John Saunders' Chess Blog

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 8

2012-01-31T18:36:00.002Z

After beating Judit Polgar yesterday, Women's World Champion Hou Yifan of China followed it up by taking another 2700 rated scalp this afternoon. Amazing stuff! The game was very complicated, but she played some very enterprising, risk-taking chess. There was a definite touch of the Mikhail Tal about it.

That said, the Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem seemed to be at least drawing the game when he played the incomprehensible 37...Bc5??, taking this all-important defensive piece off the long diagonal when 37...Rf7 was the obvious move. I guess he was in time trouble. Hou Yifan took her chance with aplomb and she could well be sharing the lead tonight when the other games finish.
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Tradewise Gibraltar Chess, Round 7 - 30 Jan 2012

2012-01-30T14:45:00.001Z

An historic moment at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival as the world's greatest ever woman player Judit Polgar sits down to play women's world champion Hou Yifan for the first time. Latest: Hou Yifan won the game - see the score below. Judit seemed well below par but Hou Yifan took her chance brilliantly.

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Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 3

2012-01-26T17:42:00.000Z

Nigel Short loves Gibraltar. He has won here a couple of times and the worst he has done is finishing second equal. Last year he had a phenomenal result on the Rock, finishing second to Ivanchuk (who scored an even more phenomenal success).

In round three he was paired with the world no.14. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Nigel played the Azerbaijani super-GM at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad and gave him a good drubbing. One imagines that Mamedyarov would have been thirsting for revenge today. Instead, he received another good drubbing! Resignation at the end is slightly premature, if only because many spectators might not have understood why, but there is little doubt that Nigel would have finished the job.

Comments below are based on Nigel Short's comments after the game.

Official Live Games: http://www.livestream.com/gibchess2012

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Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Aronian Shows The Way

2012-01-26T09:15:00.000Z

Levon Aronian is in seemingly irresistible form in Wijk aan Zee at the moment and he leads the field by a full point with three rounds remaining. His tenth round win with Black against home player Anish Giri had a little bit of everything. Some sharp and enterprising opening theory (courtesy of an Armenian colleague), an exchange sacrifice (inspired, no doubt, by his great Armenian predecessor Tigran Petrosian), confident, patient middlegame technique, topped off with an improbably beautiful knight sacrifice to set up mate.

It seems a long time ago now that we were talking about the possibility of Magnus Carlsen overtaking Garry Kasparov's record rating of 2851 in Wijk. The way Levon Aronian is playing, there is probably a slightly better chance of Levon Aronian overtaking Carlsen at the top of the present rating list by the end of the tournament.

Levon Aronian (photo Fred Lucas)

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Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Missed Opportunity

2012-01-25T17:32:00.000Z

An amusing finale from this afternoon's games at Wijk aan Zee...

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Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 9

2012-01-24T18:42:00.000Z

Here's an amazing finish from the Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee tournament, round 9, 24 January 2012. If you cut to move 47, you will see that Anish Giri (Black) is under pressure in the key position. But he then allows the exchange to a king and pawn endgame. Always a risky decision, of course, but at first it looks like he can hold. However, it turns out to be a blunder as Vasily Ivanchuk finds a very precise line to force a win. Very instructive!

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Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival Commentary

2012-01-24T15:26:00.001Z

Live commentary is now underway at the 2012 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival in the Caleta Hotel.

Currently GMs Simon Williams and Stuart Conquest are commenting live on play.

Link to live commentary: http://www.livestream.com/gibchess2012

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

2012-01-23T19:04:00.001Z

The Tradewise 10th Gibraltar Chess Festival starts on Monday 23 January 2012, with the Masters tournament getting underway on the Tuesday.

The photo shows Women's World Chess Champion of Hou Yifan making the now traditional visit to the Rock Apes on the day before the tournament proper starts.

This year's competition is the biggest and best in the tournament's history to date. It features a staggering eleven players rated 2700 or higher, headed by former winner Peter Svidler, Shak Mamedyarov, Michael Adams, Zoltan Almasi, Alexei Shirov and Le Quang Liem, plus the absolute cream of the world's top women players competing together in an open tournament for the first time - Judit Polgar, Hou Yifan, Humpy Koneru, Nadezhda Kosintseva, Nana Dzagnidze, etc. For good measure it features two former world championship finalists, Nigel Short and Viktor Korchnoi.

Official website: http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com/index.htm
Live Games: http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com/live_games_masters.htm
Live Commentary: http://www.livestream.com/gibchess2012

Magnus Carlsen wins the Tal Memorial on tie-break

2011-11-25T16:40:00.000Z

"They think it's all over - it is now." A handshake between Levon Aronian
and Yan Nepomniachtchi concludes the action in Moscow.

The final round of the Tal Memorial tournament in Moscow saw Magnus Carlsen catch the leader Levon Aronian and take the tournament on tie-break (having played more Black games).

Magnus Carlsen defeated Hikaru Nakamura with Black and condemned the American to last place in the table. Hikaru really needed to get a better opening (it's the only way to survive a close encounter of the Carlsen kind) but soon found himself on the back foot. Carlsen won a pawn and then gradually applied more and more pressure. It eventually came down to an opposite-coloured bishop endgame - notoriously drawn in general but this one had certain nuances which made it more than usually problematic for the defending side.

Carlsen's technical handling of the endgame was immaculate, although he disdained a few brutal finishes towards the end for a more positional approach. Games between Carlsen and Nakamura are starting to resemble the old-time tennis rivalry of Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. In both cases the cool Scandinavian gradually established a hoodoo over the brash American player. But Hikaru gets an early chance for revenge as the two will meet again in London in little more than a week's time!

The other decisive game saw Peter Svidler defeat Russian colleague Vladimir Kramnik. The former world champion played rather too combatively and his position unravelled in the run-up to the time control. Like Nakamura and Vishy Anand (who drew all nine games!), he will be hoping show better form in London or it might turn out to be a second instalment of the 'Magnus and Levon Show'...

1-2 Carlsen, Aronian 5½/9 (Carlsen placed first on tie-break), 3-5 Karjakin, Nepomniachtchi, Ivanchuk 5, 6-7 Anand, Svidler 4½, 8-9 Kramnik, Gelfand 3½, 10 Nakamura 3.

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Women's World Chess Championship, Tirana (ALB), 14-30 November 2011

2011-11-24T16:42:00.000Z

Women's world chess champion Hou Yifan, 17, of China completed the successful defence of her title this afternoon when she drew the eighth game of the best of ten match against challenger Humpy Koneru, 24, of India. This made the score 5½-2½ so there was no need to play the remaining two games. Hou Yifan won three games to her opponent's zero, with five draws.

Humpy Koneru, needing three straight wins to force the match into a rapidplay tie-break, had the advantage of the white pieces. She emerged from the opening with a slight edge but then tried to force the issue with an f-pawn advance and only succeeded in worsening her game. It came down to a double rook endgame where White was significantly worse and had no realistic chances of trying for a win. Black was content to accept a draw offer as it was sufficient to win the match.

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Official website: http://www.wwcc2011tirana.com

Photo by Anastasiya Karlovich and Anna Burtasova with kind permission of FIDE

Tal Memorial Tournament, Moscow, Round 8

2011-11-24T16:18:00.000Z

Round 8 of the Tal Memorial Tournament in Moscow, 24 November, saw Levon Aronian of Armenia win the only decisive game and take over the sole lead on 5/8, with one round remaining.

Levon Aronian beats Peter Svidler to lead the tournament.

Aronian, world number three, defeated Russian champion Peter Svidler in what looked like a fairly sedate game at first but gradually got more complicated. Eventually Aronian was able to play a piece for two pawns sacrifice which led down a long, forcing line to a position where his queen dominated the position and led to the win of a third pawn. Svidler fought hard but passed pawns on both sides of the board proved fatal to his chances. One round remains, with Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Karjakin and Nepomniachtchi poised half a point behind Aronian. Last round pairings affecting first place are Nepomniachtchi (4½) - Aronian (5), Nakamura (3) - Carlsen (4½), Karjakin (4½) - Ivanchuk (4½).

Official website: http://www.russiachess.org/

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Women's World Chess Championship, Game 7

2011-11-23T20:58:00.000Z

Game seven of the Women's World Chess Championship match, held in Tirana, Albania, saw another win for Hou Yifan of China against Humpy Koneru of India. The reigning champion has now won three games without reply from her challenger and needs just one draw from the three remaining games to retain her title. By contrast, Humpy Koneru needs three successive wins to force a rapidplay play-off.

The Indian challenger, probably anxious to get back into the match with so few games remaining, played the overambitious 27...h5 which both players later concluded was an error. She compounded the error by surrendering a pawn and further weakening the kingside. Hou Yifan soon won a second pawn and showed admirable technique and a cool head to convert the endgame. After the game Humpy Koneru admitted that she was "out of form".

Official website: http://www.wwcc2011tirana.com

Photo by Anastasiya Karlovich and Anna Burtasova with kind permission of FIDE

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Women's World Chess Championship, Tirana (ALB), 14-30 November 2011

2011-11-21T18:06:00.002Z

photos by Anastasiya Karlovich and Anna Burtasova with kind permission of FIDE

The sixth game of the Women's World Championship, in Tirana, Albania, was very exciting this afternoon. The holder, Hou Yifan of China, came under pressure in the opening as Humpy Koneru of India sacrificed a pawn for the attack. However, though she soon regained her pawn, it was by no means easy for the challenger to exploit the resultant position despite the presence of two bishops on her side of the board. Suddenly the Chinese player's two rooks were calling the tune and, in time trouble, she found a huge tactic to win the game. Later it was learnt that the Chinese player had been hospitalised with stomach cramps the night before. Not a bad performance, considering!

The score is now 4-2 in favour of Hou Yifan, who also won game three. There are four games left and Humpy Koneru must win at least two of them to force a tie-break.

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Official Website: http://www.wwcc2011tirana.com

CHESS Magazine, November 2011

2011-11-14T18:45:00.001Z

IN STOCK NOW AT CHESS.CO.UK - CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE AND BUY A COPY

CHESS Magazine - November 2011

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine

Magazine, 60 pages

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine - established 1935! All the regular features of the UK's best-selling CHESS magazine plus more!

Sao Paulo / Bilbao Grand Slam - The intercontinental super-tournament saw Ivanchuk dominate in Brazil, but then Magnus Carlsen took over in Spain.
Sadler Wins in Oslo - Matthew Sadler is on a roll! First, Barcelona, and now Oslo. He annotates his best game while Yochanan Afek covers the action
London Classic Preview - We ask the pundits what they expect to happen next month
Interview: Nigel Short - Carl Portman caught up with the English super-GM in Shropshire
Kasparov - Short Blitz Match - Garry and Nigel re-enacted their 1993 title match at a faster time control in Belgium. It came down to a nail-biting finish...
European Club Cup, Slovenia - Irish IM Sam Collins was on the spot in Slovenia where Europe’s top club sides (and some more modest ones) slugged it out.
Memorable Mishaps - Steve Giddins recalls funny things on the way to the tournament

Plus more!

Click here to download a PDF with an extract from the magazine.

Mickey Adams Commits Chuckicide

2011-11-11T14:26:00.000Z

STOP PRESS... Mickey Adams has committed Chuckicide in the final round of the European Team Championship in Greece, 11 November 2011... this means England currently lead Ukraine 1½-½ with two games still in play.

Michael Adams (left) 1-0 Vassily Ivanchuk

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Rachel Reeves vs Stephen Moss, House of Commons, 18 Oct 2011

2011-10-18T19:04:00.004+01:00

Today at the House of Commons, Rachel Reeves MP was challenged to a couple of games of 10-minute blitz chess by Guardian journalist Stephen Moss. Rachel and Stephen are both competition players with chess grades not too dissimilar from each other, though Rachel has not played actively for a few years. She was a bit rusty and lost the first game to Stephen. But, as you can see below, she brought in a special adviser to help her with the second game...

Garry Kasparov advises Rachel Reeves, who faces Stephen Moss.
To the left of picture you can see scribe GM Jonathan Speelman,
who kindly noted down the moves for us.

The moves of game one...

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The second game has notes by GM Jonathan Speelman, to whom I am very grateful for keying in the games.

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October 2011 CHESS Magazine

2011-10-18T17:49:00.000+01:00

IN STOCK NOW!

CHESS Magazine - October 2011 - £3.95 - click here to buy online

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine

Magazine, 60 pages

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine - established 1935! All the regular features of the UK's best-selling CHESS magazine plus more!

FIDE World Cup, Khanty-Mansiysk - Chess in the Wild West East!This year’s World Cup was as entertaining as it was strong, and proved an audio-visual feast for spectators as Peter Svidler triumphed. Enjoy our in-depth coverage!
Sants for the Memories! - ‘Born-again’ English GM Matthew Sadler annotates his exciting last-round game from Sants against Jan Smeets. Revealing!
Russian Super-Final - ‘Svidler on the hoof’ again! Richard Palliser annotates
A Tale of Two Tournaments - GM Keith Arkell annotates games from Coulsdon and Paignton
Starry, Starry Knights - GM Stuart Conquest at large... he loses a laptop but, after a bit of digging, uncovers a 19th century chess legend
The Mating Game - James Essinger is writing a novel - on love, friendship and chess!
Chess in the 1960s - Our look-back takes us to Bled 1961, which was all about Mischa and Bobby... but Bisguier also played some great chess there
Overseas News / Home News - A round-up of what’s been happening near and far. English teenager Callum Kilpatrick annotates a win against a GM

Plus more!

Download a pdf file with the extract from this magazine.

Dutch for Chessplayers

2011-10-13T09:39:00.000+01:00

Ever wondered how to pronounce 'Euwe'? Or 'Scheveningen'? Or 'Wijk aan Zee'?

Wonder no longer - there is a website which gives guidance on the pronunciation of some chess-related Dutch names and terms...

http://www.heardutchhere.net/duchess.html

Very useful - though I'm not sure I can replicate some of those sounds myself.

August CHESS Magazine

2011-08-16T09:55:00.000+01:00

The August CHESS Magazine is out now. Buy it here.

The UK's most popular and comprehensive chess Magazine, established 1935. All the regular features plus the following ...

King’s Tournament, Medias - As in 2010, Magnus Carlsen wins... but Sergey Karjakin was right alongside!

Interview: Boris Gelfand - Part 2 of Boris Gelfand’s exclusive interview with John Saunders

World Open, Philadelphia - English and American stars Mickey Adams and Gata Kamsky clash in an Armageddon finale

Commonwealth Championship, South Africa - Nigel Short narrowly failed to keep up with the Jones boy! New Commonwealth champion Gawain Jones annotates his best game.

County Championship Finals - Steve Giddins reports on a rare success for Surrey against Kent

Judit Polgar - The best-ever woman player talks candidly to Lars Grahn

Perfect Preparation - Part 2 of Eddie Dearing’s advice on how to prepare for a game

Bobby Fischer Comes to London - A look at Nigel Short’s simultaneous display from the film premiere

Plus all the usual features and more besides

To order a copy of the August 2011 CHESS Magazine, click here

New Chess Blogs

2011-08-13T22:23:00.000+01:00

I've added a few more chess blogs to the list on the side panel.

FM Steve Giddins is, like me, a former editor of BCM and he has restarted his chess blog, here:

Steve Giddins' Chess Blog

GM Gawain Jones is one of England's top GMs and he has a blog here:

Gawain Jones' Chess Blog

'Full English Breakfast' is not so much a blog as a series of podcasts by GM Stephen Gordon and IM Lawrence Trent and can be found here:

Full English Breakfast

'GingerGM' is GM Simon Williams' chess blog and shop, featuring his popular videos and other other merchandise as well as blog articles.

GingerGM

2011 British Chess Championship

2011-07-25T18:45:00.000+01:00

This year's British Chess Championships are being held in Sheffield. There is a very impressive line-up, headed by GMs Mickey Adams, Nigel Short, David Howell, Gawain Jones, Nick Pert and Stephen Gordon, and assisted by some generous sponsorship from Darwin Strategic Ltd.

The official website is http://www.britishchess2011.com/index.htm

Live Commentary by IM Andrew Martin: http://www.livestream.com/leylandchess

Matthew Webb's Chess Blog: http://www.mattywebbchess.com/

Other useful links: The English Chess Forum * The Week in Chess * Live Games * Results *

I'll try to add other links to various blogs, etc, as they become available

Kasimdzhanov's Not Wearing Any Draws

2011-07-22T20:30:00.000+01:00

Kasim wants chess to 'go commando'

Former FIDE Champion Rustam Kasimdzanov has sent an open letter to the World Chess Federation with a revolutionary idea: to abolish the draw in chess altogether.

“This way the expectations of the crowd will never be deceived. There will always be a winner, there will always be blood. (…) It will be good for our sport. Not just sponsors and attention and prizes. It will be essentially good for our game.”

Read the full story on ChessVibes here

And, yes, the only real reason I've blogged it is to be able to use the headline at the top of the blog...

... oh, go on, then. His idea is that, if a longplay game is drawn, it is replayed immediately at ever decreasing time limits, with colours reversed, say, 20 minutes each for the first one, then 10 minutes each, etc, etc, until a game is decisive. That is counted as the score of the game (1-0, 0-1 but not ½-½) and - perhaps most controversially - counted for rating purposes.

All kinds of snags occur, of course. For one thing, it wouldn't work for league or weekend chess as there is no spare time to fit in a series of replays. It might work for a top-level tournament with a limited number of competitors, by way of an exhibition or experimental event (like the Melody Amber tournament) but I can't see it catching on. Many players would be reluctant to put their longplay ratings on the line.

Besides which, what is wrong with a good, honest draw? But the good news is that it is not being proposed by another person from that neck of the woods with a name beginning with K - Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Then chess would be in real trouble. His ideas have a bad habit of turning into implemented decisions in a twinkling of an eye and with minimum of thought. Nobody much is likely to take any notice of a second-tier world champion who won his title in a discredited Libyan event shorn of a host of big-name players and which effectively excluded Israeli competitors. Thank heavens, you may well say. And so would I.

July CHESS Magazine

2011-07-13T21:23:00.000+01:00

The July CHESS Magazine is now out, edited by me. You can download a sample PDF, buy a copy or take out a subscription by clicking here. In its 60 full-colour ages, there is a huge variety of articles for players of all standards.

For me personally, the big event of the month was conducting a full-length interview with Israeli super-GM Boris Gelfand. The interview was so long that it became necessary to split it into three sections: one section comprised Boris's comments on the recent World Championship Candidates' Matches, which are included in the coverage of the competition, with the more general elements of the interview divided into two more sections, with part one in July and part two in August. Boris was the most generous and courteous of interlocutors, and interviewing him was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my 12-year career as a chess commentator. Boris must be just about the perfect role model for anyone with serious aspirations for a professional career as a player.

We've also got a great game annotated exclusively for us by globe-trotting super-GM Nigel Short from his tournament victory in Angola; coverage of the Nakamura-Ponomariov and Robson-Finegold matches in Saint Louis, with annotations by Richard Palliser; world champion Vishy Anand beating Alexei Shirov in Leon; articles by Lorin D'Costa, Yochanan Afek, Norman Stephenson, Nick Ivell, Adam Raoof, Sean Marsh, Rene Mayer; and of course all the regular features, such as GM Daniel King's How Good is Your Chess?, my look-back through the back pages of the magazine, Find The Winning Continuation and news round-ups.

Ilyumzhinov Plays Chess With Gaddafi

2011-06-13T09:43:00.000+01:00

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov shakes hands with Gaddafi on 12 June 2011

Not for the first time, FIDE (World Chess Federation) President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov causes chessplayers worldwide to cringe with embarrassment as he meets Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya on 12 June 2011.

There is no point in going into further detail here as the world media has already got its teeth into the story. In my view, the most complete report of yesterday's events and their background appears on the excellent 'Chess in Translation' website. A few observations: the general media now routinely refers to Ilyumzhinov as the 'Russian eccentric', linking the above story to the FIDE president's much-publicised account of his meeting with extra-terrestrials a few years ago and perhaps adding that he visited Saddam Hussain not long before the Iraq war. Of course it has been argued that Ilyumzhinov is far worse than 'eccentric' but this description is damaging enough from the point of view of competitive chess.

So, was this a public relations disaster from Ilyumzhinov's point of view with regard to his hopes of being elected FIDE president in three years' time? I'm guessing, probably not. FIDE works in much the same way as the world football federation FIFA, whose notorious president Sepp Blatter can get away with all manner of idiotic nonsense without it affecting his electability. A lot of international sports federation are what one might term DINOs - "democratic in name only". The heads of these organisations don't have to worry too much about the sensibilities of the people who are involved in the activity at grass roots level as it is all too easy for the voting members at national federation level to be bribed or corralled in some manner.

I suppose it can be argued that this doesn't matter quite so much in the world of football, where the sponsorship and TV money continues to roll in despite the grubby internal politics, but it is hugely damaging to chess since it is much harder to attract sponsorship from Western European or North American sources with the Russian eccentric at the helm. As a result, major chess events will continue to be held in obscure or dubious parts of the world where Ilyumzhinov is more able to strike up a relationship with other politicos whose dubious modus operandi resembles his own. Here's just one example.

The report which I've linked to above reports that Ilyumzhinov is planning an international chess tournament in Tripoli, starting 1 October. You've heard of Chess Boxing, now Ilyumzhinov brings us Chess Bombing: international chess with the added frisson of being blown to smithereens during play. And can you imagine the scene in Tripoli as those chess grandmasters brave or foolhardy enough to take part arrive to see a large banner reading "Welcome, Hostages!"?

Incidentally, any general media people reading this blog should not confuse 'chess bombing' with 'Armageddon chess', which sounds similar but is actually a chess aberration of an entirely different (but thankfully non-violent) kind. And a chess tournament played in the epicentre of war-torn Libya would be nothing new for battle-hardened grandmasters as they have been called upon to play major events in war zones several times during the Ilyumzhinov presidency. Even Garry Kasparov was obliged to dodge a few bullets from time to time during his career as world champion. Who says it doesn't take courage to play chess?

Later: Another interesting link reveals that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov actually has a 'Planet Kirsan' named after him. It's more of an asteroid, I imagine, and lies between Jupiter and Mars. "So that if anything happens, I tell everyone, I’ll have somewhere to run." (He has a sense of humour of sorts). Maybe he is trying to interest Gaddafi in a time share.

Chess Magazine at War

2011-02-11T12:54:00.000Z

The latest CHESS is out now. If you go to this link at The Week in Chess, you can get a taster of what's in the magazine, including a free download of my complete 'Chess Magazine at War' article. It is about chess in the UK during the Second World War and more specifically gives some insight into how the then editor of CHESS magazine, BH (Baruch) Wood, coped with the task of running a magazine during that terrible time.

BH (Baruch, "Barry") Wood, founder of CHESS magazine

As someone who has edited both the UK's leading chess periodicals, I know only too well how tough the job of editing a chess magazine can be, but I can only guess at how difficult it must have been for BHW at that extraordinary time. And yet he continued to turn out regular monthly issues whilst doing war work, touring the country to give simuls and also bringing up a young family. Oh, and defend a major legal case, and squabble with the national chess federation (yes, some things never change). Amazing guy, Baruch Wood - I take my hat off to the man. Anyway, do have a read of my article - I really enjoyed researching it and hope some of this enthusiasm comes through in the writing.

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

2011-01-26T11:23:00.000Z

The Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival is now underway and once again I'm working there as webmaster and report writer. It's an amazingly strong tournament, with players like Vassily Ivanchuk, Michael Adams, Paco Vallejo Pons and Nigel Short in the line-up.

Women's World Chess Championship, Aralik (TUR), 2-25 December

2010-12-01T15:30:00.000Z

Women's World Chess Championship, Aralik (TUR), 2-25 December

The Women's World Championship is being held in Aralik, Turkey, from 2-25 December 2010. It is a 64-player knock-out competition, with mini-matches of two longplay games and rapidplay/blitz tie-breaks as necessary. Alexandra Kosteniuk (RUS) is the title holder and nominally top seed (though she is 12th on rating). The favourites are probably Humpy Koneru (IND), Hou Yifan (CHN) and Tatiana Kosintseva (RUS), though the reigning champion punches above her rating in such events and must have a reasonable chance of retaining her title. England's Jovanka Houska (2421) is seeded 34th and in the first round meets Iweta Rajlich (POL, 2446, 31st seed). Official website:http://wwcc2010.tsf.org.tr/

Wikileaks: Nothing About Chess

2010-11-29T14:22:00.000Z

I visited Wikileaks to see if there was anything about chess, for example all those conspiracy theories that Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov came out with - for example, did Karpov and Kasparov really make up all those world championship games, did IBM get Karpov to make some moves on behalf of Deep Blue when it beat Garry, did Kirsan liaise with the little green men, etc, etc?

What a disappointment. I'm none the wiser. Nothing about chess at all, just some stuff about a war in the Middle East which I have no interest in (I've been editing chess magazines for the last decade, for heaven's sake). They might at least have told us whether Osama Bin Laden plays the Queen's Gambit but no... nothing... zilch... zippo.

Well, at least they haven't found out that all us chessplayers are Communists and are engaged in a worldwide struggle to checkmate capitalism, so our big secret's safe at least. Er... wait a minute, did I write that down instead of just think it? Whoops... and is that the doorbell? Just a sec... oh dear... these large gentlemen in sharp suits say I have to put my coat on and go with them to answer a few questions. I could be a while. See you soon, everyone... hopefully...

Chess is a Crime II: Justin Bieber Arrested for Looking Like Magnus Carlsen

2010-11-20T08:14:00.000Z

Following the story about the NYPD arresting and charging seven men for playing chess in a restricted area comes this sensational story from LA...

Justin Bieber: Arrested for looking like a chessplayer

The photo shows teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber being arrested in LA yesterday. But it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. An embarrassed LAPD spokesman later explained: "You see, he looked just a tiny bit like notorious pawn-pusher Magnus Carlsen. We are cracking down on chess in the USA and the police have orders to take immediate action if they spot one of these so-called 'grandmasters' on the street. We can't apologise more for suspecting Justin might be a chessplayer."

P.S. Actually Justin is a chessplayer - see this story.

Drop That Bishop and Come Out With Your Hands Up!

2010-11-19T08:02:00.000Z

Most of us have reluctantly accepted that chess is not part of the culture in either the UK or the USA, but since when did it become a crime? Here's a weird example of the NYPD showing zero tolerance towards the playing of chess (which Ukrainian GM Mikhail Golubev spotted in the New York Post):

http://bit.ly/agZ6ht

A squad of cops in bulletproof vests swooped into an upper Manhattan park and charged seven men with the "crime" of playing chess in an area off-limits to adults unaccompanied by kids -- even though no youngsters were there.

Amazingly, charges were not dropped after the police discovered what the men were doing and they still have to face criminal charges in the Manhattan Criminal Court in December.

This reminded me of an incident from my youth when, with two other youngsters, I happened to be emerging from a building in an ill-lit backstreet of High Wycombe one night. A police car suddenly hove into view and stopped rather abruptly alongside us. An officer wound down the window and barked out a question: "where did you three spring from?" Acting as spokesperson for my "gang", I replied "the chess club". He responded with a somewhat disappointed "oh!" and was gone as suddenly as he arrived. Any young offenders or other ne'er-do-wells reading this might like to consider the "chess club" line as a useful cover story for their nefarious doings though I must reiterate that, in this instance, it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Back to the story: an NYPD spokesman later tried to justify the heavy-handed treatment of the 'Chessplaying Seven' on the grounds that one of them had 'a bit of previous' (as they say on cop shows): "One of [the] men had priors for reckless endangerment, grand larceny, drug possession, and criminal mischief." Reckless endangerment? Well, we're all guilty of that, aren't we? You should see the way I play the Ponziani.

The Fourth Polgar Sister?

2010-11-17T23:00:00.000Z

Is BBC news presenter Kirsty Wark the secret fourth Polgar sister?

Left: Judit Polgar...........Right: Kirsty Wark

I think we should be told.

Any Dancing Partners for Magnus?

2010-11-13T18:26:00.000Z

GM Simen Agdestein on Norwegian TV's 'Dancing with the Stars' - but could his protégé Magnus Carlsen demonstrate similar fancy footwork were he to attempt a breakaway world chess championship?

Leonard Barden's Guardian column of 13 November 2010 is on Magnus Carlsen's withdrawal from the World Chess Championship Candidates' competition. In the column, Leonard makes this point:

"... the bold move could be for London, as in 1993, to go for a high profile breakaway series in 2011 which would still allow the winner to play the official match a year later."

I noticed that Leonard wrote "series" and not "match" and that was probably for a good reason. One difference between Magnus's vision for the championship and the 1993 breakaway match between Kasparov and Short (or Fischer's attempt to play Karpov in 1975 without FIDE's blessing) is that Magnus doesn't seem to be talking about matchplay as a championship system. In the past it has taken 'two to tango' to set up a breakaway match - and that has proved quite hard enough - but Magnus would need a whole dancing troupe were he to attempt a breakaway to suit his aspirations. Perhaps Magnus should seek advice from his former mentor, pro-footballer-cum-GM Simen Agdestein who starred in Norwegian TV's equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing.

Carlsen Puts Himself En Prise

2010-11-05T15:16:00.000Z

The big news of the day... Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from the World Championship cycle.

Carlsen at the 2009 London Chess Classic - he plays again in 2010

Here is the content of his letter to FIDE:

Letter to FIDE

To: FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov & FIDE World Championship Committee.

Reference is made to the ongoing World Championship cycle.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my decision not to take part in the planned Candidate Matches between March and May 2011.

After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the ongoing 2008–2012 cycle does not represent a system, sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparations and matches and to perform at my best.

Reigning champion privileges, the long (five year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion.

By providing you with four months notice before the earliest start of the Candidates as well as in time before you have presented player contracts or detailed regulations, I rest assured that you will be able to find an appropriate replacement.

Although the purpose of this letter is not to influence you to make further changes to the ongoing cycle, I would like to take the opportunity to present a few ideas about future cycles in line with our input to FIDE during the December 27th 2008 phone-conference between FIDE leaders and a group of top-level players.

In my opinion privileges should in general be abolished and a future World Championship model should be based on a fair fight between the best players in the World, on equal terms. This should apply also to the winner of the previous World Championship, and especially so when there are several players at approximately the same level in the world elite. (Why should one player have one out of two tickets to the final to the detriment of all remaining players in the world? Imagine that the winner of the 2010 Football World Cup would be directly qualified to the 2014 World Cup final while all the rest of the teams would have to fight for the other spot.)

One possibility for future cycles would be to stage an 8-10 player World Championship tournament similar to the 2005 and 2007 events.

The proposal to abolish the privileges of the World Champion in the future is not in any way meant as criticism of, or an attack on, the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a worthy World Champion, a role model chess colleague and a highly esteemed opponent.

Rest assured that I am still motivated to play competitive chess. My current plan is to continue to participate in well-organised top-level tournaments and to try to maintain the no 1 spot on the rating list that I have successfully defended for most of 2010.

Best regards,

IGM Magnus Carlsen

This sensational move is a very big deal for the world of chess. Magnus Carlsen is the biggest thing to happen to chess in the western hemisphere since Bobby Fischer in the 1960s and represents a major chance to see the game back in the limelight. For most of 2010 Carlsen has been ranked world number one player, aged only 19. He is likely to regain that position very soon and in time could go on to establish the sort of dominance enjoyed by the young Garry Kasparov. This decision means that he now cannot become official world champion for another four or five years.

From the point of view of the world chess championship itself: although it will undoubtedly proceed without him and produce a challenger to Vishy Anand, much of its credibility as a competition will have gone, as well as its saleability to prospective hosts and sponsors, particularly in Western Europe. The Candidates' competition is due to be played in Russia and most of the competitors are from Eastern Europe. They, and the World Chess Federation, may feel that Carlsen's withdrawal doesn't really affect them and is just a problem for those people in the western hemisphere who are trying to boost the popularity of chess in that part of the world. However, this is very short-sighted thinking: a high-profile championship challenger from the west would lead to a major boost for chess worldwide, thus enhancing all professional chessplayers' incomes and status.

It is hard not to make comparisons with Bobby Fischer, who several times withdrew from world chess championship qualifying cycles following disputes with organisers and officials. But how far does this comparison stand up? By the time he came to challenge for the world title, Fischer was very much a man alone, listening to advice from few and not always following it when it was given. Carlsen, one suspects, is very different: managed by his father, recently coached by Garry Kasparov, sponsored by Arctic Securities, he cuts a more worldly and well-rounded figure, and it has to be imagined that some, if not all, of the aforementioned agencies would have played a significant advisory role in the decision-making process.

But, in another sense, perhaps Fischer and Carlsen are more alike. After winning the championship in 1972, Fischer had promised he would play more but he actually failed to play at all (save a rematch with his rival-cum-buddy Spassky in 1992). Though unquestionably obsessed with chess (he still analysed and studied the game after he had stopped playing), Fischer may simply not have enjoyed taking part in competitions. This is not uncommon at all levels of the game: plenty of people have an interest in the game, and can be remarkably strong players, despite a distaste for entering chess competitions, for all manner of reasons. As for Carlsen, although he has amply recovered from his recent slump in form, his body language at the board is not always that of someone who enjoys the grind of elite-level chess. He sometimes looks bored or fed up whilst in play. His choice of unorthodox openings in some recent games is another symptom of possible ennui. It appears as if he is trying to rekindle his passion for the game by putting aside the same old openings for something a bit livelier.

Perhaps Carlsen’s second career, as a model for G-RAW clothes, has given him the taste for the high life, and making big money with far less exertion than spending all day slaving over a hot chessboard. All speculation, of course, but perhaps there is something in it. His sporting analogy was to football, but tennis may be more to the point - an attritional game like chess, where prodigies often burn out at a young age or move into lucrative fringe activities. There must now be a slight worry that, after a few more tournament victories but with no new worlds to conquer, Carlsen may simply walk away from chess. Let's hope not.

Carlsen drops a fairly large hint in his press release that he would prefer a tournament-based championship system to matchplay. As mentioned above, his analogy is to football, where all teams start championships on the same footing, but others would analogise with boxing, where challengers have to win through a number of challenges for a chance to take on the champion. The latter format is closer to the long chess tradition, still favoured by Kasparov, Karpov and Kramnik, though it is possible Anand and Topalov might side with Carlsen. One is forced to agree with Carlsen that the particular arrangements envisaged for the 2011 Candidates’ competition, with four-game deciders building up to a six-game Candidates’ final, seem totally inadequate, and he is surely right about the World Chess Federation’s general mismanagement of the cycle to date. However, this particular part of the press release arguably weakens his overall argument. A lot of rank and file chess fans won't like it. The matchplay format for the world championship still enjoys a good degree of popularity in the chess world at large. As well as antagonising traditionalists, Carlsen's revelation of his own preferred format signals a possible ulterior motive to his withdrawal. It starts to look like a unilateral bid to change the championship system to one of his liking - all too reminiscent of some of his great (but none too democratically-minded) predecessors’ attempts to adjust the championship format in their own favour.

The timing of the press release is interesting, coming a month or so after Anatoly Karpov’s defeat in the FIDE Presidential election. Would Carlsen have stayed in the competition had Karpov been FIDE President? Very possibly, but we cannot be sure. Even had Karpov been elected, it may have been too late for him to change the 2011 Candidates’ competition arrangements.

It is hard to judge the likely effect on professional chess of Carlsen’s withdrawal. Some will argue that it will do damage - they will say that the reconstituted world championship cycle, though still far from ideal, was in the process of being repaired after the major schism of 1993 and that this will set back progress.

The likely counter argument of the Carlsen camp is that another four years of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov at the helm, with his long history of arbitrary, ill-judged decisions and long-delayed, underfunded competitions, will soon lead to more trouble anyway. Their thinking is that the fight to reform professional chess is inevitable and may as well start right now. Carlsen has already proved he is a great chessplayer but this is his first major move on the chess politics board, against the so far unbeaten ‘world chess politics champion’, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Carlsen has placed himself, the strongest piece on the board, en prise. Will his risky gambit pay off? Your move, Kirsan...

ECF Chief Exec Joins The Blogosphere

2010-11-03T09:11:00.000Z

Two welcome pieces of English chess news...

The new Chief Executive of the English Chess Federation (ECF), Andrew Farthing, has joined the blogosphere. He is a thoughtful and articulate writer and his blogs are well worth reading.

http://englishchess.org.uk/farthing/

Also, the ECF has reinstated a link to the English Chess Forum - http://www.ecforum.org.uk/ - which hosts lively discussions on everything to do with English (and indeed British and World) chess. The forum remains independent of the federation as before but it has been good to see more and more ECF directors and officials responding to members' questions and comments there.

Both initiatives indicate a welcome improvement in communications policy by the federation, following the lead set by Stewart Reuben, CJ de Mooi and others.

Jon Levitt Column in Oxford Today

2010-10-29T12:03:00.001+01:00

GM Jon Levitt writes a chess column in 'Oxford Today' and I'm glad to say that it now appears online...

http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/Distractions/chess.html

K > K+K

2010-09-29T15:15:00.000+01:00

Only in chess... K > K+K...

Difficult to know what to say about an organisation which is so out of touch with its constituents. At least, the more significant of its constituents. So, best to say nothing for the time being.

Khanky-Panky in Khanty-Manty?

2010-09-29T11:11:00.000+01:00

I'm just blogging this because I wanted to be the first to use that headline. Anyone else using it now has to pay me a £10 royalty per use.

But I bet there is plenty of hanky-panky in Khanty today - the day of the vote to decide whether we want four more years of ET's best friend or four years of something slightly more grounded on planet earth. I confess I am not optimistic.

"Can You Hear Me, Maggie Carlsen?"

2010-09-29T10:19:00.000+01:00

I've just stumbled upon the blog of top Norwegian GM Jon-Ludvig Hammer...
http://gmhammer.wordpress.com/
... and found it to be excellent. Of course, when I say "top Norwegian GM", I haven't forgotten the other young guy from that part of the world who sits atop the world rating list. Jon-Ludvig has some photos of a relaxed Magnus Carlsen wandering around Khanty-Mansiysk, playing cards with his team mates, etc.

Jon-Ludvig Hammer gives great blog.

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw Magnus's nickname amongst his Norwegian teammates. It's 'Maggie'. The rest of us chess writers have been busily 'bigging' him up, calling him 'Magnificent Magnus' and comparing his name to Charlemagne, etc, but to his Norwegian mates he's just plain 'Maggie'*. That is rather endearing.

These days, for British people and perhaps for others round the world, the name 'Maggie' instantly brings to mind our former prime minister. This in its turn triggered the thought of Mrs T's name being taken in vain in the context of a famous football match between Norway and England in 1981 when the Norwegian commentator ecstatically reeled off the names of famous English people (including Nelson, Churchill and Princess Diana) as he gloried in the Norwegian victory. The final salvo of Bjørge Lillelien's immortal taunt was "Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher - your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!" Now the boot is on the other foot: it is Norway that has the famous 'Maggie' and, only this week, their "boys" (including 'Maggie') took a "hell of a beating" from the English chess team. Has Mickey Adams finally laid the ghost of 1981? Can you hear me, Maggie Carlsen?

* Postscript: Before anyone gets too hung up on Magnus Carlsen's nickname being 'Maggie', Jon-Ludvig has just told me this is his own private name for Magnus! "I just like calling him that," says GM Hammer.

Bent Larsen (1935-2010)

2010-09-10T17:26:00.000+01:00

Some very sad news: the great Danish player Bent Larsen (4 iii 1935 - 9 ix 2010) is no more. In the second half of the 1960s his light shone as bright as Bobby Fischer, brighter at times, as these two vied to be considered the leading western challenger to the Soviet stranglehold on the world title.

Larsen won no fewer than three interzonals, in 1964 (Amsterdam - where the photo was taken), 1967 (Sousse) and 1976 (Biel), and played on top board ahead of Fischer for the Rest of the World in the so-called 'Match of the Century' against the Soviet Union in 1970.

He was also Fischer's rival as a chess writer, bringing out his hugely influential English language edition of 50 Selected Games around the time Fischer's legendary My Sixty Memorable Games was published. Larsen's aspirations to the world title were cut short when he suffered a calamitous 0-6 defeat to Fischer in the Candidates' semi-final in 1971, and with the subsequent rise of Anatoly Karpov, but he remained a top-flight grandmaster for many years and one whose fighting attitude to the game and opening ideas remain influential to this day.

I remembered ordering his Larsen's 50 Selected Games of Chess 1948-69 and Fischer's Sixty Memorable Games at the same time and having them arrive in the same package. I can even tell you the day they arrived because I wrote it on the inside cover - 14 September 1970, forty years ago less four days. The simultaneous arrival of Fischer and Larsen on my doormat created a problem - which to read first? A real dilemma which I only half-solved by dipping into one and then sampling the other for an hour or two. As dilemmas go, it was a very happy one, of course. They remain two of my three favourite chess books of all time (the third being Donner's The King). Tonight I shall sit down in my favourite chair, with the well-loved, red dust-jacketed volume and fondly remind myself of the great man via his own words and moves. R.I.P.

When Garry Met Carol...

2010-09-09T11:29:00.000+01:00

Carol: "Come on, Garry, you remember me, surely?"
Garry: "No clues! I'm thinking... consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel... "

Carol Vorderman and Garry Kasparov at last night's chess shindig at Simpsons to support Anatoly Karpov's campaign to become FIDE (World Chess Federation) president. Carol was presenter of Channel Four's 1993 World Chess Championship TV coverage, when Kasparov met Short at the Savoy Hotel.

Book Review: 'Sixty Years in the Same Room'

2010-08-26T17:19:00.000+01:00

'Sixty Years in the Same Room' by Robert H Jones (Keverel Chess Books, 2010)

The sub-title of this book perhaps gives a better clue to its contents: "a history of the Paignton Chess Congress". The title refers to the fact that this much-loved congress has been played annually since 1951 in the very same room of the prestigious Oldway Mansion in Paignton. It started life in 1951 as a celebration of the Devon County Chess Association's 50th year of existence and it is now coming up to its own 60th instalment in the same room of the same building (of course), running from Saturday 5th to Saturday 11th September 2010.

Chess in the West Country is very lucky to have its own dedicated historian, Bob Jones, who for many years has lovingly memorialised the game in this part of England in newspaper articles, books and on the web (e.g. here and here). In this book he has collated the history of the congress from coverage given in CHESS, BCM and other sources, with photos of some of the contestants, summaries of each year's tournaments, pen pictures of eminent players and sixty memorable games (where have I heard that phrase before?! No, Bobby Fischer didn't play there but one famous world champion did come to Paignton and suffered defeat in the very first round ever played in the congress. The book tells all). There is even a section on the history of the Oldway Mansion, which started life as the home of the celebrated US plutocrat Isaac Singer, and the author even touches on this remarkable gentleman's decidedly colourful love-life (in the best possible taste, of course).

The book is effectively a nostalgic look-back at British chess throughout the past sixty years, since nearly everyone who is anyone in the British chess world has put in an appearance there at some point in their career. The Paignton Congress is a fixed point in the much-changing universe of British chess, perhaps even more so than the more venerable Hastings Congress (with its changed formats and venues). It is quaint but delightfully so and its supporters come back year after year, and decade after decade. Not just amateurs, either - Keith Arkell is its most loyal supporter amongst the chess elite, also local boy made Australian(!) Gary Lane, and there are plenty of other titled players who have played there. It is cunningly held just after the school term begins in September but that did not stop a very young Mickey Adams putting in a crafty appearance or two when he was 'nobbut a lad' (skiving off school to play chess? You could already tell he was going to be a top-class player). And Mickey is there again in 2010, giving a simul on 7 September 2010, according to the entry form. Mickey is of course a born and bred West Country man and it is a matter of enormous and well-deserved pride in those parts to have produced arguably the finest chessplayer ever to have come from these islands.

This is clearly a well-researched labour of love by Bob Jones and it will be a delightful read for those who have ever played at Paignton, or are well-stricken in years and enjoy a good helping of chess nostalgia. One very nice touch was his dedication: "to chess widows everywhere and my wife Jennifer, in particular". I showed this to my own "chess widow" and reminded her that, 15 years ago, she had declared the Paignton Congress to be the best one she had ever been to. She still stands by this verdict, on the grounds that it allowed us to do some tourism in the morning, in a particularly lovely part of Devon, then she could take a time-out in the afternoon while I played my chess and finally we could rendezvous in the evening for dinner. I have to say that Elaine's criticism of certain other congresses (which better remain nameless) has been withering in the extreme - so, for her to utter words of approbation about Paignton should be taken as the very highest recommendation possible.

I'm guessing that this book will be available from The Chess Shop in Baker Street any day now (my review copy was hot off the press) or from Bob himself. 157 pages softback, plenty of photos, £15.99.

Mickey Adams wins at a Canter(bury)

2010-08-07T12:29:00.000+01:00

This is the final moment of Mickey Adams' victorious progress at the 2010 British Championship in Canterbury on 6 August. He led from the off and never looked in any real difficulty. Peter Wells (left of picture above) came closest to defeating him in the last round but Mickey had already wrapped up the title with a round to spare so it would have made no difference.

I enjoyed my trip to Canterbury yesterday. Perhaps the most significant moment was immediately before play when the president of the English Chess Federation, CJ de Mooi, took the microphone to make an announcement about next year's British Championship in Sheffield. He told us that the first prize was to be upped from £5,000 to £10,000 (as it had been under Smith & Williamson's former sponsorship) and that he obtained a commitment from Britain's four leading players - Mickey Adams, Nigel Short, Luke McShane and David Howell - that they would take part. Also, he said that another ten British GMs would play. This is a welcome shot in the arm for the game in Britain and also an indicator of the dynamism and panache that CJ de Mooi has brought to chess administration in these islands. Well done to him.

I picked a really good day to watch play. As well as the top board game, which was fiercely contested, there was plenty of competitive chess on most of the other leading boards, and in the other sections. Personally I enjoy watching chess more or less whatever the level of play, so long as the game is evenly matched and keenly contested. I also particularly enjoy watching an endgame battle and there were quite a few of these in evidence. One significant one was on the top board of the British Senior (aged 60+) Championship, where Paul Habershon was trying to convert an extra pawn against tournament leader Paul Byway in order to share the title with him and Ken Norman. Paul Byway just needed the draw to take the title on his own.

Irina Krush Rap

2010-08-03T00:02:00.000+01:00

Well, I must admit it's not the sort of thing that Mrs ex-BCM Editor and I like to listen to of an evening (we prefer to play some nice Mantovani or perhaps get out one of our Winifred Attwell records as we sip our Wincarnis), but young people seem to like it...

Goodbye to all that BCM... and hello to my new blog!

2010-06-23T14:29:00.000+01:00

If you pop over to the BCM website, you will learn that I am coming to the end of my 11 years as BCM editor on 31 July 2010. I shall be sorry to go but the time had come and I'm eager to move on to new things.

However, as one door closes, another opens. I shall be carrying on working in the chess world, and I've now moved my old BCMChess blog to this new address where I will once again be commenting on chess events.

I shall be also be looking after the BCM website pro tem, and also my own BritBase website, which I shall be maintaining as before.

Paradise Regained

2010-04-23T14:11:00.000+01:00

BCM's editor is back in Blighty. The journey took 47 hours, from 4am on Tuesday in Gib, to 3am on Thursday in Kingston-upon-Thames. I won't bore you with too many details but the Spanish travel arrangements went like clockwork while the French ones went wrong from the moment we crossed the border. So it's 'Viva España' when it comes to the much underestimated but highly efficient RENFE railway system but 'zut alors' to France's overrated, incompetent/dishonest SNCF (who took bookings on the Sunday for a Tuesday train that had already been cancelled as the result of strike action). That's no criticism of individual French people who showed us kindness and generosity at various points of the journey. But French officialdom has a lot to answer for. The next time someone makes a joke about 'mañana' to me, I shall suggest they really mean 'demain'.

Coming Soon: The Gibraltar Chess Magazine

2010-04-17T06:55:00.000+01:00

An announcement: from 1 May 2010, the British Chess Magazine will be known as the Gibraltar Chess Magazine. This is because the editor, John Saunders, has relocated to the large rock of that name for the indefinite future.

Well, not really. But the last bit is true. I'm in Gibraltar at the moment and I could be here for a while, thanks to a geological malfunction in the land of Bobby Fischer's last resting place. Don't worry, BCM subscribers, I can still do my day job whilst holed up here... very comfortably, I should add, at the Caleta Hotel, venue of the Gibtelecom Chess Festival. I came here a couple of days ago to plan the tournament's metamorphosis into the 2011 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival (which will be bigger and better than ever) but it seems my stay might be longer than I had intended.

P.S. If anyone knows of a boat passing by Gibraltar, do you think you could ask the captain to drop by and give me a lift home? In return I am willing to give chess lessons and pass on hundreds of exclusive, scurrilous stories about chess players.

Probably the Best Chessplayer in the World

2010-01-18T12:09:00.000Z

This month's issue of British Chess Magazine is now out, a little (well, OK, a lot) later than usual. We were keen to include a full report of the London Chess Classic as it was the best thing to happen to British chess for a long time.

For the cover we couldn't resist designing a graphic along the lines of a certain brand of beer of a similar name to the world chess number one. It's not quite the same design (nor the same font) so hopefully those jolly nice chaps who brew the excellent beer will not be minded to sue.

We have no fewer than 40 pages of games and photos on this fantastic tournament in the January BCM, amounting to a souvenir issue. I do urge you all to buy a copy - only £4.05 from a website near you.

http://www.bcmchess.co.uk/bcmmag.html

Hastings and Gibraltar

2009-12-31T15:21:00.000Z

I don't know what effect it had on blog readers, but the phenomenal London Chess Classic earlier this month at Olympia seems to have re-energised me. I've been down to Hastings to take some photos (which I'm hoping will appear on a website very soon) and sensed a more positive mood amongst the British chess community. I watched the round one games and was generally impressed by the quality of play. I sat in on a game post-mortem with Keith Arkell and enjoyed his good-natured and informative comments on his first round win. Since then he has had one of those typical Arkell endgame grinds at which he excels - usually a good sign that all's well in Keith's world.

As well as writing and editing the magazine, I've also been involved in the preparations for the next Gibtelecom Chess Festival in Gibraltar. It starts in about three weeks and now boasts a remarkable line-up on players. There are three 2700+ players, Bacrot, Vallejo Pons and Movsesian - plus two players who have been a heartbeat away from the world championship - Mickey Adams and Gata Kamsky. The tournament is famous for its generous women's prizes and this has attracted two of the three highest rated women players in the world, Humpy Koneru of India and Hou Yifan of China (see photo above), as well as the Women's World Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk. Such is the growing reputation of the tournament that it doesn't necessarily have to go looking for star players any more - some of the big names you see above asked if they could play there.

I've also heard a whisper or two about a couple of legends of the game who just might be visiting the Rock in 2010. No names yet, but watch this space.

Website: http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com

Anand to have Carlsen as a second for the World Championship with Topalov (or is he?)

2009-12-23T11:45:00.000Z

A recent newspaper interview indicates that Vishy Anand is to have Magnus Carlsen as one of his seconds for the World Championship match with Veselin Topalov In April 2010.

Anand broke the news himself in an interview given to an unnamed staff reporter on the Calcutta Telegraph. Asked whether Indian GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly would be his one of his seconds, Anand replied: "He may be. I am not sure. Seconds are a very secretive thing. Even if I tell you that he will be one of my seconds, the rival camp will not believe me. But one thing is for sure, Magnus Carlsen (the world No. 2) will be one of the seconds."

By the time of the match Carlsen may well be world no.1 so it does seem slightly strange that Carlsen should support a player whom he would surely hope to challenge in a subsequent world championship (assuming Vishy retains his title, of course). Any cooperation between Anand and Carlsen would involve Vishy revealing his box of opening tricks to his future challenger. But perhaps it would also reveal something of Carlsen's modus operandi to the wily champion.

With his immediate target in mind, Anand must be hoping that this early revelation of the ace in his hand will deal a psychological blow to his Bulgarian challenger - much in the same way that, earlier this year, the announcement that Magnus Carlsen was being coached by Garry Kasparov was timed to boost Carlsen's challenge against Topalov in the 'Pearl Spring' super-tournament in China. I'm just wondering whether it means that Anand will get a degree of Kasparovian support at second remove - Garry tells Magnus, and Magnus tells Vishy? Veselin Topalov and his team have occasionally been accused of paranoia - but maybe they really are all out to get him.

But HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! It seems that the interviewer could have messed up. ChessBase News are now reporting that Anand may have said 'Nielsen' and not 'Carlsen'! This would make sense as Peter Heine Nielsen has been Anand's second on several occasions. To which we can only say "OH! CALCUTTA!"...

Chess in Guyana

2009-12-20T15:23:00.000Z

While I was working as press chief at the London Chess Classic in London, many thousands of miles away one of my oldest chess friends was doing his bit at the grass roots level to popularise the game, and with considerable success.

David Stevenson and I learnt our chess together at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, back in the 1960s and we were both members of the Cambridge University Chess Club in the 1970s. We've stayed in touch for 40 years and still meet up whenever we can though David has long since settled in the USA.

A few months ago David made a bold career move and decided to become a voluntary teacher in a developing country. If it had been a chess move, we'd have to annotate it 'exclamation mark, question mark' - "interesting"! Anyway, in a spirit of adventure, David took the plunge and now finds himself teaching maths in Georgetown, Guyana - for virtually no money and in what most of us European softies would consider to be incredibly difficult living conditions.

As well as teaching, David has taken the opportunity to start a chess club at his school, St Stanislaus College in Georgetown. And in a matter of months he has coached them to winning the Guyana National School's Championship. David can be seen in the above photo, flanked by his victorious team.

Some links...

Kaietur News

WorldTeam Blogspot (worth reading for David's description of some of the privations he has to put up with)

The photo above shows David holding the trophy, with the successful team around him.

Whilst saluting David's achievement as coach, I hope he also gets the chance to show what he can do on a chessboard himself while he's in Guyana. He has not played much competition chess for many years but, as a player who used to rank regularly in the 180s in the (then) BCF Grading List, my guess is that David could be the best chessplayer currently domiciled in Guyana. Though it once used to send teams to the Olympiad, a sharp downturn in the economy affected chess in the country and Guyana is (I think) no longer a member of FIDE.

We've just had a fantastic couple of weeks of big-time chess in London but, at this time of year, we should also stop to think of all those volunteers like David, all over the world, who give their time to organise and popularise our game. They are the lifeblood of chess.

Dave, if you get to read this: well done, have a great Christmas and a happy new year.

New Chess Player's Blog...

2009-11-28T20:29:00.000Z

I'm still suffering from chess blogger's cramp. I have to do so much chess writing in other contexts that the blog occupies a rather low priority at the moment. Apologies.

I've just spotted this new blog by the Anglo-Russian chess player Maria Yurenok - Maria's Chess Adventures. Looks very interesting. Glad to see that Maria is also a cat lover!

I'm going to be the press chief at the forthcoming London Chess Classic tournament so there may be more scope for blogging then (and also a bit of tweeting too). In the meantime I've got to clear my desk - magazines seem to take longer to write and edit every month.

Chess Players Run The World

2009-10-11T00:58:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the long silence. I've still been here, beavering away at the magazine, website, Britbase, Gibraltar website, etc, but haven't felt very bloggish for a while.

But now I do. Occasionally I stumble on something interesting on the web about a chessplayer who has left the game, gone away - and is now quietly running the world. This familiar story goes back to the dawn of (chess) time and includes along the line the remarkable tale of the group of chessplayers who congregated at Bletchley Park and helped to shorten WW2 by means of their amazing code-cracking skills. Always remember that story when some non-chessplaying infidel challenges you with a question such as "what have chessplayers ever done for us?".

I came across a similar story whilst googling recently. Nick Patterson, born in London in 1947 of Irish parents, was a very strong chessplayer of the 1960s and early 1970s and was one of the formidable posse of strong players who made the Cambridge University Chess Club the strongest in the UK at that time. Had he carried on with chess he might well have rivalled the likes of Hartston and Keene for strength but he turned to the groves of academe.

In fact, during the past 35+ years Nick Patterson has migrated from one Cambridge to another - the one in Massachusetts in the USA. He says he is a "data guy". But this doesn't give any idea of the vast span of highly critical and significant areas in which he has worked - cryptography, high finance and the human genome. He has turned his data skills to all of these high-profile areas of research. I'm rapidly going out of my depth, so I'll pass you onto a link which I found from the New York Times. It is three years old but very interesting...

Nick Patterson interview in the New York Times

New Ivanchuk Drug Test Shock Horror

2009-05-19T17:08:00.000+01:00

Chess has been rocked by another drug scandal. Yesterday, after the traditional MTel Masters soccer match, where the chessplayers line up against a local side, Vasyl Ivanchuk once again refused to take the obligatory post-match urine test prescribed under the rules of the Bulgarian Football Association. He faces a lengthy ban...

... don't worry, I'm only kidding. But the joke is not original. What actually happened was that, as Ivanchuk limbered up for the game, the 'team doctor' approached him and warned, "After the match, we have a urine test laid on for you!" Ivanchuk is said to have 'appreciated the humour'. Hmm, I wonder. What's the Ukrainian for "are you taking the p***?"

Well done, Evening Standard!

2009-05-19T15:23:00.000+01:00

Having taken the mickey out of the London Evening Standard in my previous blog entry, I'm only too pleased to retract everything in this one and say "well done, Evening Standard". Leonard Barden's daily print column has been restored (though at the cost of withdrawing the online column, it seems. Oh well, can't have everything). The newspaper was remarkably quick to respond to readers' opinions.

The Remorseful Day

2009-05-15T09:20:00.000+01:00

What's with all these people suddenly saying sorry? Is it perhaps a symptom of swine flu or is it an ailment in its own right? The fat cats of major banks were the first people to go down with 'sorry flu' with their profuse apologies for cocking up the world's economy and paying themselves unjustifiable mega-bonuses (I couldn't help noticing that the cure for the disease didn't extend to paying any of the money back).

Now the disease (apologitis ratbagiensis, to give it its full Latin name) has taken hold at Westminster as afflicted MPs and party leaders vie with each other in expressing their oh-so sincere regrets for helping themselves to rather more of the tax-players' money than they should have. It's clearly a painful malady as the air rings with heartfelt cries of "it's the system that's at fault", "it was a genuine mistake", "I've already paid it all back", "the money was just resting in my account", etc, etc. No, wait a minute, that last one came from an episode of Father Ted more than ten years ago - but you get the general idea.

A few weeks back, lodged neatly between the bankers' outpourings of remorse and the politicians' mea culpas, there was another public airing of the five-letter 's-word'. I read this report online...

LONDON EVENING STANDARD SAYS SORRY TO LONDONERS IN RELAUNCH CAMPAIGN

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/rss/902948/London-Evening-Standard-says-sorry-Londoners-relaunch-campaign/

LONDON - The London Evening Standard launched a campaign today apologising to Londoners for its performance in the past, as the newspaper kicks off a three-week publicity attack ahead of its relaunch on May 11.

The print campaign, created by McCann Erickson, apologises to Londoners for losing touch, taking them for granted, and being negative, complacent and predictable. All of the executions begin with the word "sorry" and use the Standard's Eros logo.

The campaign comes in response to market research, commissioned by the newspaper’s new editor, Geordie Greig, which found that Londoners felt the paper was too negative and did not meet the capital’s needs.

The approach will be seen as critical to that of the former editor Veronica Wadley, who edited the Standard for seven years before its acquisition by Alexander Lebedev.

So, when 11 May finally arrived, what did the Evening Standard apologists actually do? Well, for a start, they reduced Leonard Barden's long-running and much-loved chess feature from five appearances a week to a solitary one (on Friday), though still publishing the other four online. It's at http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/chess if you want to read it and there is a comment box at the end where you can express your feelings about the situation (more and more people are doing so). Good to have it online but it is a retrograde step to remove it from the printed newspaper where it is much more likely to be read by occasional or casual chessplayers and where it has provided high quality enjoyment for tired commuters and valuable publicity for competition chess since the early sixties.

Only now can we chessplayers fully appreciate what the earlier report said about the Evening Standard "losing touch... taking [people] for granted... being negative", etc, etc. For us, things were rather better before the newspaper suddenly succumbed to a fashionable attack of 'sorry flu'. Given the Standard's admirable propensity for expressing sorrow, there is still time for them to do so again, whilst at the same time restoring Leonard Barden's column to the print version of their paper on every weekday as before. But there is no need for the newspaper to shell out further cash on an expensive publicity campaign. See the image above, where I have adapted the poster the Standard used earlier this month as part of their relaunch. In a spirit of reconciliation I'm prepared to let them use my artwork for free.

4NCL: Jonathan Rogers Annotates...

2009-05-07T16:12:00.000+01:00

Whilst at the 4NCL in Daventry on Monday, I bumped into FM Jonathan Rogers of Barbican (see photo). Jonathan recommended to me his ninth round win against Mark Ruston which featured an attractive queen for two pieces sacrifice.

Jonathan followed up the sacrifice with a less spectacular but highly potent move which he tells me a number of GMs failed to find when he challenged them. He has very kindly let me have an annotation of the game to feature here.

Celeb Chessplayer No. 954

2009-04-25T13:41:00.000+01:00

Frances Barber is a highly accomplished and very attractive British actress. In today's (25 April) Telegraph, she mentions that she is a chess player...

"I love playing chess with a friend. He's a special friend. He's not an actor and he's a very good chess player, but I'm not elaborating further – he's so new that something might go wrong."

Though not wishing to spoil Ms Barber's chances with said special friend, it would be interesting to know his identity - if indeed he is a 'very good chess player' as she claims.

Bolton Easter Congress

2009-04-20T13:47:00.000+01:00

I'm testing some new code for displaying games in an online viewer on this blog. I'm using Chess Viewer Deluxe, written by Nikolai Pilafov and based on Michael Keating's very popular MyChessViewer which I used to use for BritBase. It looks pretty good and, unlike most viewers to date, allows you to move pieces around on the board. It was quite easy to set up. I might well start using this for Britbase proper.

For testing purposes, here are three games from the Bolton Easter Congress sent to me by Mick Norris and Rod Middleton.

Raaphy Persitz (1934-2009)

2009-02-10T18:26:00.000Z

Raaphy Persitz, one of BCM's oldest friends and contributors, has died aged 74. I was sent the sad news by Amatzia Avni, who also kindly appended the following tribute to Raaphy. I am indebted to Amatzia on both counts. The news of Raaphy's death came as a particular shock to me as, only a couple of weeks previously, he had sent me a fax saying how moved he had been by the tribute I had written to Bob Wade in the January issue of BCM. That was typical of his kindness towards me which dated back to when I took my first tottering steps as BCM editor in 1999. We never actually met in person but spoke occasionally on the telephone and exchanged faxes (Raaphy didn't seem to communicate by email). As a long-time reader of the magazine I had enjoyed his 'Student's Corner' column in the magazine, which was initiated by Abe Yanofsky in the early 1950s and which Raaphy inherited in 1958. I was particularly delighted when, in 2004, after I had written about his 1954 feat in winning his Varsity match game and a county match against English no.1 Hugh Alexander on the same day, Raaphy consented to write another 'Student's Corner' column (which appeared in the May 2004 issue of BCM). I never succeeded in getting him to write another one but it was such a pleasure to have him write for the magazine during my spell as editor.

R.I.P. Raphael Joseph Arie (Raaphy) Persitz
Born 26 vii* 1934 (Tel Aviv)
Died 4 ii 2009 (Tel Aviv)

* Gaige's Chess Personalia gives May rather than July for Raaphy's month of birth but all online sources give July - can anyone tell me which is correct?

I shall be writing more on Raaphy in the March issue of BCM. I should be grateful for any reminiscences that others may have of him - please send to me at editor@bcmchess.co.uk or append to this blog entry.

The photo shown above is of the Oxford University team which won the 1953 British Lightning Club Championship - left to right: Raaphy Persitz, John B Sykes, Leonard Barden, OI Galvenius, David M Armstrong. (note: the 2008 ECF Yearbook seems to think that this lightning championship was first contested in 1954, but BCM confirms it first took place in 1953).

What follows is Amatzia Avni's personal tribute to Raaphy...

Ordinary people have a mixture of good qualities and bad ones. After 20 years of friendship with the late Raaphy Persitz I can attest that he was a distinct type: one sided, positive-only; pure gold.

I first met him in 1989. Just wrote my first chess book (in Hebrew) I was searching for someone to write me an introduction. The word was that Persitz was back in town, after long years abroad. Having seen glimpses of his amazing linguistic skills, I contacted him and he agreed immediately. He didn’t know me, hadn’t read a single sentence of the book, yet he didn’t hesitate: “yes, sure, I’ll be glad to”.
That was typical Persitz: always ready to help, unconditionally. The introduction, needless to say, was a sheer delight, a class or two above the rest of the book.

In latter years he gave me a hand several times, polishing my texts and making them more reader-friendly to English speaking readers. Somehow he seemed to know what I wished to express better than I did. His suggestions enabled me to convey my meaning in a clear and precise manner.

Raaphy was modest and reserved. Once I called him and realized that he was upset. “My mother had passed away some weeks ago” – he said. I was puzzled why he didn’t tell me the sad news at the time. “I didn’t want to bother you” – was his reply.

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Bruce Hayden’s old book “Cabbage heads and chess kings”. One of the book’s articles was headed “Raaphy Persitz – star or comet?”. I learned that in the 1950s Persitz won some bright victories in England against Penrose, Alexander, Milner-Barry and others. Searching in Chessbase I found out that he also did battle with some outstanding international players. Yet in all our meetings and hundreds hours of conversation he never said a thing about that!

Persitz was a master of understatement. I learned that if I wrote “very fine” or “extremely strong”, the ‘very’ and ‘extremely’ would fly out of the window. If I made a firm stand on a certain issue, he would add “probably”’ “apparently”, or “it may be argued that”, because it was indeed only an opinion, not a fact. Over time, following his train of thought made me improve the way I expressed myself and thought about chess.

Persitz’ distinctions in chess, in linguistics and in journalism are evident to anyone who ever read his chess books and articles. He also excelled in economics, but I am unqualified to comment on this.

God bless you, Raaphy. I feel privileged to have known you.

Amatzia Avni

Bob Wade: The Father of Modern English Chess

2008-12-16T17:03:00.000Z

The funeral of Bob Wade (1921-2008) was held at Eltham Crematorium on Tuesday 16 December at 10.15am. There was a very large turn out of people for this great man of chess - so much so that the stalls was soon filled and many people had to stand in the large auditorium.

I took a few photos of people who came to the funeral, and have scanned in the programme - click here

The speakers included Jon Speelman (who referred to Bob as his first and only teacher); David Anderton (who gave a warm and witty appreciation of Bob); Malena Griffiths (who spoke about Bob's enormous contribution to women's and junior chess); and Tony Gkountintas (who was a close friend and neighbour).

Amongst those present at the funeral: Murray Chandler (who travelled from New Zealand to be there), Stuart Conquest, Jovanka Houska, Michael Stean, Stewart Reuben, Malcolm Pein, William Watson, Ray Keene, Peter Wells, Jonathan Mestel, David Levy, Robert Bellin, Shaun Taulbut, Les Blackstock, Henry Mutkin, David Sedgwick, Jane Seymour, Peter and Rose-Marie Hannan, Peter Wilson, Peter Kemmis Betty, Tony Stebbings, Alan Hanreck, Bill Linton, Michael Bolan, Mario Houska, Alan Martin, Brian Smith... and many, many more. Bob's surviving brother and sister (he was one of seven children) are elderly and it was too far for them to travel.

In his appreciation, David Anderton referred to Bob as "the father of modern English chess" - and that is an excellent summary of a man who did so many things in chess. Sad though the occasion was, David's speech was peppered with wit, tailored to an audience which knew Bob well and loved him as much for his occasional moments of fatherly rage as for his (much more frequent) good humour. Looking round at familiar faces in the audience, David said: "there can be few of us who didn't feel the sharp edge of his tongue at some point" and the many chuckles in the audience confirmed the truth of this statement. As David said, "Bob was as fierce in debate as he was over the board" - but it was all geared towards the greater good of chess. David had been Bob's captain for Olympiad teams - "he was never the easiest man to tell he had been benched". But actually these little outbursts were very endearing. Bob didn't have it in him to get cross for long and within minutes he was at great pains to kiss and make up.

A very great man and completely irreplaceable. We shall all miss him. RIP

The Perfect Marriage: Chess and Cricket

2008-12-13T11:42:00.000Z

It's official: chess and cricket have got married. The world's greatest sport has finally decided to formalise its natural partnership with the world's greatest game.

The ceremony was performed in Chennai on 11 December, with Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni doing the honours for cricket and world chess champion Vishy Anand representing chess. The photo shows Dhoni slipping a diamond ring on Vishy's finger. Best man duties at this, the celebrity wedding of the year, were performed by Nigel Short and Peter Svidler, while Vishy was 'given away' by FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (bravely masking his disappointment that chess had decided to marry cricket and not the Olympic Games, with which it had previously conducted a long but pointless flirtation).

OK, I'm getting a bit carried away with this skit, so here's the real story. The photo does not lie - that really is MS Dhoni placing a ring on Vishy Anand's finger. It was a present to celebrate the world chess champion's 39th birthday on 11 December. And, while on the subject, I'd like to wish Vishy all the best myself. A really great champion and one of nature's nice guys.

Rather surprisingly, the birthday celebration took place after day one of the India v England test match in Chennai. As Matthew Turner has already commented, it might explain India's woeful batting on the following day. Can you imagine England's cricket team taking time off during a test match to make a birthday presentation to Mickey Adams or Nigel Short? As Geoffrey Boycott might have said: "tha's roobish plannin', is tha'!"

Vishy was quoted as wishing Dhoni and the Indian cricket team luck in their ongoing encounter against England. “Good luck for the next four days, though I hope it gets over in three,” he said. He might yet get his wish but possibly not in the way he'd hoped. His birthday celebration could have caught the cricket team in the corridor of uncertainty.

Now, have I ever told you about the time I went to The Oval and saw Brian Statham bowl his last test-match spell? Well, it were 1965 and I were nobbut a lad and ... (continued page 94)...

[The original story and photo here]

Carlsen and the Candidates Debate

2008-12-05T11:59:00.000Z

Just when we thought the world championship had sorted itself out... suddenly it’s all up in the air again. The latest news is that Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from the Grand Prix cycle and this series of tournaments looks as though it could fall by the wayside.

Before going any further, perhaps I’d better state my prejudices when it comes to world championships. The important thing for me is that the whole thing ends with a one-to-one match. Thankfully they are back in fashion and I am glad of that, though I think they should play a few more games – 16 would be ideal. I found the old knock-out system, with its scores of rapidplay and blitz games, utterly abhorrent as a world championship system and as far as I’m concerned Khalifman, Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov were not world champions (I always use the term ‘FIDE champion’ when referring to them), and Vishy Anand only became one recently. Though Kasparov was arguably wrong to break away from FIDE in 1993, he and his successors, Kramnik and Anand, still represent the ‘apostolic succession’ of world champions and I’m not prepared to be fobbed off with any inferior alternative.

So now, with the world title match system finally repaired, it seems that we must go through the pain barrier with the next tier of the championship. My strong preference is for a Candidates competition of 8-16 players. I think I would prefer a matchplay knockout of (at least) six-game matches rather than a tournament but the latter option is probably a lot easier to organise in this recession-hit world we live in.

Unfortunately the current qualification cycle – until this week – consisted of nothing of the sort. Instead, FIDE had cobbled together a ‘system’ which consisted of a watered-down version of their old knock-out world championship (called the FIDE World Cup) and a series of tournaments called the Grand Prix. The winner of each of these would meet in a match, and the match-winner go on to play a world title match with Vishy Anand.

Appraising this system, one finds a couple of plus points but rather a lot of negatives. One apparent plus point – and this goes for the old knock-out system too – is that it provides a good pay-day for quite a large number of grandmasters. By the same token, it was egalitarian and inclusive. But do we really need – and can we afford – the world championship to be quite so democratic? What is the point of giving a sizeable chunk of cash to people who are inevitably going to be knocked out in the early rounds of a qualifier? A complicated system of national and zonal qualifiers made sense in the days before we had the rating list but now everybody has a rating which, by and large, is trusted and accepted as a true measure of their strength. Given that we now have 30+ players rated over 2700 and a world champion on the brink of 2800, it seems reasonable to exclude anyone below 2700 from taking part in a world championship system.

The FIDE World Cup is an excellent tournament but far from ideal as championship qualifier to a play-off match. Like most chess fans, I enjoy watching the matches online and thoroughly enjoy the spectacle. But when relegated to being a qualifier for a Candidates event it makes perhaps a bit more sense. This seems to be what FIDE is now planning.

The Grand Prix series of tournaments has a number of advantages – one being the complete elimination of rapidplay and blitz play-offs – but I think there are a number of serious practical problems which are hard to overcome. One is that players have to fit four lengthy tournaments into their schedule which can’t be easy to do. But the really big practical problem is that FIDE has to organise and secure sponsorship for six different events worldwide. This would not be easy to do even if they were more competent than they are. We now learn that the Doha and Montreux events have been called off – one can speculate that they have fallen victim to the worldwide recession – so that rather underlines the problem. Looking back, we have to say that the whole concept was ludicrously optimistic.

Another major practical problem with the World Cup/GP system is how a dethroned world champion re-enters the system. Under the old-time Interzonal/candidates system, an ex-world champion (or unsuccessful challenger) would slot in at the Candidates stage. The lack of provision for this is a glaring hole in the World Cup/GP system. How was Kramnik supposed to re-enter the fray? He wasn’t in the GP, probably because it clashed with his world championship preparations and match. So presumably he was expected to take his chances in the World Cup. This just seems preposterous to me. Can you imagine a post-2000 Kasparov playing in one of these bun-fights? He baulked at playing in an infinitely more respectable and sensible candidates event in Dortmund in 2002 so one shudders to think what his reply would have been to an invitation to a Siberian slugfest. Any qualification system has to take account of world championship runners-up and allow them to re-enter at a level which is appropriate to their status and at a time which is fair and equitable.

I can fully understand Magnus Carlsen and others being disgusted with FIDE’s decision to change the qualification system in mid-cycle and have sympathy for the situation they find themselves in. But perhaps FIDE has finally woken up to just how rotten their system was and that for all manner of reasons it has to be replaced with a Candidates competition. One tournament, to include all the main contenders, should be relatively easy to organise and fund (even for FIDE). It was quite apparent that the overly ambitious and unwieldy GP series was coming apart at the seams so they probably had to do something immediately and of course this was bound to hurt those players involved in the GP - they have my sympathy.

Re the Carlsen withdrawal: looking at it another way, perhaps the Carlsen family have simply made a pragmatic decision. They have a legitimate grievance which effectively gives them a way out of the ailing GP cycle. Having exited, they can now concentrate their energies on parachuting Magnus straight into the Candidates. And why not? Magnus looks even more like a future world champion. Not only does he play chess like Garry Kasparov, he can politick like him as well. To be a world champion one must make good moves off the board as well as on, and this looks like a pretty good one.

So who will be the Candidates in 2010? Let’s assume Vishy successfully defends his title against Topalov/Kamsky, then we will have Topalov, Kamsky, the GP winner, the next World Cup winner, the nominee of the host country plus three other guys from the top of the rating list. So long as those qualifiers and nominees include Kramnik, Carlsen, Morozevich and perhaps Aronian and Ivanchuk, we should be assured of a competition that is reasonably representative of current world title contenders. The way we got here has been fraught with bad decisions, wrong turns and hurt feelings but finally we might be arriving at the right place. I did say “might”...

P.S. Has another Fischer record been broken? Magnus Carlsen, born 30 November 1990, withdrew from the Grand Prix on 5 December 2008, aged 18 years 6 days. Fischer made his first major competition withdrawal on 13 August 1961 (or thereabouts) when he withdrew from his match with Reshevsky at the age of 18 years 5 months 4 days old.

Chess on Mastermind Part 2

2008-11-07T20:30:00.000Z

Well, in the end I did get to see Mark Hannon answering questions on Bobby Fischer on Mastermind tonight. Despite not having access to my own TV, I managed to watch via my computer using a TV tuner card. Isn't modern technology wonderful?

Mark Hannon did extremely well, scoring 13 points (and no passes) on his Bobby Fischer questions. I think he failed to get two of them - one, on the number of consecutive games Fischer won in the 1971 Candidates Matches - he said 20 when the answer was 13 (I think he misheard the question and added the games Fischer won at the back end of the Palma 1970 Interzonal). And he couldn't remember which piece Fischer had sacrificed against Spassky in one of the key 1972 match games (the answer was bishop and he said rook - for my part I cannot remember which game was being referred to). But 13 was a very good score under pressure (I think I got about 11 - under pressure of the glass of wine I had drunk shortly before). The questions were a good deal fairer than the last time chess featured on Mastermind. There were one or two tricky ones (where he had to remember the opening variation played in games) but he rose to the challenge.

But it was a case of "the operation was successful but the patient died." Mark piled up another 12 points on the general knowledge questions (some very tough questions in there) to score a very creditable 25 points overall. But another contestant just pipped him to first place, scoring 26. Never mind - the honour of chess was maintained.

Chess on Mastermind

2008-11-07T09:38:00.000Z

Mark Hannon, a Welsh player of around 2000 strength, wrote to tell me recently that he is to be one of the four contestants of an episode of Mastermind going out on BBC2 on 7 November 2008 (Friday) at 8.00 PM. His specialist subject is "Bobby Fischer - Life and Career". Good luck with that, Mark.

The fact that Mark wrote to tell me about is perhaps an indicator that he did well, but I wouldn't guarantee it. I recall that a previous chessplayer contestant on the show in 2005 also tipped me off about his participation despite the fact that he had bombed horribly answering questions on the history of the world chess championship. But then so would most of us with some of the completely daft questions he was asked. For example, "in how many moves did Spassky beat Petrosian in game 19 of the 1969 championship?" - and I cannot think of a reply to that which isn't either rude or obscene. The number of moves played in a game of chess is an utter irrelevance - the equivalent of asking a football specialist how many throw-ins there were in the 1966 World Cup final. I would be hard pushed to tell you the number of moves played in any game of chess, either one of my own or a famous one such as Morphy versus the Duke of Brunswick, though I could probably give an approximation in many cases. Of course it is a big clue that the question setter knows little of chess and in compiling questions has simply looked up a few facts on Wikipedia.

Should Mark get one of these ludicrous "how many moves" questions I can see me getting very hot under the collar watching tonight's show. But fate has taken a hand to ensure that I don't burst a blood vessel. It so happens that my TV set will be inaccessible tonight as the sitting room floorboards are being treated for woodworm today and we won't be able to enter it for 24 hours. Probably just as well...

Armageddon in Nalchik

2008-09-03T00:32:00.000+01:00

I've just been watching edited highlights of the Armageddon game between Monika Socko and Sabine Foisor in round one of the Women's World Championship in Nalchik.

Monika Socko of Poland had White and six minutes to win, playing against Sabina Foisor of Romania who had Black and five minutes to get a draw. It came down to a clock-thumping finale which was caught on film by a bystander. The final minute or so can be seen as part of this report on ChessBase.

The moves were being blitzed out as a tremendous rate with pieces being knocked over right left and centre. It came down to king and knight versus king and knight and a few seconds later Foisor's time ran out ("flag fall" in old terminology, though there is no flag on digital clocks).

The arbiters on the spot ruled that the game was drawn on the grounds that White could not force a win, though it is possible for Black to allow herself to be mated (e.g. wKc7, wNb6, bKa8, bNa7 - later note: credit to Sean Hewitt for noticing that the original position I gave here was not checkmate! I have moved the black knight from b8 to a7...). However, this is not the most logical interpretation of article 9.6 of the laws of chess ("the game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled play...") and the appeal committee overruled the arbiters and awarded White a win.

However, one thing that nobody else seems to have noticed so far is that Foisor could have forced a draw in the final sequence. I reconstructed the game from the video and the diagram on the left above shows a position which arose just before the end. The game proceeded: 1...Ke6 2 Nc5+ Kf5 3 Nd3 Ke4 4 Nb4?? and now we reach the position on the right, above. Amazingly, Black didn't snap off White's knight with 4...Nxb4 which would have given her the draw she needed to qualify, but played 4...Kd4?? 5 Nc6+ Kc5 6 Ne5 Kd6 7 Nd3 Nf6 8 Nf4 Nd5 at which point Black lost on time. In truth, it is very hard to see the actual moves played but I'm pretty sure they were as above. I do hope poor Sabina Foisor doesn't watch the video as she will be kicking herself for missing a 'draw in one'.

Conquest of Britain

2008-08-09T16:03:00.000+01:00

"Mistakes... I made a few... but thereagain... too few to mention..."

Stuart Conquest did it "his way" and became the 2008 British Champion - congratulations to him and commiserations to Keith Arkell (both great guys).

At last England has a born, bred and registered champion again after ten years. Except that Stuart lives in Spain! And speaks fluent Spanish. As indeed does the new British women's champion Jovanka Houska (her folks come from Uruguay). It's been a great summer of sport for Spanish speakers, hasn't it? The football team, Rafa Nadal, the Tour de France guy - and now Stuart and Jovanka!

So I guess it's "Enhorabuena, campeones!"...

Ynojosa in the national press...

2008-08-04T09:27:00.000+01:00

Here's a link to a short piece on Felix Jose Ynojosa's British Championship challenge by Leonard Barden in today's Guardian sports pages.

British Championship - Part 3

2008-08-03T07:57:00.000+01:00

Round six saw draws all round for the leading group of six on 4/5, which gave a chance for yet more players to catch up. However, only one player managed to exploit the opportunity, namely Bogdan Lalic. The Croatian-registered grandmaster is the main danger as regards the return of the trophy to English hands this year (though he is not the only one - Manx resident German IM Dietmar Kolbus, whom I mentioned in an earlier blog, is on 4 and could yet win the title for the Isle of Man).

So the final week will start with Stuart Conquest, Nigel Davies, Danny Gormally, Mark Hebden, Gawain Jones, Bogdan Lalic and Lawrence Trent in the lead on 4½, with a further 11 players on 4 who are still in with a decent chance of the title.

The most notable story of the first week has been the performance of the tournament's youngest player, Felix Jose Ynojosa, who is 12 years 6 months old. Something tells me we're going to see and hear quite a lot of that name in the future so we'd better establish correct pronunciation right now - it's Ee-no-HOS-a (sound the 'h' as in the Scottish 'loch' - please don't imitate the dodgy pronunciation of the BBC reporter who interviewed Felix for BBC South-East). Felix has made quite a stir in junior chess circles since his arrival in the UK and he's now being coached by GM Nick Pert (for a photo of the two together, see this page on Nick's website).

Felix came to the UK from Venezuela with his family (his older sister Angelica also plays chess) a few years ago and nows lives in Berkshire. He is registered as an English player. This page on the Berkshire Junior website gives a good run-down on his latest achievements, while veteran talent-spotter Leonard Barden identified him as one to watch in his May 31 column in the Guardian, along with the two talented London-based 13-year-olds, Yang-Fan Zhou (also doing well in the British, having beaten IM Richard Pert in the first round) and Samuel Franklin.

Leonard Barden compared Felix's London Junior performance last Xmas with that of Nigel Short at the same age, and there is another near-parallel with the English super-GM in Felix's performance this week in Liverpool. In 1977 Nigel Short, aged 12 years 2 months, made national headlines by beating ten times British champion Jonathan Penrose in the third round of the British Championship. Short's round six score that year was 2½/6 whereas Felix, just 4 months older, has already chalked up 4/6. That works out at a TPR of 2418 so far, so he could be on course for an IM norm. Felix's progress has been very impressive. After a first round loss to Jonathan Hawkins, he displayed mature technique to defeat Dave Ledger, then drew games with Steve Barrett and IM Simon Knott. In round five he comfortably defeated the Indian player Venkat Tiruchirapalli. But in round six he went one better and defeated the highly experienced and dangerous IM Graeme Buckley...

Ynojosa,F (2101) - Buckley,G (2401) [B22]
GBR-ch Liverpool (6), 02.08.2008

1 e4 c5 2 c3 e6 3 d4 d5 4 exd5 exd5 5 Nf3 Nc6 6 Be2 Bd6 7 dxc5 Bxc5 8 0-0 Nge7 9 Nbd2 0-0 10 Nb3 Bb6 11 Nfd4 Ng6 12 Be3 Nce5? 13 f4 Nc6 14 Qd2 Re8 15 Bd3 Bd7 16 Rae1 Nge7 17 Qf2 Nc8 18 Qf3 Be6 19 Qg3 Bc7? 20 Nc5! Qf6 21 Nxb7 Nxd4 22 Bxd4 Qh6 23 Nc5 Ne7 24 Nxe6 fxe6 25 Rxe6 Ng6 26 Rxe8+ Rxe8 27 Bxg6 hxg6 28 Qf3 Re4 29 g3 a5 30 f5 Be5 31 Bxe5 Rxe5 32 fxg6 Qxg6 33 Kg2 Kh7 34 Rf2 a4 35 Rd2 Qb1 36 a3 Qc1 37 Qf4 Qe1 38 Rf2 Kg8 39 Qxa4 Re2 40 Qa8+ Kh7 41 Qf8 Rxf2+ 42 Qxf2 Qe4+ 43 Kh3 Qe6+ 44 g4 g5 45 Qf5+ 1-0

What struck me about this game was Felix's intelligent game plan. Buckley has a strong preference for tactical mayhem in his games, but Felix steered him into an innocuous system (Sicilian c3 transposing to Exchange French) where Buckley couldn't generate any tactics. By move 12 it was evident that Black was far less comfortable with the positional nature of the game than his young opponent and a slip on move 19 was instantly exploited by the 12-year-old. Felix won two pawns and liquidated to leave himself with a straightforward technical win.

This was actually Felix's second win against Buckley, whom he beat in the King's Head Rapidplay earlier this year on his way to first place with 5½/6. Later, at the May Richmond Rapidplay, Felix added another IM scalp to his belt by beating Malcolm Pein in the second round on his way to 4/6 in what was an extremely strong one-day tournament. He obviously has a huge talent. It will be very interesting to see how he fares in the second week.

British Championship - Part 2

2008-08-02T08:33:00.000+01:00

Despite telling you previously that I am not so keen on following week one at the British, I must confess that there have been some fascinating struggles in the last couple of rounds. Going into round six, we now have six players tied on 4/5, with no fewer than 30 players still within reach of the 'magic score' of 4/6 which means they still have chances of finishing first. Perhaps, as in the golf Open, there should be a 'cut' after six rounds so that all those out of contention for first prize can go home (and save hotel expenses). By the way, the 30 in contention still include 100% of the female contingent. Susan Lalic, Jovanka Houska and Meri Grigoryan are all on 3/5 so the competition for the women's title is still wide open.

Susan Lalic nearly went one better in round five when she had top-rated Gawain Jones at her mercy at one point. Of course, I speak with benefit of Fritz: it was a very complex position and far from easy to find the winning sequence, but our German friend seems adamant that Susan was close to victory.

I'm not proposing to analyse any of the top board games here but just have a quick look at some of the thrills and spills further down the board order. The two diagrams above have something in common. In both cases the player to move tried a piece sacrifice to expose the enemy king to attack. But there the comparison ends. In one case, the operation was successful but in the other it was the surgeon (and not the patient) who died.

In the top-left diagram, play continued with 14...Nxb2!? 15 Kxb2 Na4+. At this point White should have played 16 Ka1 when computers find nothing decisive after 16...Nc3 or 16...c6 though it is fairly clear that Black would get a useful kingside attack. Instead White decided to walk the plank with 16 Kb3? but was shocked by 16...c6! 17 Bxb5 Qa5!! - as powerful a zwischenzug as you are likely to see. White resigned since it is mate in three.

But, for every published combination, there are probably 1,000 unpublished miscombinations. I'll try to restore the balance by showing you what happened in the game shown in the top-right diagram. White is fairly well placed here. He had previously played a useful exchange for pawn sacrifice, though he had then missed a much stronger follow-up which might well have won. However, things are still looking good: 21 Nc5+ is strong, when 21...Ka8 is answered by 22 Bd3! and the resultant complications seem to favour White. Instead, White thought he could lure the black king into the open and win with 21 Ba6+ but let's see what happened: 21...Kxa6 22 Nc5+ Ka5 23 Nb7+ Kb6 24 Nxd8 Rxd8 25 d5+ ... when you see a discovered check resulting in a double attack on a piece at the end of your tactical analysis, you understandably get excited. But, sadly for White, his analysis ended too soon... 25...Kb7! - the only good square for the king. White resigned. The point is that 26 dxc6+ is illegal because the pawn is pinned and that 26 Rxc6 allows 26...Rxd5+ and 27...Kxc6. Life is unfair.

British Championship - Part 1

2008-07-30T21:40:00.000+01:00

I must confess, I have got out of the habit of watching British Championship games during the first week of the competition. It always reminds me of one of those bizarre pursuit cycling races where the competitors pootle round the velodrome like Miss Marple going to the vicar's tea party, reserving their energy for a frantic dash in the final couple of circuits. The main contenders in the British Championship usually end up with approximately the same number of points after six rounds - so what's the point in getting excited about it at this stage? That's not to criticise the tournament. The final rounds usually provide more by way of entertainment.

Slow starts are not always the order of the day, of course. Back in the 20th century, we were sometimes treated to the spectacle of Julian Hodgson or Jonathan Mestel storming through tournaments to make 9/11 or even more. But since 2000 (the last time Julian won, incidentally), the eventual winners have usually made relatively modest first week scores. Go on - have a guess at the commonest first-week score of the eight winners from 2000 to 2007. Did you guess 4½ or 5? Those sound the likeliest answers but they are wrong. Four of the eight winners made do with just 4/6 the first week (that's Hodgson in 2000, Gallagher in 2001, Ramesh in 2002 and Rowson in 2006). Two champions (Kunte in 2003 and Rowson in 2005) scored 4½/6. The only two 21st century champions who could consider themselves front-runners were Rowson in 2004 and Aagaard in 2007, who both blazed into the lead with 5½/6 (and they both nearly paid for their early exertions by having slightly shaky second weeks). So maybe the 'Miss Marple' pootling policy is best...

This year, after three rounds, it looks like most of the leading contenders are taking their places for the cagey cycling pursuit race of the next few days. Maybe even Richard Pert is not yet without hope despite his calamitous 0/2 start; after all, he can still reach the magic score of 4/6. I could be wrong about what is about to happen, of course. Nigel Davies will celebrate his 48th birthday tomorrow in the sole lead with 3/3 and maybe he will hack his way through the opposition in Hodgsonesque style to finish on some massive score. All things are possible. But don't write off the people who reach 4/6.

Kamsky Interview

2008-06-18T09:58:00.000+01:00

GM Gata Kamsky was at the top of a six-way tie for first recently at the National Open (June 5-8), part of the Las Vegas International Chess Festival. In this eight-minute interview with Macauley Peterson of ICC Chess.FM, Kamsky discusses his time in Vegas and his thoughts on the upcoming World Championship candidates match with Veselin Topalov, scheduled for November in Lvov, Ukraine.

My thanks to John Henderson of ICC for sending this through.

A Few Snippets from My Former Blog...

2008-05-29T09:55:00.000+01:00

I have just visited an old blog (which I no longer maintain) for the first time in many months and found a few comments of interest there. Rather than linking to it, I'll give the items here (in no particular order)...

1. [comment on thread about chess venues in London...] Here are the answers gentlemen: The Wargrave Arms [40-42 Brendon Street, W1] has a resident chess team and there are competitions every Tuesday, Bread & Roses [68 Clapham Manor Street, SW4] carries a whiff of old-school Socialism along with their chess boards and The Museum Tavern [49 Great Russell Street, WC1] has held boards behind the bar since Marx was a regular. Haven't visited this page before, but send me an email anyone who knows of any other good chess-playing pubs or cafes. alexowenwilliams@gmail.com

2. On a related theme (chessplaying venues in major cities), a 'Barcelona citizen' sent me the sad news that, as of 2003, Barcelona's 'Oro Negro' ceased to be a games-playing bar and is now a restaurant. A pity: I remember playing endless games of blitz chess there in about 1976/77. Some very strong players used to put in an appearance (e.g. Antonio Medina). But my thanks to the 'Barcelona citizen' for letting me know.

3. Posted under the title 'GOOD NEWS' on 21 April 2008 (and it does seem to be very good news)... Since 12 months ago, I have been setting up a number of UK venues where the public can walk in and play chess free of charge, the sets being supplied by the management. Mainly South Midlands, but we are looking further afield. Some venues are already set up, we are aiming for a dozen by end-2008. For details, please contact me, Tony Robson, via email: tonyrobson@solve360.com.

My thanks to those posters.

Spassky at Hay-on-Wye

2008-05-28T15:27:00.000+01:00

Above photo shows Marina Spassky, Boris Spassky and interviewer Ronan Bennett. (c) 2008 John Saunders.

On Monday 26 May, former world champion Boris Spassky gave a talk at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival in Wales. We don't get many world champions visiting our shores these days (more's the pity) so I decided to go along.

In fact, Spassky had been in action there the day before, giving a 20-board simul in a local bookshop. I didn't attend that but I understand he won most of the games but conceded a few draws, including one to Ian MacNab, a chess-playing scientist who was playing remotely from Antarctica. Also amongst his opponents was the comedian Dom Joly and a Welsh MP, Peter Black.

I am grateful to Stephen Moss for contributing the following observation on Spassky's technique for encouraging players to resign in the simul: "... his rival is two pawns down in an endgame (king and six pawns v king and four) ... Spassky would approach the board, look at it with a frown for 30 seconds as if it was the hardest position he'd ever seen, then look up at his opponent and say in that lovely, lilting Russian voice 'But where is your army?' Worked every time. I think he scored 15 wins and 5 draws in the simul."

On the Monday, the interview was conducted in a large marquee on the tented festival site, some half a mile west of the town proper. Unfortunately the weather was absolutely appalling, with wind and rain whipping around the site. The marquee managed to remain standing but at times it was difficult to make out what was being said on stage for the sound of wind upon canvas. So I hope you will forgive me for any misquotations in the following...

The great man appeared on stage, suitably attired against the elements, with his wife Marina who was there to aid his English comprehension when needed (which was not very often). Spassky's interviewer was novelist, screen writer and journalist Ronan Bennett. Ronan Bennett is also a keen chessplayer and weekly columnist (with GM Daniel King) for the Guardian's G2 'Bennett and King on Chess' feature. During the interview Bennett occasionally glanced at his copy of Bernard Cafferty's Boris Spassky: Master of the Attack (having also written a few prepared questions on the inside back cover). He was an excellent choice of interviewer for the occasion, and he struck a well-judged balance between topics which would be of particular interest to the initiated and more general ones which would be more comprehensible to a large (and largely non-chessplaying) audience.

Asked about his early chessplaying experiences, Spassky recounted how he was (like all of us) the victim of Scholar's Mate. As he climbed the chess ladder, he described himself as a "beggar" in his early days, but it was evident that his love for chess carried him through in what must have been the highly competitive world of Soviet chess. He was twice asked why he loved chess (both by the interviewer and a member of the audience at the end) but he could only describe this as "an enigma". Asked why he thought he thought he was so good at the game, he simply pointed heavenwards and smiled.

Many of the questions centred round the man to whom his name will be linked for ever - Bobby Fischer. Spassky simply doesn't have a bad word to say about his 1972 adversary. The two men billed as 'Fischer versus Spassky' in their professional life had long since become 'Bobby and Boris' - good friends. Spassky revealed that in recent years they were in regular email contact. On one occasion Spassky consulted Fischer on some question about rook endgames and Fischer sent a message back saying that Russian grandmasters' endgame play had improved since the publication of the Levenfish/Smyslov book on rook endgames. Spassky was visibly moved when he mentioned his last email from Bobby: "he was full of... conviviality", I think Boris said, as he broke off and, for a moment, nearly broke down.

The nearest he came to being critical of his former rival was in the discussion of what happened before the 3rd game of the Reykjavik match, when play took place in the room behind the stage. Boris admitted he was upset by Fischer's brusque treatment of match referee Lothar Schmid. That was a turning point in the match as Spassky could quite justifiably have insisted on the match being played in accordance with the previously agreed regulations (which might well have resulted in a Fischer walk-out). But he acquiesced and allowed the match to take its historic course. Mentioning that his name means 'saviour' in Russian, he commented that he saved the match, although sacrificing himself in the process.

Spassky was not always as diplomatic as he might have been with his Soviet colleagues. He told one story of a conversation with Botvinnik, the so-called Patriarch of Soviet chess and (unlike Spassky) a loyal party man. Spassky told him that the best example of the Soviet School of Chess was... Bobby Fischer. "Michael did not like that!", admitted Spassky ruefully.

The outcome of the 1972 match was not a tragedy for him (although he had to endure the later inquest by his fellow Soviet grandmasters). He emphasised to the audience that he "did not like to be the king" and that the years during which he held the title (1969-72) were the unhappiest of his life. He felt he was past his best in 1972. "I was perhaps number one from 1963 to 1971."

When asked about an early Fischer comment, to the effect that all Soviet GMs were members of the KGB, Spassky told us that he had raised the subject with Fischer: "When I become a colonel in the KGB, I will invite you to eat in the best restaurants!". To which Fischer had replied: "Yeah!". Spassky tried very hard to reproduce the authentic Fischer pronunciation of the word "yeah!", much to the amusement of the audience.

The mere mention of the 1992 rematch with Fischer brought Boris to life. "Ah! That was different! It was a festival, like this!," he said, gesturing to the surroundings of the book festival. By 1992, of course, Boris was a free agent and the Yugoslav match an unexpected bonus - a protracted pay-day in the Adriatic sun. He agreed that the standard of play was much lower than in 1972. He started to tell a story about game 6 (he wasn't sure himself) where he had set out to play for a draw but Bobby had surprised him by playing some very poor moves. He mentioned the time controls of the 1992 match as being problematic, with games dragging on endlessly to eight or more hours. "After one long game, Bobby was like this..." and Boris got up from his chair and lumbered unsteadily about the front of the stage, in imitation of Fischer's exhaustion after this particular encounter.

A member of the audience asked Spassky who his chess heroes were: "My heroes were all tragic!". He mentioned them by name: "Morphy, Alekhine..." - here I missed a couple of names but SonofPearl (see link below) recalls Chigorin and Steinitz. And then, as an afterthought he added "Pillsbury". "All tragic people!", he reiterated.

After the session of audience questions had ended - some were excessively long and complicated, and politely deflected by a tiring champion - Spassky was treated to a warm round of applause from an appreciative audience before leaving the stage. But I confess that I wanted to meet Boris in person and 'invited myself' backstage. Luckily Ronan Bennett was on hand to save me from being ejected by some security people and he was also kind enough to introduce me to Boris. I was able to shake Spassky's very large (and slightly intimidating) hand. On hearing that I was editor of 'British Chess Magazine' (which, by the way, he still receives regularly), he was kind enough to comment that "it is a very nice magazine". Now I can die happy...

Some links to other coverage of the Spassky talk:
Stephen Moss at Guardian Unlimited
SonofPearl's Blog

R.I.P. Patrick Taylor

2008-05-27T19:03:00.000+01:00

Some very sad news: Patrick Taylor, managing director of Monarch Assurance and generous sponsor of the Monarch Assurance Isle of Man International from 1991 to 2007, died on Friday 23 May 2008, aged 74 (he was born on 8 December 1933).

Patrick Taylor was a very hands-on sponsor who, despite not being a keen player himself, loved the game and the people who played it, and liked to visit his tournament as often as he could. At the opening ceremony of the tournament it was quite often his way to greet all the leading grandmasters with a handshake and a few words, and I am quite sure he would have extended that to all the players in the tournament had time permitted. He was very much a "people person". He was also a sponsor of the Manx Operatic Society and became their official Patron some years ago.

Everyone who ever attended the Isle of Man tournament, grandmasters, rank and file players and officials alike, will remember Patrick with deep affection and will be saddened to hear of his passing. I received the news from the tournament's long-time director, Dennis Hemsley, and I know Dennis particularly feels the loss of the remarkable man who was so instrumental and so generous in helping him to realise his dream of an international tournament in the little town of Port Erin. R.I.P.

ECF Forum Goes Off The Air

2008-05-25T09:59:00.000+01:00

I've been enjoying reading the ECF Forum recently. A number of interesting debates have opened up on topical matters and we've been getting useful answers to a number of questions which the ECF had previously stonewalled or ignored.

Today I logged into their forum to find this message: "I am unable to moderate this forum properly at this time due to the house move and lack of internet connection, BT have promised next weekend at which point this forum will resume operation."

Why did this mean taking down the entire forum? And why do we have to wait a week for it to be fixed? Seems amateurish to say the least. Or is it? It is hard not to be suspicious that it was done for reasons of censorship. The end of the Prague Spring at the ECF?

Mike Truran - Open Letter, 8 May 2008

2008-05-09T13:29:00.000+01:00

The following open letter was sent to me for publication by Mike Truran and he has agreed that I should display it on BCMBlog. To put you in the picture, Mike was until a few days ago a non-executive director of the English Chess Federation. In conjunction with a number of other directors of the federation, he decided to resign from his post last week. The background to the ECF crisis has been summarised elsewhere on the web and I (JS) don't propose to summarise it here (though I may say more at a later date). Links to various background material: SCCU Report of the ECF Council Meeting of 26 April 2008 - Debate at the ECF Forum - Debate at the Atticus CC forum.

Here is Mike Truran's open letter in full:

There is a story (apocryphal or otherwise) of how the Chinese army once decided to establish a military garrison in the middle of the Gobi desert. The garrison was built, supply lines were established, soldiers were dispatched, all at ruinous cost. It apparently took some years for it to dawn on people that nobody, friend or foe, was particularly interested in the middle of the Gobi desert. The point of the garrison was the garrison’s own existence.

Sometimes I’m reminded of the story when thinking about the ECF. It’s as if the main purpose of the ECF is to raise enough funds to perpetuate the ECF. Certainly its purpose doesn’t seem to be to be to sort out the woeful state of chess in this country. The ECF president only a few days ago was apparently heard to say “The ECF is about more than chess”. Let’s hope that’s right, because it sure as hell isn’t particularly about chess.

There has been a lot of speculation about why four of us recently resigned as ECF directors, with many fanciful theories raised on various forums. I speak for myself on this, although I believe that my fellow directors share similar although not necessarily identical thoughts. I resigned because I have lost faith in the ability of the ECF as it is presently structured to take meaningful action to sort out English chess – or indeed in the ability of the ECF to even understand that there is an issue.

When I signed up to Martin Regan’s ticket and agreed to stand for re-election as a non-executive director I genuinely believed that there was at long last an opportunity to revitalise English chess and embark on a radical programme that would restore English chess to its rightful position in the world. I now believe that the vested interest lobbies in Council and on the Board will all they can to prevent meaningful change, and that even if Martin and his team had been able to force through the changes needed the resulting fall-out would have made life intolerable.

I’m a senior business executive in my real life. Time is a valuable commodity for me. That said, I’m willing to give my time for free when I see goodwill and a genuine intention to make things better amongst my colleagues. What I’m not prepared to do is to waste my time pushing water uphill. Life’s too short and I have better things to do.

Have you ever been to an ECF Council meeting? If you ever get invited, run like hell in the other direction. There are, I know, good and competent Council members who recognise that there is a problem with English chess and would like to do something about it. Meeting after meeting these members’ voices are drowned out by a vociferous minority who either bang on about arcane points of order and constitutional minutiae or about their own particular hobbyhorses, which usually involve some variant of the “What does the ECF do for me?” or “What’s the Board trying to slip past us this time?” themes – and usually (which I find more soul-destroying than anything) without a scintilla of doubt as to the correctness of their own opinion and with an absolute refusal to countenance the possibility that there might just possibly be valid points of view other than their own. Most of the subjects discussed involve operational matters which should be within the Board’s remit and so not even on the agenda. The atmosphere typically ranges from the unpleasant to the poisonous. No meeting passes without some confrontation or other between Council and the Board. I recall on one occasion overhearing one Council member saying to another member “I wouldn’t trust this Board as far as I could throw them”. On no occasion can I recall any strategic discussion about how Council thinks the ECF (and the Board on behalf of the ECF) should be developing and improving English chess. The ECF discussing strategy? Don’t make me laugh. It’s much more exciting to discuss whether game fee increase should be 1p or 2p.

ECF Board meetings are little better. The late lamented John Dunleavy once said to Martin Regan “Well, Council have at least given you half a ticket”. As Martin commented recently, that wasn’t enough. In the end, it seems to me that the Board split right down the middle between those who sought radical change and those who wanted to preserve the status quo. In business a divided Board never achieves its objectives. This Board was no different, and I think that in the end Martin and his team recognised that the drag on the reform and modernisation agenda from those who looked to block substantive progress at every turn was going to be insuperable. In any event, as with Council, getting the Board to discuss anything other than trivia was always difficult. As a for instance, I recall one memorable occasion when we spent an enthralling quarter of an hour or so debating whether one particular job title should be “…………Manager” or “Manager of…………”.

So where are we now? An organisation with the turnover of a fairly large Cotswold tea shop has a business plan it has neither the resources nor the skills to deliver, seemingly living in a fantasy world in which all manner of lofty ambitions are signed up to year after year with no discernible will to provide the finance to achieve those ambitions. Any meaningful debate about what the ECF should be delivering as opposed to what it actually delivers is immediately hijacked by lobbyists complaining about the cost of chess in England. All Martin and his team wanted to do was to get the debate out on the table. We really didn’t care whether membership was pitched at £2 or £50. What we wanted to flush out was a vision from Council, the elected representatives of chess organisations in England, of what the ECF should be doing and where it should be going. If Council just wanted the ECF to produce a grading list, with no office and a skeleton service (£2?), that was fine. If Council wanted the ECF to run properly funded international teams to represent England, provide appropriate conditions for our top players to play in the British Championship, invest properly in junior chess, have a properly resourced and skilled office delivering proper value added services for members etc etc (£50?) that was fine too. Once the vision was agreed, the costs would follow. We couldn’t even get the debate started.

Well, I’ve said my piece and, having said it, can hardly be excused from the obligation to offer some thoughts on how matters might be improved. So here goes, for what it’s worth…………

• The ECF needs to tear up its present structure and start again. Council in its present form is unworkable, and the Board is emasculated by the need to refer any meaningful decisions to Council. To my mind the present Council structure should be replaced by a small number of shareholders, duly elected by their constituents – in effect the shareholders who hire or fire the directors. As a starter for ten suggestion, these members could, for example, be representatives of the regional unions and/or the major leagues, with the unions/leagues taking responsibility for the democratic processes whereby these members were elected. I recall writing to Gerry Walsh before the BCF morphed into the ECF suggesting that the change of legal status was a golden opportunity to get the structure fit for purpose for the 21st century. True to form, nothing happened.

• The ECF needs to allow its Board to get on with things, as would be the case in the real world. The Board, as Council’s appointees, needs to be able to set the overall strategy for the ECF and then to set about delivering it. If Council isn’t happy it should get rid of its directors and appoint new ones, not seek to second guess them at every turn.

• The ECF should work out what it is for and what it should be doing by way of core activities and value added services. Once that is decided, the chess playing public should fund that level of activity and service on a non-subsided, break-even basis. Whether that is done by way of membership fees or game fees isn’t the issue. The issue is what the chess playing public wants and what it is willing to pay for. Nobody is going to sponsor the ECF in current circumstances, even if the ECF had a brand worth investing in, or indeed any sort of compelling proposition with which to convince potential sponsors. We can’t expect any of this to be funded by sponsorship under current circumstances, and if we think it will be we delude ourselves. Anyway, sponsorship should be used to fund the “icing on the cake” over and above properly funded and resourced day to day activity. Chess players are going to have to be prepared to stump up themselves for what they want. If they are only prepared to pay for a skeleton service that perpetuates the downward spiral of chess in England, so be it. If they want to pay the money needed to re-energise chess in England, that’s fine too. What they shouldn’t do is pretend that they can get something for nothing. What they should do is have the debate about what they really want and what they are really prepared to pay.

• Finally, the ECF needs to get some competent people onto the Board – and that I fear includes replacing some of the present incumbents. Whether you agree or disagree with the views of Martin and his team, it would be pretty hard to argue (based on what they have delivered in the real world) that they were not competent to do the job. With their loss I fear the ECF has missed another golden opportunity. Nobody is irreplaceable, but I suspect the ECF will have to work quite hard even to find people of the calibre of Martin, Peter and Claire, let alone persuade them to act as ECF directors. The ECF’s reputation is just too low.

It distresses me to see how English chess has declined over the last couple of decades. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I compare chess in England with the buoyant state of affairs in countries like Germany, France, Turkey…………I could go on. I suppose we could wait for the old guard on the Board and in Council to die off before we try to put things right. I suspect that by the time that happens chess will be completely moribund in this country.

We really do need to start over. But I’m not holding my breath.

Postscript:

The other day I was leafing through “Chess Monthly” for 1991 (!) and came across the following (concerning, I believe, something called the Edwards Report which had been commissioned by the then British Chess Federation to “review all aspects of chess activity and organisation in the UK, taking into account the various interests of all levels and groups of players, both amateur and professional, together with organisers and sponsors”). I quote:

“The committee was unanimous in agreeing that the BCF is designed for a structure of British chess that is largely superseded. It recognised that the cumbersome structure with an unwieldy Council and Management Board was ill-equipped to handle the increase in professional chess of the world’s number two chess nation. Difficulties in recent years in finding and keeping sponsors have resulted from the lack of professional commercial management.

The major recommendations of the report are:
1. To appoint a competent, professional, full-time General Secretary.
2. To start a National League.
3. To reform the management structure of the BCF to simplify the organisation and improve communication to members.”

Progress to date:

1. Not achieved.
2. Achieved, but not by the BCF.
3. What do you think?

Seventeen years on we’re still waiting. I had almost forgotten until “Chess Monthly” reminded me that we used to be number two nation in the world. Does anybody in the ECF care any more?

Let me finish with a quote from David Norwood, then the BCF’s Publicity Director, also from 1991:

“The BCF……is simply the sum of its parts: individuals, clubs and counties. If what is commonly termed the ‘grass roots’ then continually demands: ‘What does the BCF do for me?’, as if expecting immediate benefits from above, there is something intrinsically wrong. The BCF can only be what its members make it.”
[end]

Kasparov's Long-Lost Brother?

2008-05-08T11:54:00.000+01:00

I saw the fellow on the left on the TV and thought he looked rather like Garry Kasparov. He is former Brookside actor and TV presenter Simon O'Brien. What do you think?

Isle of Man Update (of sorts)

2008-05-05T00:52:00.000+01:00

I have heard that there might be an Isle of Man tournament of sorts some time in the autumn. If it happens - and I stress it is only a possibility at the moment - it is probably to be a two-day rapidplay tournament and in Douglas rather than Port Erin. Some time in the autumn. Maybe (did I already say that?). Watch this space.

Isle of Man - On or Off?

2008-05-02T12:24:00.000+01:00

Yes, it has been a very long silence here at the BCM Blog, hasn't it? My last piece was on Bobby Fischer's death so perhaps I've been in mourning for the late, great world champion. But if so, it wasn't a conscious thing.

The reason I break the silence is to talk about the Isle of Man tournament. Is there going to be a 2008 Isle of Man tournament? As long-time tournament webmaster, it is a bit embarrassing to have to answer that with the words "I don't know". At the last tournament we had a meeting to discuss the 2008 event and various semi-official announcements were made via the website, talking in terms of a 2008 Manx International, but I haven't heard a thing since.

The prognosis is not good. Monarch Assurance's generous sponsorship ended with the 2007 event so it was already known that new sponsorship would need to be found. Since then, there has come further news that the venue, the Ocean Castle Hotel, closed for business on 31 December 2007 (and it is likely to be scheduled for demolition). At that point, hotel manager Jean-Pierre Depin - who is also tournament director - retired to Ramsey. I understand that all other possible venues in Port Erin are booked for the requisite time so the tournament would have to move town as well as find new money.

Various things appear on the web about a 2008 tournament but they look a bit sketchy and out of date. Does anyone out there know what's happening? If you do, please me know...

R.I.P. Bobby Fischer

2008-01-18T13:01:00.000Z

Bobby Fischer (9 March 1943 - 17 January 2008)

Just two hours ago, BCM heard the desperately sad news that former world chess champion Bobby Fischer died yesterday, with initial reports indicating that it was as a result of kidney failure. BCM carried the news of his chronic kidney condition in the January issue so this was not entirely unexpected news.

It's unprecedented for us to show you a front cover before it has been formally finalised but here is a mock-up of the February British Chess Magazine front cover which is likely to go to the printers later today. It shows the 19-year-old Fischer playing Rivera at the Varna Olympiad in 1962. We prefer to show Fischer as he was in his prime (actually a little before his prime) rather than the way he appeared in the later stages of his life after he had long since abandoned chess. And that is also how we prefer to remember him. R.I.P.

The Kome-Back Kid and his Kome-Back Dad...

2008-01-17T13:46:00.000Z

Just seen this at chessusa.blogspot.com... click here

Rustam Kamsky - father of Gata - has emerged from a long-time silence to sound off about the world chess situation, how his son has been badly treated by the chess establishment and why he needs state support in his forthcoming match against Topalov.

The interesting thing is that he is still alive and taking an interest. Whether he is speaking on behalf of his son is a moot point. It may be an embarrasment for Gata for all we know. But it does make one think - will Rustam be there for the showdown between his son and Topalov? Rustam vs Danailov... now that is a confrontation I would pay money to see.

Dawn Corus

2008-01-13T00:42:00.000Z

Well, it's a very long time since I last blogged... I thought I'd better say something in case you thought I had been rubbed out by the avenging 'Farce Brothers' after my previous comments about them here. Or perhaps you thought that I had made a new year's resolution to quit pontificating about chess.

Sorry to disappoint you - neither of these things came to pass. It was just that I decided to give chess writing a miss for the duration of the Xmas/New Year holiday in order to recharge my batteries. I did think about writing another of my alphabetical annual reviews of the year: I got as far as 'A is for Anand' (a no-brainer) but couldn't think of anything funny to say... then 'B is for'... boredom. Yes, the creative juices simply failed to flow so it was time to give up on that idea and get back to the mince pies.

Hastings didn't rouse me from hibernation to any great degree. I usually go there on the final day so that I can take photos of likely winners for photos, but that had proved to be a mistake last year. The leaders had decided to draw their games instantly and I missed a couple of them before they had exited the tournament room. Tip to chess photographers: make sure your camera has a really fast shutter speed to catch those ultra-fast last-round draws. I thought I'd fool them this year and go down for Round one (when they'd surely sit at the board long enough for me to get a decent shot). It was pleasant meeting old chess friends as it always is, and there were a few decent games to watch. But the course of the tournament wasn't terribly exciting. Sometimes the new, premier-less Hastings can be good when someone like Belov lights up the Hastings sky with a string of wins, but it was a case of 'Asbestos on Board' this year - a few middle-income GMs intent on a steady little earner.

But today was round one of Corus: the real first day of the chess year, when everyone gets to show off their shiny new January rating for the first time. Unfortunately for me it coincides with a heavy workload and a brisk deadline as I get the February BCM ready so that I can travel to Gibraltar in a week or so's time for the other big January event. I haven't found a really interesting chess story to write about this year yet, but Corus had a goodly helping of surprises, right from the off. I thought about writing a preview of the tournament, but then decided I didn't really have a clue what might happen. Will 2008 be another good year for the more mature players (as 2007 was) or will the Carlsens and Radjabovs finally start to elbow them aside? Who knows? Today's games provide evidence of the latter but it's only a tiny sample. Besides which, as I pointed out in the January BCM editorial, last year's Corus did not provide a reliable indicator of what might happen during the rest of 2007. Aronian, Topalov and Radjabov tied for first place... and all three had a sub-standard year. It turned out to be Ivanchuk, Anand and Kramnik who came out on top by December.

No, great though Corus is as a tournament, I wouldn't read too much into what happens there in terms of who is going to be at the apex of world chess by the end of the year. Anand and Kramnik will probably go careful in Wijk. They don't want to pig out on the hors d'oeuvres because they know they have a substantial main course to find room for later in the year. Tournaments are all right but it is matchplay which really sorts out the men from the boys. Roll on September...

Kamsky vs Shirov: Back to the 1990s

2007-12-11T13:10:00.000Z

It is to be Kamsky versus Shirov in the FIDE World Cup final.

Although youth has been well to the fore in the tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, it seems that the younger generation are not yet ready to claim their inheritance. In both semi-finals it was a case of "age before beauty".

The final pairing makes me think of one of those cheesy old sports movie plots where a has-been sports star comes back from the wilderness for one last improbable attempt at glory. And of course they succeed: the final scene shows the ball going into the net, or the hated rival hitting the canvas, the hero is reunited with his long-lost girlfriend... cue credits.

I would love to see this happen in chess but life is not like the movies. And of course I am way ahead of myself because the two old bruisers still have to slug it out with each other. Only one of them will get to live the dream and it may be short-lived. The formidable figure of Veselin Topalov stands between them and a world title match. Not to mention a whole minefield of politics and negotiations. Harold Wilson said that a week was a long time in politics and that is even more true of chess politics. But Alexei Shirov will be more aware of that than anybody.

I'm glad that these two have come through the knock-out competition. Not that I have anything against Carlsen, Karyakin and co, but I feel that both Kamsky and Shirov deserve another chance at glory and that their track record as match players means the clash with Topalov should be a meaningful one. One thing they have in common is winning a match victory over Kramnik. Kamsky beat Kramnik in the 1994/95 PCA candidates quarter-final, while Shirov beat him in 1998 for the right to challenge Kasparov for the title. The other major factor they have in common is that both have played in a match for the world title. Kamsky lost to Karpov in the 1996 FIDE world final, while Shirov lost to Anand at the same stage in 2000 (although the FIDE version of the championship had by then been reduced to 'Mickey Mouse' status).

One of the great chess 'wrongs' that stands a chance of being righted in this current cycle is Shirov's lost chance to play Kasparov for the title in 1999/2000. I don't suppose we shall ever know the true story of what went wrong at that time but there is no doubt that Shirov has nursed a burning sense of injustice ever since and one can only feel for him. In the end, as we all know, his opportunity passed to his beaten rival Kramnik, who went on to defeat Kasparov and enjoy seven years as world champion. Kramnik also got paid his fee for the Shirov match, while Shirov ended up with precisely nothing. Well, nothing apart from the aforementioned sense of injustice, that is. But perhaps that may yet prove to have a motivational value which will carry him through his coming challenges. I wish him well.

Kamsky's virtual retirement after 1996 seems to have been triggered by a general disillusionment with chess as a career. Perhaps it was also a necessary stratagem to escape the clutches of an over-protective and dysfunctional father. He then turned to his studies (first medicine and then the law) but began a tentative come-back in 2004. He has settled back in pretty well, rejoining the 2700 elite, but chess has changed significantly during his absence. Mastery of computer-based theory is now more important than it was and he is sometimes judged wanting in that area. But his reputation as a match player is still high, despite a loss to Gelfand in the Elista Candidates last year. I also wish him well for his coming challenge.

So now there are five. The plan is that the winner of the Kamsky/Shirov match will get the chance to play Topalov, and the winner of Topalov vs GK/AS then goes on to challenge the winner of the 2008 Kramnik/Anand championship match for the title, sometime in 2009. An enticing prospect but at the moment is no more than a plan. Four matches in two years could tax the organisational and fund-raising skills of the World Chess Federation. I wonder how many of these matches will actually happen?

The Farce Brothers

2007-12-07T23:57:00.000Z

Who said adjournments were dead? The appeals committee at the 2007 World Youth Championships has re-invented them. Read all about it at ChessVibes.com. They decided it was OK to get a 14-year-old boy out of his bed at 11pm, ask him to give evidence before them (I've got a picture of "when did you last see your father?" in my head) and then oblige him to sit down and, at midnight the same night, continue a game which he had thought had been finished several hours before he went to bed.

Read the full facts at the ChessVibes site by all means but to my mind the rest of the matter pales into insignificance besides the aforementioned bit of lunacy. How could the appeals committee even think to summon a child from his bed in the first place? Well, basically because the appeals committee consisted of 'The Farce Brothers' (like the Marx Brothers, only not as funny) - Azmo, Campo and Makro Farce (to give them their stage names - in real life they are Zurab Azmaiparashvili, Florencio Campomanes and Georgios Makropoulos... three of the most senior people in world chess administration - to our collective shame).

Beggars belief, doesn't it? There are three things these cretins should do immediately, in no particular order - resign; apologise profusely to the boy and to the Belgian Chess Federation; and (two of them) also apologise to Nigel Short. Why the latter? Because they recently caused Nigel Short to be reprimanded by FIDE for referring to them as dunderheads. Since we now have cast-iron, irrefutable evidence of the aptness of Mr Short's description, he should receive a fulsome apology.

Vishy's Baking Tray

2007-11-21T12:33:00.000Z

The other day at the BCM Chess Shop we were all chortling at this photo which appeared on the cover of the latest New in Chess magazine. Vishy had just won the world championship and, after dressing him up like a market stall with various bits of local material and vegetation, all they could think to present him with was what looked like an unwashed baking tray. No wonder he looks slightly less than delirious.

We all had a go at dreaming up captions for the photo. One of the first was the traditional "I went to Mexico and all they gave me was this tea tray". Another was based on the speculation that a Post-It note had been attached to the reverse, which read "Dear Vishy, Many congratulations on nicking my title. I'm hanging onto the real trophy until you beat me fair and square in a match. In the meantime, you can have this tray which I took from my rest room in Elista as a memento of many happy hours spent there. All the best, see you next year - Vlad".

Maybe readers would like to volunteer their own caption...

Dogs and Cats Playing Chess

2007-11-17T21:49:00.000Z

First things first... apologies to anyone who has been trying to access the BCM website which has been down all day (Saturday 17 November). Seems to be the fault of the web hosts - nothing we can do about it.

I have just enjoyed reading an amusing story on the Streatham and Brixton blog - click here - featuring the hapless fictional English GM Geoff Scorebook (a sort of chessplaying Mr Pooter) and the day he was forced to play chess against a dog.

Those Streatham guys give great blog and I exhort you to read their stuff. If you read to the end of the comments on this story you will find that I feebly try to top EJH's story with a tale about a cat that played chess (or at least one move of a game of chess). Only my story happens to be absolutely true. I thought you might like to see a picture of Scamp, the remarkable animal that once played 1 Rh1-g1, having a kip on his favourite chess set. Notice how he wraps his paw protectively round the king. He definitely knows something, that cat.

ECF: One Member, One Vote?

2007-11-09T11:40:00.000Z

Peter Sowray, international director of the English Chess Federation (ECF), has started a petition to change the way the federation is organised. Without further ado, click on the following link:

http://www.ecfomov.co.uk/

The wording of the petition is "We, the undersigned, call upon the English Chess Federation to adopt a more democratic approach. Specifically, we believe that 'One Member, One Vote' should be introduced for major decisions, including the election of board members and the setting of the Annual Budget."

At the moment the ECF has a federal structure, composed of affiliated organisations which have votes. This was probably quite a reasonable set-up in its day, 100+ years ago, but it is increasingly evident that the ECF's wheels just don't turn fast enough for the chess world as it stands in the 21st century. The pace of change is agonisingly slow, and over the years a number of dynamic people who might have been useful in the organisation of chess have been put off by its in-built conservatism. Note, this is not a criticism of any of the people involved, just the structure of the organisation.

Please read Peter's petition and the reasons behind it. I haven't the time today to do a full-blown blog on this but I find Peter's case admirably clear and sensible. I was havering about whether to sign myself, given that I am a 'foreigner' (a member of the Welsh Chess Union). But I live in England and am directly affected by decisions made by the federation in my work, so felt constrained (after the gentlest arm-twisting from Peter!) to append my name. What do blog readers think?

Sticking Up for Chess

2007-11-08T15:45:00.000Z

I did a chess-related sound bite for a local radio station this morning. I've done a fair few of these over the years and you tend to get asked the same old questions. The problem is that they are just using you to fill in a couple of minutes at the end of the hour, before the news bulletin kicks in. You are the equivalent of the 'skateboarding duck' story which is traditionally slotted into the end of TV news shows, just to raise the viewers' spirits after half an hour of depressing hard news stories. Or the 'dead donkey' which can be conveniently 'dropped' should there be a big story which needs more time. In fact, that excellent TV comedy show of the 1990s to which I am referring could, but for the grace of God, have been named Drop the Chess Story. I'm so glad it wasn't.

Anyway, you always have to expect to be asked something about the game's reputation for being 'slow' or 'boring' or the image of chessplayers as 'geeks' or 'nerds'. Tempting though it is for an old grump like me to trade insult for insult and suggest that I cannot think of anything more boring than listening to local radio - that would come across as snooty and middle-class - you have to play the game... take a deep breath and say something frothy and upbeat which chimes in with the banter that you hear coming down the phone line from larky lads and lasses in the studio. Well, that's what I tend to do, anyway. Anyone got a good riposte for the 'slow, boring' jibe that they'd like to suggest?

One idea I had but did not implement was to ask that the presenters do a bit of homework on chess before my slot. Next time I might suggest that they go to 'YouTube' and search for 'Nakamura Dlugy'...

... two grandmasters playing one minute chess whilst heavy rock music plays around them. After watching that, could they still legitimately ask me whether chess was slow or boring?

Of course, the real reason a lot of people think chess is boring is because they have never had contact with anyone who can play it competently. They think they know what chess is, but they don't. Most games and sports tend to be slow and boring when played by the untutored or the incompetent. Even reasonably competent sport, as practised by parks footballers, is not particularly stimulating to watch when played in front of two men and a dog.

Here's a little experiment: next time you watch TV football, try watching with the sound turned down. Dull, isn't it? It makes you realise that a huge part of the fun comes from the noise made by the crowd and the commentators. Much of the appeal of TV sport lies in being sucked into this state of mass hysteria which a lot of us find irresistible. It wouldn't work quite like that for TV chess, of course, but there are other, subtler ways of getting people involved in things presented on the box.

As for the 'geek/nerd' jibe: my standard reply is to tell them about someone like Simen Agdestein, grandmaster and pro footballer. And now star of the Norwegian equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing. Although that particular answer is almost as trite and done-to-death as the question it purports to answer, it's a way of trying to tell them that chessplayers come in all shapes and sizes (although it has to be admitted that an unhealthily large proportion sport a 'y' chromosome) and that, amongst the geeks and nerds, there are 'jocks' and 'dudes' and 'babes' and 'alpha males' and 'brats' and 'fogies'... in fact, virtually every kind of revoltingly-named social stereotypes that one can think of.

So how do readers of BCMblog respond to the geek/nerd jibe?

Whilst looking round for some online video action showing Agdestein playing football, or even doing the paso doble (haven't found anything as yet), I came across some soccer action featuring another chessplayer, Torkil Nielsen, who was reputedly the chess champion of the Faroes Islands and has a rating in the mid-2100s so he's a decent player. He was the Faroe Islands soccer player who scored the winning goal for his country against Austria in one of the biggest international soccer upsets of all time in a European Championship qualifying match in 1990. Here's the video...

... I should have warned you to turn the sound down on your computer before watching it - the commentator goes completely berserk. "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!! Ludwig Wittgenstein!! Sigmund Freud!! Kurt Waldheim!! Arnold Schwarzenegger!! Can you hear me, Arnold Schwarzenegger!! We gave your boys a helluva beating!!" Well, he could have been saying something like that, couldn't he?

Enough of the chess, it's nearly time for the news headlines...

This has been John Saunders...
At three minutes to eight...
BBC Ambridge...

Guardian Chess Book of the Year

2007-11-06T14:08:00.000Z

The Guardian, in the shape of GM Daniel King and his co-columnist Ronan Bennett, is running a competition for 'best chess book of 2007'. You can read their three most recent articles here, here and here, in which they nominate their own favourite books of 1907 - Karlsbad 1907 and Silman's Complete Endgame Course being two titles singled out - and invite readers to nominate their own favourites which will be added to the short list for the judges to consider. Dan and Ronan are inviting readers to nominate two more titles and want them to email their choices.

The two books with the most nominations (closing date November 12) will be added to the short list. Dan King and Ronan Bennett will then team up with two other members of the Guardian Chess Club, Stephen Moss and Sean Ingle, and they are proposing to announce the shortlist of six on December 3. Everyone who makes a nomination will have their names put into a hat, and the lucky winner will receive a copy of the winning book.

Here's the important bit: the email address. It is chess@guardian.co.uk

Vishy v Vlad 2008: Pre-Match Skirmishes, Round 2

2007-11-06T11:01:00.000Z

Well, that didn't take long, did it? No sooner had I started deconstructing the rules of engagement on my blog than Vishy produced his second volley. Chessbase, bless their hearts, has all the relevant info. In reality the match has now begun, with every utterance of the two contenders likely to be analysed, distorted and whipped into a souffle by chess hacks worldwide - and, hopefully quite soon, the general media too. They will have to watch their every word: even a polite request for directions to the nearest gents could be mistranslated or misinterpreted as another toiletgate accusation.

I'm beginning to wonder whether the match should really be billed 'Izvestia v Hindustan Times', those being the two organs through which the rivals' latest pronouncements have been filtered. Then, of course, there is the secondary filter, ChessBase itself, which has been known to place a spin or two on chess news. Their headline - "Anand blasts FIDE's 'political patronage' of Kramnik" - shows they enjoy reading UK tabloid newspapers. The word 'blast' is beloved of the UK press - it's nice and short and Anglo-Saxon and pulls in the punters like no other. It's just a tad stronger than 'rap'. A 'rap' criticises in relatively polite terms (like a ticking-off from your mother) but I always feel a 'blast' really lets it all hang out, and maybe slips in a vulgar insult or two. Or am I thinking of 'slam'?

Well, anyway... as you excitedly read the text of a blast-headlined article for some full-blooded criticism, you usually find that what the 'blaster' (or 'rapper' or 'slammer') actually said, tucked away in a few lines somewhere in the third paragraph after the writer has had a go at exaggerating and interpreting the actual words, would barely offend an elderly dowager at a garden party. What a disappointment! Still, the press is trying hard and this is exactly how these things are supposed to play out in order to whip up a bit of aggro. 10/10 for effort all round.

Going back to the 3 November edition of the Hindustan Times article: the writer kicks off with "Long after the bitter days of rivalry between Kasparov and Karpov, another chess star war seems to be in the offing." Already we can see where he wants to go with this story. The first direct quote from Anand, quite a bit further down the page, is: "He is trying to make the most of the political patronage he enjoys from the FIDE. Kramnik's position seems like a legal explanation of a situation arising from the political patronage." Not exactly a 'blast', is it? Nevertheless Anand is making quite a significant criticism here, not so much of Kramnik as of FIDE for showing favour.

So there you have it: the second bit of FIDE-bashing from Vishy. As I said in my earlier blog, this is always a good move to make in a game of chess politics. Notice Vishy seems to have had two moves in a row. There is no rule about each player making alternate moves when mud-slinging. Kramnik doesn't have to move at all if he doesn't want to. There is no zugzwang in chess politics. I'm not surprised Vishy has made this pair of moves but they strike me as coming a bit early in the piece. I would have expected him to manoeuvre, playing the political equivalent of pawn to a3 or h3 for a while before launching a flank attack of this magnitude. But it is too early to judge its effectiveness. The position is either level or unclear (select whichever cliche you prefer).

Vishy's next quoted utterance - "Who the best player in the world is decided on the board" - well, that's more like it at this early stage. Just a minor developing move. You or I could have found that platitude without the slightest difficulty.

In the final para of the article, Anand is said to have 'refuted' (good chess term, that) the claim that the match would be held in Germany in September 2008 and that nothing had as yet been decided. Excellent! Any notion that agreement had been reached on dates and venue would be ruinous for this traditional area of off-board conflict, which ideally needs to be left unresolved until the last possible minute. In 1972, we didn't know if there would be a match at all until we saw Bobby Fischer descend the steps of the plane in Rejkyavik - which was picture that greeted us on the TV news that night. How's that for brinksmanship - and newsworthiness? I doubt that we could ever again enjoy that sort of cliff-hanging tension but the pot needs to be stirred for a few months yet.

On 5 November the Hindustan Times ran a story on Vishy Anand shifting base back to India. Apparently he has bought a house in Chennai and is talking about training young Indian players. "I have bought a new house in Chennai and will be staying more in India. Earlier, I used to stay for about two months in India and six-eight months in Spain. But now it could be the other way round." The maths doesn't quite work there. Where was he the rest of the time? On the road playing chess perhaps? But I suppose it could be interpreted as a political move in the build up to the Kramnik match. The fact that he lives most of his life abroad slightly detracts from his status as a national hero.

It is interesting to contrast this move with that of the Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton who, on becoming a British national hero, has decided to go and live in Switzerland because he cannot walk down a British street any more wthout getting pestered. Most of us cynics assumed the real reason for the move is because the Swiss tax man helps himself to less of his dough than his British equivalent. I wonder if Vishy has some ulterior motive in this move?

You would have thought that Vishy would have the same problem as Hamilton when trying to walk down an Indian street. But perhaps his privacy has to be sacrificed in order to benefit from the extra political muscle his vast and powerful home country can bring him - the 'India v Russia' angle. Akin to a playground dispute and the traditional chant of "my dad's bigger than your dad". I certainly get the impression that the Indian press could be a major influence in the coming struggle. The fact that they publish in English could be a plus factor in the Anand campaign.

Yes, it'a all shaping up nicely...

Vishy v Vlad 2008: The Hype Has Begun...

2007-11-02T09:26:00.000Z

As we all know, Kramnik and Anand are due to play a world championship match some time next year (there is now talk of Germany in September). But it is not unprecedented: they played a ten-game match a few years ago. Anyone remember it? Thought not. To be fair, it was only rapidplay, at Mainz in 2001, and ended 5-5 with just two decisive games. Anand won a blitz decider 1½-½.

The only thing I remember about the 2001 match was a comment made to me afterwards by a chess journalist who had witnessed it. “They arrived for each game practically hand in hand!,” he commented rather disgustedly of the all too obvious friendliness of the two players to each other.

From the journalistic/PR point of view there is nothing worse than a cosy relationship between two sporting competitors. It doesn’t matter for run of the mill events but when you are trying to generate some publicity for a high-profile match that might catch the eye of the general media, you need there to be at least some degree of aggro between them. Ideally, you want to be able to quote a few spiky comments made by one about the other. Just imagine, in soccer, if the managers of Arsenal and Manchester United spent the afternoon before their teams played having a round of golf together. It wouldn’t do at all, would it?

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why the 4NCL has a bit of an image problem at the moment. The league was at its zenith a few years ago when we had Slough and Wood Green fighting for supremacy. There was considerable personal animosity involved between the two clubs, but it only served to enhance the competition, with the two rivals hiring ever more exalted grandmasters in an armaments race to overpower the other. Later, Wood Green and Guildford had a less heated rivalry; but when you pump all that cash in, you want to win and the competition becomes intense. These days we have the less than enthralling rivalry between Guildford-A&DC first team and... Guildford-A&DC second team. Doesn’t set the pulse racing, does it? There is a world championship precedent for this: the 2004 title match between Kramnik and Leko, where both players had the same manager. Not a trace of ill-feeling between the players could be discerned before, during or after the match. In his recent book, Topalov described that as the “most boring world championship match of all time” and he has quite a strong case.

Anyway, back to Anand versus Kramnik: in a recent interview with Izvestia, Kramnik laced his answers with some slightly barbed comments. See Steve Giddins’ commentary on this at the ChessBase site. It is also noticeable that Anand has been more outspoken in various comments to the press since becoming champion. Of course, they now have more at stake than first prize in a relatively trivial rapidplay match but it looks like the PR machine for VVV ’08 (Vishy versus Vlad 2008) has now started in earnest.

Just a small sample from the Giddins article: “When it was put to him that Anand was surely the strongest player in Mexico, Kramnik replied that the situation is like tennis: ‘Federer is better than Nadal, but cannot compete with him on clay. Everyone has their strong side. Mine is match-play, whereas Anand’s is tournaments. He is very even and stable, and can draw with the top players and beat those lower down.’” Not an unreasonable comparison, but with just the right amount of needle. Can Vishy hack it as a match player? Vlad has flung down his challenge.

Looking at it from the PR angle, Vlad mixed in just the right amount of edginess into his answers, with a view to building up interest in the match. It may be slightly artificial, of course. If he overdid it, we would know straightaway that it was faked, because it would be so out of character. So he has to do it in easy stages. After all, if he came out with bland stuff about "Anand won fair and square, I've no arguments", etc, etc, it would hardly stir the blood or whet the appetite for a showdown. A degree of aggro has to be introduced into the equation and gradually developed between now and September 2008 otherwise the general media will be unable to find an 'angle' and will end up ignoring the match completely.

Of course the source of any difference between them has to be credible but at the moment it is quite understandable for Vlad to be bitter and twisted. Unseated world champions are never the happiest of souls and he must still feel very irritated at being dragooned into the Mexico tournament so soon after he had won a tough match to reunify the world title. Karpov and Kasparov would surely not have caved in to any amount of federation pressure to make them put their title at stake so soon, and in a format which didn’t confer some tangible advantage on the holder. Kasparov, one feels, might have wormed his way out of the obligation in some spectacular way, and then used his influential friends to bang the drum on his behalf and drown out all the negative publicity. He did this sort of thing more than once in his career. But Kramnik would have needed a bigger rating (and an even bigger helping of chutzpah) to pull that one off.

We’ve seen how the Kramnik PR machine is shaping up but there is evidence from recent interviews in India that Vishy's camp are also working on policy. Vishy has grumbled about the forthcoming world championship cycle. This is always a good opening move in world championship politics (just like starting a game with 1 e4). Just as Vlad has made it plain that he is not looking forward to a possible future defence against Topalov, Vishy doesn’t see why FIDE granted Kramnik a Botvinnik-style return match at all (and that it was just a vote-winning stratagem during the FIDE elections). Since 1972 this general air of hostility towards the federation has arguably become a staple ingredient of major world championship matches. A bit of judicious FIDE-bashing from Vishy and Vlad could do wonders for PR.

Of course, if one side attacks FIDE, then the other must reply immediately in the same vein (1...e5!) in case anyone gets the idea that FIDE might favour one player over the other. Perhaps we should call this two-pronged anti-FIDE strategy the ‘Campomanes Attack’, after Karpov and Kasparov both attacked the then president of FIDE after he terminated their 1984 match. “Termination favoured Kasparov because I was leading the match!,” bellowed Karpov. “No, it favoured Karpov because I was finishing the stronger!,” howled Kasparov in reply. Not direct quotations, of course, but it gives you an idea of how this strategy plays out. But FIDE-bashing must be conducted with some finesse: the last thing anyone wants is another break from FIDE as in the quintillion question-mark Short-Kasparov breakaway blunder of 1993.

Kramnik's jibe about Vishy drawing with the big guys and beating the lesser ones in Mexico is one step along the road to saying "Ha! You big bully! Let's see you pick on someone your own size!". This seems quite a fruitful avenue for building up the hype but the two sides need to be careful and keep their sparring on the current gentlemanly level. If they start using street language or ‘doing a Danailov’, we’ll know they’re faking it. Keep it clean, guys.

Vishy’s political TN compared to previous world championships is that he considers a tournament to be a worthy way to decide the title. From a recent interview in an Indian newspaper: “I think what we had in Mexico (2007) and San Luis (2005) are the best. First of all, it’s attractive to have four games (involving all eight players) a day. If you have one game and that fizzles out, spectators have to come back two days later. Not a dream format, in my opinion.” Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? I suspect that most of his ‘great predecessors’ would disagree with him. Spectator appeal has rarely been at the top of their agenda (and Fischer did his best to have rows of spectator seating removed from the playing hall in 1972). Even though I disagree with Vishy (and suspect him of preferring the tournament format purely and simply because it favours him), it is good to have something different to haggle over. The chess world would be a dull place if we all agreed with each other and at least it provides another bone of contention to chew over in the long months until September 2008.

Whatever happens, I think we can assume that Vishy and Vlad won’t be skipping into the playing hall hand in hand this time round.

The Move That Killed Dracula

2007-10-29T09:48:00.000Z

Naisortep (or can I call you Nargit?) has asked to see the move that killed Dracula (see previous post). The position is from Anand vs Kasparov, in the final of the PCA/Credit Suisse Knock-Out Rapidplay in Geneva, 1996. Their rapidplay encounters ended 1-1, so two blitz games were needed to break the tie. The first was drawn and this is the position in the deciding second blitz game after Anand's move 33 Rc1-e1. On the face of it he's completely busted, having lost two central pawns in a middlegame melee. However, his last move sets a trap and this is, after all, a blitz game. Kasparov thinks he can simply exchange material and win the endgame so he plays the move you see in the clip - 33...Qxe3 - but it's a horrible, horrible blunder. The next thing you see is Vishy's hand hover over g4 and in that instant Kasparov realises what's coming and his eyes blaze with horror... 34 Qxg4! ... as Vishy later wrote: "The face-pulling he did now rivalled anything he has ever done!". With his queen and c8 rook attacked, Kasparov soon played 34...0-0 but it is quite clear from his histrionics that he knew he was dead and buried.

Here's the complete score:

Anand,V (2750) - Kasparov,G (2785) [B90]
Geneve PCA-GP Credit Suisse Geneve (4.4), 01.09.1996

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Be3 Ng4 7 Bg5 h6 8 Bh4 g5 9 Bg3 Bg7 10 Be2 h5 11 Bxg4 Bxg4 12 f3 Bd7 13 Bf2 Nc6 14 Qd2 Ne5 15 0-0 g4 16 f4 Nc4 17 Qe2 Rc8 18 b3 Na3 19 Nd5 e6 20 Nb4 Qa5 21 Qe1 h4 22 Be3 h3 23 g3 Nb5 24 Rd1 Nc3 25 Nd3 Qc7 26 Rc1 Nxe4 27 f5 e5 28 f6 Nxf6 29 Nf5 Bxf5 30 Rxf5 Qc6 31 Qe2 Qe4 32 Rf2 Nd5 33 Re1 Qxe3 34 Qxg4 0-0 35 Rxe3 Nxe3 36 Qxh3 Nxc2 37 Qd7 Nd4 38 Qxb7 a5 39 Kg2 Rc3 40 Nb2 Nc2 41 Nc4 d5 42 Nd6 Ne3+ 43 Kh3 f5 44 Qd7 f4 45 Qe6+ Kh7 46 Nf7 Rxf7 47 Qxf7 Rc6 48 gxf4 Rf6 49 Qc7 e4 50 f5 d4 51 Qe7 Rh6+ 52 Kg3 Nd1 53 Rf4 e3 54 Rg4 1-0

Dracula Sees the Sign of the Cross

2007-10-28T16:31:00.000Z

Long radio silence here at my blog. Apologies. After my busy time in the Isle of Man, I went down with a bad cold, then it was time for the November BCM...

... excuses, excuses. You don't want to hear that stuff, do you? Well, here's an oldie but goldie. I think this must be my favourite chess video clip of all time...

This is from a big 1996 rapidplay tournament. 22 seconds of pure joy for all of us (with one notable exception). Kasparov makes a capture but, as Vishy Anand's hand momentarily hovers over his reply, realisation dawns for Kasparov. Just look at those eyes - like Christopher Lee's Dracula as he sees Peter Cushing's sign of the cross. Kasparov throws himself back in his chair, mad eyes still swivelling in their sockets. As a victorious Vishy said immediately after the game: "Did you see his reaction? It was BEAUTIFUL!!".

Indeed it was. And they say chess is not televisual. When Kasparov played chess, it was always worth watching. How we miss him.

Dunderheads in the East, Dunderheads in the West

2007-09-16T11:40:00.000+01:00

I shall start by admitting that we all make typos, all of the time, but there are times when you simply have to check, double-check and make sure you get it right. It's Sunday morning and, as the vicar of St. BCM's, my sermon today is on the subject of getting it right when it matters...

Exhibit A: the pairings page at the official website for the world championship. I had a look at this to check when various people were due to play each other and was appalled to find that the pairings for the second half of the tournament were all over the place. In most cases they replicate the pairings of the first half, so that players are shown playing the same opponents with the same colours. For example, round eight looks OK but in round nine the same guys play each other again with the colours reversed. The first free day is listed as Sept 11 when it should be September 17. In short, muchos problemas. Anyway, I tried to be helpful and email the webmaster. I found the contacts page, which had a contact email address for the webmaster, so I penned him a quick line, in English and rusty Spanish, indicating the errors. But - as you've probably already guessed - the email bounced back to me, recipient unknown. Mas problemas... I wonder, could it happen... could one of the world championship contenders rely on what he found on the website, prepare for the game and then turn up to find himself facing someone entirely different. It couldn't - could it? Anyway, I have just extracted 'Speckled Jim' from my pigeon loft, attached a message to his claw and sent him on his way to Mexico City.

Exhibit B: the ACP proposal for the standardization of time controls. Now, for once, I shall not go banging on about how idiotic I think modern time controls are, how I loathe it when they are described as 'classical', etc, etc: I will merely draw your attention to section 1 of this document where the writer (Polish GM Macieja) lists the so-called 'long classical' option. He first lists it in time limit gobbledegook as (100'/40+50'/20+G-15')+30" ("the longer") and then attempts to decode as
[90 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for remaining moves, with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move 1]. Unfortunately it has become garbled in translation since the first talks about 100 minutes and the second 90 minutes: a typo which might be forgivable in many contexts, but here it goes to the heart of the matter. As lawyers like to say, time is of the essence. It seems to me that this failure to get it right completely undermines any confidence we can have in this entire proposal and the thought that has gone into it. Together with the vague generalisations about who wants new/fast and who wants old/slow time controls, it looks like a botched job.

P.S. Sorry to be so cynical on this bright and sunny Sunday morning but it is hard not to presume that the ACP has agreed to roll over and have its tummy tickled in this way in return for some FIDE bribe or other.

Krambo Runs Amok

2007-09-15T12:41:00.000+01:00

I tuned in to watch the tail-end of round two of the world championship and was hugely surprised by Kramnik's play in this game. It was totally out of character when compared with his post-2000 safety-first style of play. My first reaction was that this Tal-style approach was either a ploy specifically aimed at Moro (demonstrating that he was ready to go out and meet him on his own messy territory) or that he recognises the need to play more sharply in a tournament scenario in order to keep pace with the likes of Anand. It probably won't be good enough just to "do a Dortmund" and get +2, he may need +4 or +5 to retain his title.

Kramnik has just issued a DVD called 'My Path to the Top' (available from a chess shop near you) which provides considerable insight into Kramnik's planning and approach. Having spent a few hours watching the videos recently, the reality of his round 2 game came as quite a shock. In his DVD Kramnik explains how he adapted his game in the late 1990s, under the influence of his (then) coach Dolmatov, to make it more positional and less overtly aggressive. Has he changed styles again? Are we now seeing (K)rambo 2, a born-again attacking chessplayer? This makes me wonder whether he has managed to time publication of the DVD to coincide with a deliberate wrong-footing change of style.

Anyway, as sporting surprises go, Kramnik's rush of blood to the head rivals that moment earlier in the week when England defender Rio Ferdinand suddenly thought he had turned into Cristiano Ronaldo, did a little shuffle and then whacked the ball past the Russian goalkeeper.

Of course it could all have gone horribly wrong for 'Krambo' had Morozevich reacted better. I shan't attempt a discussion of the moves (just too complicated and I'm not sure even the computers can do justice to it) beyond saying that Kramnik had already committed himself to a razor-sharp struggle when he played 8 0-0 or even 6 Ne5.

On the official site they are showing an article on round one by Leontxo Garcia which has been translated from Leontxo's usual florid Spanish into rather stilted English. Leontxo castigates Kramnik and Svidler for their first round draw ("frustrating the worlds' fans with an attitude that should be prohibited") but this has now been overtaken by the more dramatic events of round two. There are various bleatings lower down the website about problems with transmission. It seems that even world championship websites can suffer from "round one syndrome".

UK 2½, China 5½

2007-09-08T22:12:00.000+01:00

"Oh young Miss Hou,
What shall I do?
I've got those
British-bashing
Chinese chessplayer Blues..."

(apologies to George Formby)

Dunderheads vs Nosher (Part 2)

2007-09-08T11:15:00.000+01:00

So the official verdict is that Nosher shouldn't have called Makro and Azmai 'dunderheads'. On reflection that seems to be quite correct. Makro may well be a dunderhead (e.g. his preference for the FIDE time limit) but I see Azmai more as a thug than a dunderhead. In future Nigel Short should choose his insults with more precision.

Chinese Cracker in Liverpool

2007-09-06T16:56:00.000+01:00

One of my oldest chess friends chided me over my overlong silence here at the BCM Blog, so I thought I would write something of my Tuesday trip to the UK vs China match at St George's Hall, Liverpool.

First of all, I was impressed by how easy and convenient it is to get to Liverpool by train and then find the venue. 2½ hours direct from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street, and then you cross the road ... and you are at the venue. Couldn't be simpler. The train ran to timetable. And, thankfully, the Northern line of the underground was unaffected by the tube strike so that part of the journey worked like a dream too.

At two o'clock we had the opening ceremony, which was a very informal affair in which the Lord Mayor of Liverpool was presented to the two teams. The local press photographer dragooned all the players into position either side of a long table at which the Lord Mayor (who had apparently been promoted to board one for the UK) faced China's youngest (and already most famous) player, 13-year-old girl prodigy Hou Yifan. Then of course the photographers urged the Lord Mayor to make a move, which he promptly did - 1 h5. Yes, he had the black pieces and made the first move. If Hou Yifan was surprised by this remarkable TN, she didn't show it but continued to smile sweetly. In fact, after further languageless gesturing from the assembled press corps, she was persuaded to continue this chessboard travesty with a white move. I thought this demonstrated considerable sang froid and flexibility of mind on her part. The abundant evidence that she had travelled halfway round the planet to be confronted by people who appeared not to have the slightest clue as to how to play chess did not faze her one iota.

We then moved to the speeches, with the Lord Mayor (Councillor Paul Clark), organiser David Robertson, ECF chief executive Martin Regan, UK captain Jon Speelman and the Chinese head of delegation (whose name I did not catch) all speaking. Jon Speelman told us that he had arrived on the Sunday expecting to be match commentator but, in the absence of a room suitable for commentary, he had instead been appointed the UK skipper. This reminded me of the frequent occasions on which I have turned up to various chess competitions thinking merely to spectate and then being induced to stand in for a missing player, or generally help out in some administrative capacity. Of course, GM Speelman is a kindly and solicitous soul and it was good to see him busily ministering to his charges, whilst also finding some time to explain to us less gifted occupants of the back room what was really happening on the boards.

The opening ceremony and photo-shoot dragged on rather and, at its close, the Chinese team begged leave to put the start time back by half an hour: a perfectly reasonable request which was agreed to by the organisers, though it may have nonplussed the web audience somewhat as they settled down to watch.

St George's Concert Hall is a splendid venue for a prestige event such as this, and the organisers had laid on supplementary lighting so that we were bathed in light (it was noticeable that pro photographers dispensed with their flash guns when taking pictures - a very good sign). One awkwardness was the lack of room on the stage. Though it accommodated the eight boards of the match perfectly easily, the space required for the Open meant that a few boards from the Open were placed at the back of the stage which left insufficient room for the match players to move about. I wasn't present for rounds two and three but I imagine this has since been sorted out.

But I'll cut short any quibbling about the arrangements and minor niggles about the set-up - none of it matters in the general scheme of things and what will be remembered in the years to come will be the chess. And the chess has been excellent. The match has lived up to its advanced publicity. The first two rounds were a wake-up call for the British squad, with the Chinese squad playing a brand of feisty, fighting chess which rocked them back on their heels. To be fair, the British probably knew what they were in for and saw themselves as underdogs before the start - though the Chinese claimed this status for themselves. Anyway, round three came as a welcome shot in the arm for British chess. Mickey Adams played like... Mickey Adams. He is the rock around which British chess is currently founded and one gets the impression that his team-mates derive inspiration from his calm countenance gazing impassively at the board as he gradually throttles the life out of his opponents. Nigel Short has been having a bad trot recently but he was back to playing a real opening today and the juices seemed to be flowing again. Bu Xiangzhi tried to loosen his grip by stirring up a big mess but Short is perfectly at home in a tactical quagmire and emerged with the point.

Not everything went swimmingly for the Brits. Jonathan Rowson was up against the most Adams-like member of the Chinese team, Wang Yue, and on the wrong end of a grind. Nick Pert became the first British player to find out why the Chinese had brought along the shy, sweet-faced little girl with the hair grips. It is still hard to believe that this 13-year-old moppet (who looks more like about 8) packs a 2500-rated punch but the baby-faced assassin gave poor Nick a bloody nose in this encounter. Hou loves ya, baby.

ECF selectors, please note: England could have the makings of an Olympiad team if Adams and Short manage 2/2 and Jones and Howell can then chip in with 1½/2 as happened today. Nice going, against opposition of 2681, 2685, 2624 and 2649. Jones and Howell both had long and bruising encounters but both came through pretty well. This is all excellent team chess experience.

The women's match so far is now +2 in favour of the British women, with both wins coming from the Arakhamia-Shen Yang mini-match. Ketevan seems to have too much experience for her 18-year-old opponent, despite a slightly lower rating. Ding Yixin is both younger and lower rated than her teammate but is proving a tougher nut to crack. The British team may be relying on its apparent superiority in this component of the overall match to get a result.

All hugely enjoyable: the match isn't over yet, and already I want to see another one. We've had 24 games of which 14 produced decisive results, and most of the draws have been mighty battles too. All credit to David Robertson and his team for setting up the match and chasing after the money, to the Chinese squad for being a really classy squad of chess fighters, and to the British team for rising to the challenge. More!

Danegeld - Another £5,000 Paid Over

2007-08-10T21:21:00.000+01:00

"The Danegeld was an English tribute raised to pay off Viking raiders to save the land from being ravaged by the raiders. The expeditions were usually led by the Danish kings, but they were composed by warriors from all over Scandinavia, and they eventually brought home more than 100 tonnes of silver"

(Wikipedia)

... and the English are still paying. I've witnessed a lot of similar payments over the years. There was a period when another Viking raider, Tiger Hillarp Persson, sailed round various islands around Britain scooping up sackfuls of cash. Done with a smile and no need for the sword and horned helmet. Then Simen Agdestein came to the Isle of Man and carried off the loot a few years ago. One of the first thing he said in his victory speech was "we used to own this place!" - a reference to the fact that the Vikings used to hold dominion over the Isle of Man. I'd never heard a territorial claim made in a chess tournament winner's speech before so this was a first. Judging from the look in his eye and the generally sturdy appearance of the young Norwegians in his party, they could have taken the place back, there and then.

Notice, these Viking chessplayers are always more at home when they are near the coast. It's an atavistic thing - they sense the nearness of their long ships, left on the beach to carry away all the plunder to their villages back in Scandinavia. The ECF should take notice of this and stop holding congresses in seaside towns - it only encourages them. Find somewhere well inland, or well up an estuary where they don't feel as safe... London, say...

Jacob Aagaard wrapped things up with a nice, fighting effort against Glenn Flear. He always gives the other guy a chance, does Aagaard, but his brand of fearless chess did him proud these past two weeks. One thing sent me scurrying to my record books - the fact that he lost two games. It is quite a long time since that happened last. It was in 1988, in Blackpool, when Mestel lost to Chandler in round five and Flear in round nine but still won (with 8½/11).

Gibraltar 2008

2007-08-10T10:47:00.000+01:00

Thie briefest of brief blog entries...

http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com

... the new website for the 2008 Gibtelecom Chess Festival is now live. You can download the brochure and check out all the details.

John Saunders' Chess Blog

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 8

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess, Round 7 - 30 Jan 2012

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 3

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Aronian Shows The Way

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Missed Opportunity

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 9

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival Commentary

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

Magnus Carlsen wins the Tal Memorial on tie-break

Women's World Chess Championship, Tirana (ALB), 14-30 November 2011

Tal Memorial Tournament, Moscow, Round 8

Women's World Chess Championship, Game 7

Women's World Chess Championship, Tirana (ALB), 14-30 November 2011

CHESS Magazine, November 2011

CHESS Magazine - November 2011

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine

Mickey Adams Commits Chuckicide

Rachel Reeves vs Stephen Moss, House of Commons, 18 Oct 2011

October 2011 CHESS Magazine

CHESS Magazine - October 2011 - £3.95 - click here to buy online

UK's most popular CHESS Magazine

Download a pdf file with the extract from this magazine.

Dutch for Chessplayers

August CHESS Magazine

New Chess Blogs

2011 British Chess Championship

Kasimdzhanov's Not Wearing Any Draws

July CHESS Magazine

Ilyumzhinov Plays Chess With Gaddafi

Chess Magazine at War

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

Women's World Chess Championship, Aralik (TUR), 2-25 December

Wikileaks: Nothing About Chess

Chess is a Crime II: Justin Bieber Arrested for Looking Like Magnus Carlsen

Drop That Bishop and Come Out With Your Hands Up!

The Fourth Polgar Sister?

Any Dancing Partners for Magnus?

Carlsen Puts Himself En Prise

ECF Chief Exec Joins The Blogosphere

Jon Levitt Column in Oxford Today

K > K+K

Khanky-Panky in Khanty-Manty?

"Can You Hear Me, Maggie Carlsen?"

Bent Larsen (1935-2010)

When Garry Met Carol...

Book Review: 'Sixty Years in the Same Room'

Mickey Adams wins at a Canter(bury)

Irina Krush Rap

Goodbye to all that BCM... and hello to my new blog!

Paradise Regained

Coming Soon: The Gibraltar Chess Magazine

Probably the Best Chessplayer in the World

Hastings and Gibraltar

Anand to have Carlsen as a second for the World Championship with Topalov (or is he?)

Chess in Guyana

New Chess Player's Blog...

Chess Players Run The World

New Ivanchuk Drug Test Shock Horror

Well done, Evening Standard!

The Remorseful Day

4NCL: Jonathan Rogers Annotates...

Celeb Chessplayer No. 954

Bolton Easter Congress

Raaphy Persitz (1934-2009)

Bob Wade: The Father of Modern English Chess

The Perfect Marriage: Chess and Cricket

Carlsen and the Candidates Debate

Chess on Mastermind Part 2

Chess on Mastermind

Armageddon in Nalchik

Conquest of Britain

Ynojosa in the national press...

British Championship - Part 3

British Championship - Part 2

British Championship - Part 1

Kamsky Interview

A Few Snippets from My Former Blog...

Spassky at Hay-on-Wye

R.I.P. Patrick Taylor