Video Blunder

You have to be terribly careful these days. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, there could be someone pointing a camera lens at you. I read a statistic recently about the number of times you appear on CCTV every time you walk down the street (I cannot recall the number but it was surprisingly large).

This even applies when you play chess... click here to watch me leave a rook en prise. I had no idea someone was videoing this, during a recent light-hearted rapidplay match between The Guardian and The Capablanca Club. With the help of the video I was able to reconstruct the finish. Don't bother setting up a chessboard because it is not terribly educational, but it might help to explain what is going on in the video clip.

John Saunders - Jovanka Houska, Guardian v Capas, 18.04.2007

39...Rh2+ 40 Kg1 Kxf4 41 exf6?? (Calmly blundering a whole rook! 41 Rd4+ Kxf3 42 Rd3+ should draw) 41...Rxd5 42 Re1 (A long pause as the awfulness of the blunder sinks in. Poker face – but I was screaming inside) Rdd2 (42...Rdh5 mates) 43 f7 Rdg2+? (Jovanka only had a few seconds left: 43...Rh8 wins) 44 Kf1 Rf2+ 45 Kg1 Rhg2+ 46 Kh1 Rh2+ 47 Kg1 Rfg2+ 48 Kf1 Rf2+ 49 Kg1 ½–½

I think I mumble something about “missing a win” (earlier in the game) but fail to mention missing a loss! Not sure the game merited a round of applause. Thanks to Arne Hagesaether, who took the video. More still photos of the event can be found at Jovanka's excellent website - www.jovanka.co.uk.

But here's what can happen in similar circumstances if you fail to keep your feelings in check. Not for the squeamish.

Life Begins at 100

Well, there we are... I file a story entitled 'Life Begins at 70' and, two days later, one comes along to trump it...

Alec Holden is 100 today (born 24 iv 1907) and has made headlines after winning £25,000 from a bookmaker after placing a £100 bet with them a few years ago that he would make it to 100 (if you think about it, a bet which, if lost, hardly matters).

Asked the inevitable questions about how he accounts for his longevity (on this morning's Today radio programme), one of his answers was that he plays a game of chess every day and still runs a club. He is celebrating his birthday at a party later today and he made a point of mentioning that he would be taking his chess set with him.

There, that's official, then. Chess is good for your health. Tell your friends - and don't forget to add that there is a shop in Baker Street which sells the elixir of life.

Link to news reports about Alec Holden · purchase the elixir of life

Life Begins At 70

It has been an eventful month for Lajos Portisch. He turned 70 on 4 April 2007. This is way past the age at which most professional chessplayers retire (except for Korchnoi, of course) and his name has not been prominent much in recent years. That said, I checked the database and found that he has been turning out fairly regularly in both the Hungarian Champioship and the country's team championship. But last year he finished last equal. I recall noticing that at the time and half expected that it could be his final appearance.

But no: this month he has played a rapidplay match with Spassky (drawn 3-3) and is now engaged in a strong GM tournament in Gausdal. At the time of writing, Portisch has 3½/5 and is in second place on his own, half a point behind leader 16-year-old Magnus Carlsen. Today Portisch turned back time by beating 2661-rated Michal Krasenkow with the black pieces. He snatched what could have been a warm pawn with his queen but then simply outplayed the 43-year-old upstart. Portisch has black against Carlsen in round 7. I just hope I have not put the journalist's hex on the old boy by drawing attention to him.

Another notable thing about this tournament is that England's Gawain Jones is in the field. He's having rather a tough time, having score 1/5 to date. He lost to Carlsen in round four, being gradully outplayed in a rook and pawns endgame. In the fifth round he conceded a draw to 2260-rated, 48-year-old untitled US player Eric Moskow.

I noticed that the tournament is being played at standardplay (40 in 2, 20 in 1, ½ hour for the rest - sometimes worryingly referred to as 'classical' by those who would consign it to a museum). Sensible people, the Norwegians.

Dog's Dinner in Dresden

I've not had much to say about the results of 'Eurotrash 2007' - my disparaging nickname for the European Individual Championships in Dresden. I'm afraid I got cheesed off with the quality of the gamescores and rather lost interest. It became too difficult to work out if a move was a brilliant queen sacrifice or just an electronic input device gone haywire. Besides which I'm not impressed with the time control used for this event, and a monster swiss consisting mainly of non-elite East European GMs (who are really just trainee super-GMs) and chess tourists don't really do it for me. But I'll put in a word for Tatiana Kosintseva: 10/11 against some top women players was very impressive. Well done, her.

But apparently gamescores and dodgy time controls weren't the only problems. Some of the players became disenchanted with the quality of the food being served up for lunch and dinner and started asking questions. Subsequently I've seen some commentary on ChessVibes, in which Dutch GM Erik van den Doel highlights the disparity between the hefty daily fee the players paid to the European Chess Union and the amount which the hotel received for the food provided.

This is not the first time that 'Eurotrash' has been criticised for its poor conditions. In fact, problems with the first championship led to the foundation of the professional chessplayers' union, the Association of Chess Professionals. It will be interesting to see if the ACP picks up van den Doel's comments. I note that they have already posted Erik van den Doel's comments on their website.

Susan Polgar on TV

UK readers: look out for former women's world champion Susan Polgar on British TV on Tuesday night. She appears on the science news programme 'Horizon' on BBC2 at 9pm (Tuesday 17 April). The programme investigates ways of measuring intelligence and puts seven high fliers in their fields to various tests of intelligence. It will be interesting to see how she fares in competition with a musical prodigy, a quantum physicist, an artist, a dramatist, an RAF fighter pilot and a Wall Street trader • Susan Polgar blog • BBC Horizon website

Electronic Chess Wars - Stewart Reuben Comments

The following comments from Stewart Reuben were sent to me by email for posting here. His direct comments in italics:

"Mike Yeo expresses concern about cheating with players leaving the tournament venue and phoning a friend. Using a phone in the playing venue (which includes the toilets and refreshment area) is strictly forbidden, so that I think the Monroi device offers no new problems there. After all, you could send a message to Fritz or a friend and get a reply in the current setup.

"Mike correctly says that the cumulative add-on of 30 seconds is inadequate when using the devices. He is absolutely correct and I believe 30 seconds is inadequate anyway. When I wrote the FIDE Law that score had to be kept throughout when there was an add on of 30 seconds or more, I had no intention that it be solely 30 seconds. Events I run have an add on of one minute as in Gibraltar and Hastings. David Welch and I agree we would not use Monroi with only 30 seconds. Indeed, ordinary scoring is also too difficult for some older people with only 30 seconds. They may have to use two sets of glasses.

"Only events run by British and Australian arbiters use an increment of one minute. The world is out of step with us. Stewart Reuben."

In a separate email, Stewart says he thinks that they may not have used DGT in Dresden but may be building their own system for use at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad. I have no information about this - can anyone comment? Given the inconsistent output from the 2007 Euro Dresden website, it is hard to have confidence in such relatively untested technology with only a year to go. Stewart also makes the point that DGT boards have not been used for Olympiads to date. Russian boards are used. I have no information as to the brand.

Electronic Chess Wars (Part 2)

One of the errors I often make when reading other people's blogs is to overlook the little 'Comments' link at the bottom of a blog. Often the most interesting stuff is tucked away in the reactions to the original post. This is true here: I urge you to read Mike Yeo's considered response to my earlier 'Electronic Chess Wars' blog, based on his own experiences with MonRoi at a recent tournament in Zagreb. Click on the comments link immediately below the earlier blog.

I don't consider myself to be against the use of technology in the capture and transmission of chess games, but it is clear that we need open debate involving players, organisers, technologists and spectators if the technology is to be developed to the point where it satisfies the requirements of all parties. At the moment my feeling is that it is only really at the experimental stage. MonRoi hasn't been fully accepted by leading players, while neither MonRoi nor DGT have the full confidence of the audience.

One worry I have is that the people selling the equipment may be pushing the idea that their automated systems can save tournaments money in respect of human resources needed to input games. I used to be a professional IT purchaser and came up against this sort of salesmanship all the time. In reality I suspect that there are only limited savings to be made in terms of human resources. To do the job properly, you merely replace your expert games inputter with an expert DGT/MonRoi operator. And if the latter have scant chess expertise (i.e. cannot diagnose 'mad gamescore disease' at a glance), then additional chess expertise will need to be hired anyway.

Another problem is that chess organisers aren't necessarily any good at implementing IT solutions. Mike draws our attention to the difficulty of using a MonRoi with only 30 second increments. This also applied in Dresden. It strikes me as insane expecting a chessplayer to play chess and also act as a data input operator in the space of 30 seconds. Fortunately Stewart Reuben doesn't like 30 second increments so competitors in Hastings and Gib are spared this insanity. But FIDE is proceeding gung ho down this path.

Mike makes further relevant points about the visibility of the opponent's score. Added to my earlier point about needing to be 'square-on' to the screen to see what you are doing, and other points made elsewhere on the web about the limited visibility of a small computer screen (particularly for those of us well stricken in years), my growing feeling is that the current implementation of MonRoi is a system for which the world at large is not yet ready. When we have small computer screens which are as visible as a piece of paper at different angles and reasonable distances, and as user-friendly, then it might be different. I suspect we are still a very long way from this scenario.

Mike makes the point about a time lag in transmission being necessary to curb an easy way of cheating. There is a growing feeling that this is an essential step in the fight against electronic cheating. However I suspect it might prove to be technically difficult for anyone other than the most expert webmasters or system operators to build delays into web transmissions. And of course it does not preclude the use of stooges in the physical audience using their mobile phones to transmit current moves back to cheating HQ.

Both Mike Yeo and Stewart Reuben have put me right on one point: the women in Dresden were using the MonRoi system as it is part of the Monroi Women's Grand Prix. Thanks for that.