Chess on Mastermind Part 2

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

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

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

"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...

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

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... 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

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.