2011 British Chess Championship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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/