played in 1975 year, from the game Karpov - Tal, played in July 23, 1975.

For 'courses of party', read 'moves of the game'. The rest of the paragraph is self-explanatory, although the game was Tal - Karpov, rather than Karpov - Tal. I suppose the scoresheet headers, written in red, were prepared by an arbiter before the game. Next to the players' names are the teams they represented: Latvia and Leningrad. Karpov's signature (at the bottom of the Wh!te column) matches an autograph on a book I own, mentioned in Two More Autographs (June 2016).

For the complete game, see Mikhail Tal vs Anatoly Karpov; Riga ch-Latvia (1975) on Chessgames.com, although I'll go with the item seller's mention of 'Spartakiad', rather than Chessgames.com's 'Riga ch-Latvia'. The game lasted only 18 moves, thereby valuing the scoresheet at nearly $27 per move (or exactly $13.31 per half-move).

Chess Clones

We've all seen photos of someone playing chess against himself -- in my case I've seen dozens -- but playing chess against two copies of oneself? That's different. This photo was captioned,

Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Conservatives battle for control on a three-player chess board.

Since "all politics is local" and I'm not in that locality, I won't touch the political ramifications.

Election battleground © Flickr user Edward Webb under Creative Commons.

More relevant to me is the next statement in the caption,

This was taken in 2010 and only now uploaded due to overexposing my blue shirted clone, who is looking better after some editing.

I've highlighted the word in italics: clone. The photo is in four groups all titled using the same word -- 'Clone meets clone', 'My very own clone', etc. -- so now I know the name of the technique. As for 'three-player chess', Wikipedia has a page on the subject, appropriately titled Three-player chess. The page says,

Three-player chess variants (as well as other three-player games) are the hardest to design fairly, since the imbalance created when two players gang up against one is usually too great for the defending player to withstand.

The same must be true for politics.

Not the Rossolimo Sicilian

Last summer, the August 1966 'On the Cover' (August 2016) post on this blog featured GM Nicolas Rossolimo on the Chess Review side. I ended the post saying, 'As for GM Rossolimo, he deserves a post of his own.' It's time to make good on that promise.

The Wikipedia page Nicolas Rossolimo provides basic information about his life and career. It starts,

Nicolas Rossolimo (February 28, 1910, Kiev – July 24, 1975, New York) was an American-French-Greek-Russian chess Grandmaster. After acquiring Greek citizenship in 1929, he was able to emigrate that year to France, and was many times chess champion of Paris. In 1952 he emigrated to the United States, and won the 1955 U.S. Open Chess Championship. He was a resident of New York City until his death.

A French language page, Rossolimo Nicolas (heritageechecsfra.free.fr; 'Heritage des Echecs Français') provides more detail about his personal life: 'biographical elements furnished by Alexander Rossolimo, his son'. One of the recurring stories about Rossolimo is that he drove a taxi cab to make a living (bellhop and busboy are also mentioned) and Edward Winter's Chess Notes for February 2015 has an item '9108. Nicolas Rossolimo' with a complete copy of a long 1958 New York Times article on the subject. Some years later the same newspaper published his obituary: Nicolas Rossolimo, 65, Is Dead; Grandmaster Ran Chess Studio (nytimes.com; July 1975; 'one of the country's 12 grandmasters of chess').

A few years ago I wrote a post, Friendly Chess Players (July 2013), which mentioned Rossolimo.

GM Averbakh divides great players into six groups. [...] Group five - the artists. For them it is important not just to win, but to win elegantly, and to create works of art. • Simagin, Rossolimo.

By coincidence, I found two 1975 appreciations from Chess Life & Review (CL&R), both written after his death, expanding on this idea.

Nick Rossolimo was a chess artist. He won innumerable prizes for beautiful and brilliant games, which gave him greater satisfaction than winning tournaments in an ordinary way. It was his feeling, often expressed, that what distinguishes a grandmaster from ordinary players is his creative imagination. In Rossolimo's case, he was not satisfied to create beauty only in competitive situations, but he also composed many endgame studies, all of which are characterized by high technical polish and simple beauty. • CL&R September (p.571)

and

Rossolimo's chess style was purely classical, and he relied on his own opening variations. Always searching for beauty and brilliant combinations, he won numerous brilliancy prizes. Nick considered chess first of all an art. He once wrote: "What am I supposed to do? Trade in my romantic, combinative style for 'today's style' and become a hunter of points at any price? No, I will not do so. I will fight for the art of chess. I will not become a monster." He even suggested that points be awarded according to the artistic merit of a game, rather than for its result, so that the loser of a game may earn credit if his play was creative. • CL&R October (p.647) by Pal Benko

The Chessgames.com page, Nicolas Rossolimo, lists a number of his 'Notable Games', including his most famous game, Rossolimo - Reissmann, 1967 Puerto Rico.

Early Goichberg Tournaments

Running through two recent posts Early N.Y. Scholastic Championships and Early U.S. High School Championships was a common thread: Bill Goichberg and the Continental Chess Association (CCA). The chronologically first of the tournaments mentioned in those posts was the 'Greater New York High School and Junior High School Championships', April 1966. The following overview of Tournament Life Announcements (TLAs) from 1965 shows the earliest Goichberg tournaments listed in Chess Life (CL).

From various issues of Chess Life 1965

In 1969, Goichberg ran for USCF Vice-President, a position held for the three previous years by Isaac Kashdan. His candidate statement in the June 1969 issue of CL summarized his early career.

William Goichberg: I believe I have the experience to serve our Federation well as a national officer. Currently I am Director of the Continental Chess Association, USCF's most active affiliate. Previously, I was USCF rating statistician for 3 1/2 years, during the latter part of which I also wrote many articles for CHESS LIFE.

I have organized and directed over 100 USCF-rated events in seven states, with a total of more than 10,000 entrants; these have brought in over 1500 new USCF members. Among these has been the largest tournament ever held in the U.S. (1966-7 Greater N. Y. Scholastic Champions, 614 players), the largest rated tournament (same, 486 players), the largest single-section tournament (1969 National High School Championship, 370 players), and the largest open tournament (1968 Atlantic Open, 329 players). Of the fourteen largest rated tournaments ever held in this country, I have directed ten.

The success of these events has not been limited to one area, but includes the largest non-holiday open ever held in New Jersey, Connecticut, and D.C., and the largest open ever in Delaware and upstate New York. This activity has given me a thorough understanding of the elements of successful chess promotion -- of organizers' problems and players' needs.

He lost the election to Frank Skoff, but it was not his last run for USCF office and he would one day become USCF President. As for the CCA, the earliest tournament reference I can find is the TLA for the August 1968 Eastern Open in Washington DC.

Bobby Fischer usually gets full credit for the so-called Fischer boom in the 1970s, because his fame triggered the excitement. Tireless organizers like Bill Goichberg had already seeded interest among U.S players and were able to harness the newfound fascination for chess.

Korchnoi's Career 1946-1977, One Table

The previous post, Korchnoi's Career 1946-1977, Cross References, documented a new table with Korchnoi's second-tier events, those which were not on the original overview of his tournament and match record. I ended the post saying,

The TMER page is somewhat messy, but that should improve when I merge the two tables. Before I do that I need to look at a half-dozen events on the TMER which have no corresponding L&O codes.

Two of those events were errors that I had introduced and four were events with no games in L&O:-

1948 USSR Junior Chp., Tallinn
1957 Armenian Chp. (hors concours)
1964 Leningrad Chp.
1970 Match vs Bronstein (training match)

Merging the two tables left one last set of cross references to be noted:-

L&O also has nearly 50 pages of crosstables covering major events. These could be flagged in the TMER.

I'll take care of that on my next post, which should be a wrapup for this stage of the series on 'Korchnoi's Career'.

[]

L&O: Levy & O'Connell, 'Korchnoi's Chess Games' (Oxford University Press 1979)
TMER: Viktor Korchnoi's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (1946-2015)