R.I.P. Bobby Fischer

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...

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

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

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

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 [partly in Dutch but the Belgian protest is in English]. 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

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

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.