GM Fressinet: 'In Blitz You Always Sacrifice Something'

A couple of Danes show that chess isn't all serious. (Warning: occasional profanity.)

What's a Top Level Chess Tournament like? (7:51) • 'Outray Chess travels to Berlin to check out a "top level genius fest" (featuring Svidler, Chessbrah, Fressinet).'

The description continued,

We have a talk with fascinating characters like Peter Svidler, Eric Hansen (the Chessbrah) and Laurant Fressinet and discuss the future of chess. The event was World Blitz and Rapid Championship 2015.

The Berlin event was played in October 2015. Why did it take two years to upload the video? If you like this clip, see also Guy uses Soviet Tank to explain INSANE chess game (Tal - Smyslov, 1959).

Averbakh's R+P vs. B+P Endgames

For the last day the house wifi has been behaving badly, so for today's post I needed a subject that didn't demand too much online time. My first idea was to return to the Aronian - Dubov game from the fourth round of the just-completed 2017 World Cup in Tbilisi. I discussed the R+P vs. B+P endgame in

• 2017-09-14: A Difficult Tablebase Position

I knew I had covered other R+P:B+P endgames in the past, but when exactly? Here's a list:-

• 2009-10-27: Tablebase 1 - Polugaevsky/Kasparov ½
• 2010-08-19: R vs. B Plus Knight Pawns
• 2010-08-24: More R+P vs. B+P Magic

That last post ('Magic') discussed a couple of positions from Averbakh's multi-volume set of endgame books, specifically the volume on Rooks vs. minor pieces. The Rook vs. Bishop endgames can be extremely tricky and often contain hidden resources. The following diagrams shows two of Averbakh's first (and simplest) examples.

The top position is a typical example of how a single tempo can be the difference between a win and a draw in an endgame. White to move draws with 1.Rxf2. Black to move wins with 1....Ke2, because after 2.Re8+ Be3 3.Rf8 Bc1 4.Re8+ Kf3 5.Rf8+ Bf4, the Bishop interferes with the Rook's attack on the file.

The bottom position (Mattison 1914) shows the Bishop and the King coordinating to stop the Rook's attack. The key move is 1.Be3+. After 1...Kb7 2.e7 Rxa3, first the Bishop limits the scope of the Rook with 3.Ba7 Ra1. Then the King finishes the job with 4.Kf4 Rf1+ 5.Bf2 Rxf2+ 6.Ke3 Rf1 7.Ke2.

All of Averbakh's examples contain equally surprising moves and deep plans. For more info on his books, see

• 2011-11-15: Averbakh's Endings, and
• 2011-11-24: Averbakh's Convekta

If I can't get the wifi tamed quickly, I might come back to the subject again.

TCEC Season 10 Kickoff

Fans of engine-to-engine play -- and who isn't? -- know that the TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) is the toughest tournament of them all. Many consider it to be the real World Championship of chess engines. The TCEC takes place on Chessdom.com, and over the past month the site has announced plans for season 10.

2017-08-22: TCEC 2017 season coming soon – information and details • 'The new edition of TCEC is scheduled to take place in the last quarter of 2017. Once again the main goal of the championship will be to provide equal and fair conditions for the top chess engines to face each other and compete on a superb hardware. [See also:] Schedule, Duration, Format, Server, Participants, Staff, Finances'

2017-09-02: TCEC weekly update • 'After a constructive discussion and feedback from the TCEC fans, the new season will have the following parameters: [...]'

2017-09-12: TCEC – structure and participants • 'TCEC Season 10 is starting in about a month. Behind the scenes active preparation is going on for holding the 2017 season of the world’s premium computer chess event.'

2017-09-23: TCEC Season 10 participants • 'TCEC Season 10 is going to start in the beginning of October. It is confirmed that this season’s Top Chess Engine Championship is going to be record breaking both in terms of average ELO of the participants and their rating. [...] The top three seeded are again the open source Stockfish and the commercial Komodo and Houdini.'

For a summary of posts on this blog about the 'TCEC Season 9 Superfinal', see Engines, (Google), Korchnoi (December 2016). For the TCEC Facebook page, see TCEC - Top Chess Engine Championship.

The Harkness Rating System

One of the first posts on this series covering the introduction of chess ratings in the U.S. was The First USCF Rating System (July 2017). The main article in the post, 'National Rating System by William M. Byland, USCF Vice President in Charge of Rating Statistics', ended with

For the long labor of compilation and computation involved in these listings. which furnish an invaluable base for future ratings, we are deeply indebted to Rating Statistician Kenneth Harkness.

The Wikipedia page, Kenneth Harkness, credits him with having 'introduced the Harkness rating system, which was a precursor to the Elo rating system'. Harkness wrote his first feature article on ratings for the 5 March 1952 edition of Chess Life (CL), the same issue where the fourth National Rating List appeared; see USCF Rating Lists in the 1950s (August 2017), for a summary of all early rating lists. Titled 'Picking the Winner at Havana', the Harkness article started,

As this is written the big international tournament at Havana is getting under way. Although the final line-up has not yet been announced. the list of probable competitors includes some top-flight masters from Europe, South America and the United States. This country is represented by U.S. Champion Larry Evans, Grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky, former U.S. Champion Herman Steiner, Senior Master Israel A. Horowitz, veteran U.S. Master Edward Lasker.

Naturally, we all hope that one of our boys will bring home the bacon. And even with the price of meat these days, you can buy a lot of bacon with the $2500.00 first prize being offered by our good friends in Cuba. If our brilliant young champion Larry Evans brings home that much dough he can pay his taxes and still play bridge at the Marshall Chess Club for a fifth.

Good chessplayers being even more consistent than racehorses, it is no trouble at all for your Rating Statistician to lay down his copy of Racing Form for a few moments and give you the probable order of finish at Hialeah -- I mean Havana. Judging by their past performances, as measured by the rating system, the boys will pass the line in the following order:

1. Samuel Reshevsky, USA...2704
2. Miguel N. Najdorf, Argentina...2714

It should be a photo-finish between these two Grandmasters. They ended up one-two at Amsterdam, 1950, and New York, 1951, alternating for first prize. We give Reshevsky the edge because he has made higher ratings than Najdorf in the past and because he is out to avenge the loss of the U.S. Championship to Larry Evans last year. Sammy will play harder than ever to recover his prestige. [...]

A few months later, in the 20 May issue of CL, Harkness wrote a follow-up article. It appeared under the following banner.

'How the Rating System Works'

The article started,

Many readers of CHESS LIFE were favorably impressed by our recent forecast of the results of the international tournament at Havana. With one or two exceptions, which we will hasten to explain now that the race is over, the predictions were about as near as you can come without the use of a crystal ball.

To get some idea of how closely the national rating system measures tournament playing strength, let us compare the ratings earned at Havana with the last averages of the contestants:

['Player, Last Average, Havana Rating' for Najdorf, Reshevsky]

We predicted a photo-finish between these two grandmasters, giving the edge to our ex-champion. An unexpected draw with one of the tailenders cost Sammy the first prize, so be tied with Najdorf.

Note how the ratings earned at Havana confirm the correctness of the previous ratings -- and vice versa. A difference of less than 50 points is negligible.

[Ditto for Gligoric, Eliskases, Evans]

We claimed that any one of these three could take third prize. It was Gligoric who came in third. with Eliskases and Evans tied for fourth and fifth. [...]

This was the first in a series of eight articles under the title 'How the Rating System Works'. I'll look at the following articles in the next post on early U.S. chess ratings.

The 12th Soviet Championship

I've occasionally remarked that the series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price is often a case of feast or famine. In the previous post, Man Ray Chess Photos, I noted, 'the short list had only a single item and I had to go well under my usual cutoff price to find it.' For this current post I had plenty to choose from, even if I again went under my usual cutoff price.

The item pictured below was titled 'Soviet Chess Photo: Panorama of 12th USSR Chess Championship 1940', and sold for US $316 after seven bids from two bidders. Just after the auction opened, the first bidder entered his maximum price. Some days later the second bidder came in with a lower price. Finding that it was insufficient to win, he increased it gradually over the next day, finally giving up. The first bidder had obviously decided that this was a valuable photo. How high was he willing to go?

Top: The entire item

Bottom: Detail from the item

The description said,

Original Soviet chess panoramic photo from 12th USSR chess championship in 1940. On the photo - Moscow conservatory, the place of the tournament. Size of the photo - 19,5 cm x 7 cm. Please notice that the photo was made by the original author by the process of bonding five smaller photos. Probably that was the only way to make a panoramic photo in 1940.

If you look carefully at the top photo, you can see the lines showing where the different photos have been joined. The description continued,

12TH SOVIET CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP: • This is a photograph from the famous 12th Soviet Chess Championship held in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory from September 4th through October 3rd, 1940. The 12th Soviet Chess Championship was truly a battle of the titans. Outstanding players such as Mikhail Botvinnik, Paul Keres, Vasily Smyslov, Alexander Kotov, Isaac Boleslavsky, Igor Bondarevsky, and Andre Lilienthal took part. This so-called "absolute championship" is rightfully considered one of the strongest USSR chess championships ever held.

Here’s an excerpt from Mikhail Botvinnik’s memoirs. "It was a tough tournament. There were many participants and very few off-days. The Grand Hall of the Conservatory has excellent acoustics. The spectators behaved impudently, made a great deal of noise, and clapped all the time. The excellent acoustics only made matters worse. Supposedly, Sergei Prokofiev applauded Keres vigorously after the latter won a game. The other people in his box reprimanded him,, and then the composer remarked, "I have every right to express my feelings." Would my friend Mr. Prokofiev be happy if he were playing a trio and spectators applauding the violinist’s performance drowned out his piano piece? Chess players are in a worse position, though. A pianist can afford to play a few false notes amid booming applause, something a chess player isn’t allowed to do."

The results of the 12th Soviet Chess Championship were truly sensational, since two young players, Andre Lilienthal and Igor Bondarevsky, came in first and second, respectively, leaving grandmasters Mikhail Botvinnik and Paul Keres, the tournament favorites, far behind. The unprecedented hype surrounding this tournament matched its historical significance. After all, the unofficial right to contend for the world championship crown, as well as the prestigious title of USSR champion were on the line.

"The most difficult and most monumental tournament in which I’ve ever taken part has come to a close," Andre Lilienthal wrote. "I have no reason to be displeased with myself. First off, my win over Botvinnik himself wasn’t too bad. Secondly, I snatched what seemed to be an irrevocably lost point from Bondarevsky in the last round. Thirdly, I managed not to lose a single game. Fourthly, I wound up in the wonderful young company of Bondarevsky and Smyslov at the top of the leaderboard. A decisive match for the title of USSR champion is up next. I have to prepare thoroughly for it, which, first and foremost, means getting some much needed rest."

Three months after the tournament was completed, on January 14th, 1941, the Soviet Committee on Physical Culture and Sports issued an order approving the tournament results and awarding Bondarevsky and Lilienthal, the tournament winners, grandmaster titles; however, this order was missing a key point, since it did not mention any sort of match between the two victors. That strange inconsistency came to light a month later when it was decided -- through a behind-the-scenes power struggle -- that one more tournament for the title of absolute USSR champion would be held, a tournament Mikhail Botvinnik won.

Unless I'm misreading something, that description is not entirely accurate. The first paragraph mentions the '12th Soviet Chess Championship', and refers to it as the 'so-called "absolute championship"'. The last paragraph implies that the absolute championship was played later, which is confirmed in Botvinnik's book on the 1941 tournament.

Chess in the Sky

Anyone can see that's a chess King, right? But how was it made?

The world’s a game of chess, and we’re just pawns. Who’ll make the next move? © Flickr user Rasagy Sharma under Creative Commons.

Hint: One of the tags said, 'Bangalore', which is 'the third most populous city and fifth most populous urban agglomeration in India', according to Wikipedia's page on Bangalore.

Win a Million Bucks

Seen on Slashdot.org ('News for nerds, stuff that matters'): Solve a 'Simple' Chess Puzzle, Win $1 Million. Sounds good to me! What's the catch?

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have thrown down the gauntlet to computer programmers to find a solution to a "simple" chess puzzle which could, in fact, take thousands of years to solve, and net a $1 million prize. [...] Devised in 1850, the Queens Puzzle originally challenged a player to place eight queens on a standard chessboard so that no two queens could attack each other. This means putting one queen in each row, so that no two queens are in the same column, and no two queens in the same diagonal. Although the problem has been solved by human beings, once the chess board increases to a large size no computer program can solve it.

The catch is in that last sentence, 'the chess board increases to a large size'. As the original article, "Simple" chess puzzle holds key to $1m prize (st-andrews.ac.uk; August 2017), put it,

Once the chess board reached 1000 squares by 1000, computer progams could no longer cope with the vast number of options and sunk into a potentially eternal struggle akin to the fictional "super computer" Deep Thought in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which took seven and a half million years to provide an answer to the meaning of everything.

A related paper, 'Complexity of n-Queens Completion' by Ian P. Gent, Christopher Jefferson, and Peter Nightingale (School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews), published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 59 (2017) explains everything. But be careful -- you'll need to be a math whiz just to get through the 'Abstract'.

Google image search on 'chess eight queens'

Even the 8-by-8 version isn't that easy to solve. An algorithmic approach of using the Knight's move to place the next Queen -- shown above in the top row, third from left (or bottom row, ditto) -- leaves two Queens on the long diagonal (a8-h1). 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?', indeed.