The Chess Mind

The 2008 U.S. Chess Championships, sponsored and directed by one Frank K. Berry, start today in Tulsa, OK (at 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. Tulsa time) and continue for nine rounds, one a day with no rest days, through May 21. There are separate men's and women's championships; the men have a 24-player Swiss System tournament while the women are in a 10-player single round-robin. Go figure.

As for who is and isn't playing, the top seeds on the men's side are Onischuk, Shabalov and Kaidanov; Kamsky and Nakamura are absent. (In Kamsky's case this is understandable - he's probably tired from the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku and might be preparing for the world championship semi-final match with Topalov. As for Nakamura, I have no idea why he isn't playing, and there doesn't seem to be any info on his blog explaining his absence. On the women's side, the US's (by far) two highest-rated women, Krush and Zatonskih, are both playing.

Here are the men's pairings for round 1:

1 Onischuk, Alexander 2728 - Kraai, Jesse 2569
2 Yermolinsky, Alex 2568 - Shabalov, Alexander 2709
3 Kaidanov, Gregory 2697- Friedel, Josh 2539
4 Fedorowicz, John 2514 - Shulman, Yury 2676
5 Akobian, Varuzhan 2666 - Ippolito, Dean 2512
6 Pruess, David 2497 - Becerra, Julio 2648
7 Ivanov, Alexander 2628 - Vigorito, David 2439
8 Ludwig, Daniel 2429 - Perelshteyn, Eugene 2626
9 Gulko, Boris 2623 - Kaufman, Larry 2384
10 Langer, Michael 2307 - Finegold, Benjamin 2613
11 Gurevich, Dmitry 2594 - Shankland, Sam 2299
12 Galant, Sergey 2176 - Kudrin, Sergey 2588

There's tactics and there's technique. We often think of these as separate categories, but in all but the simplest positions the two are inseparable. Take the following example, from the game Pavlov-Sidorchuk, Ukraine 2008:



Can White (to move) win in this position? He has an extra pawn, but with such limited material that's not a guarantee by itself. See what you can come up with, and we'll present the answer sometime Wednesday.

That's five in a row for Ivanchuk, whose current TPR is a ridiculous 3537. (This seems more a quirk of the system when a player's score is at 100% - even if he scores 9.5/10 that number will drop significantly.) His fifth win was a surprisingly easy one, with Black against Aronian, but it seemed less a matter of his brilliance and more that Aronian's novelty and the next few moves afterwards were suspicious at best.

Despite Ivanchuk's tremendous success so far, Topalov is not out of range. He won easily against Bu Xiangzhi, who is finding himself outclassed so far. (This happens to almost everyone breaking into top-class events - not long ago Magnus Carlsen was getting whupped in these tournaments, and now he's winning them.) That leaves Topalov with a very respectable 3.5/5, a point and a half behind with five games to go.

The third game, Cheparinov-Radjabov, was an exciting draw in a Bayonet King's Indian. The game was dynamically balanced most of the way, but Cheparinov's errors on moves 30-32 gave Radjabov a winning position. Radjabov, who has understandably complained of exhaustion (he played in the FIDE Grand Prix event just before this tournament), returned the favor on move 34, and his opponent escaped with half a point.

Now the players get to enjoy their one rest day, after which they play the second round-robin. Can Ivanchuk make it 10 in a row? Probably not, but who knows? Meanwhile, it will be fun watching him try, and it would be nice if he could at least achieve a Fischerian 6-0 score.

Here are the games from round 5, with my comments.

Standings after Round 5:

1. Ivanchuk 5
2. Topalov 3.5
3-4. Radjabov, Cheparinov 2
5. Aronian 1.5
6. Bu Xiangzhi 1

Pairings for Round 6: (On Wednesday)

Topalov - Aronian
Bu Xiangzhi - Cheparinov
Ivanchuk - Radjabov

Tournament site here.

Unless it was some sort of local issue, this was the third time in the last few weeks when my blog's domain, Powerblogs, was down for several hours. This seems unacceptable, but maybe I'm wrong. Does this happen to all major blog providers from time to time?

It's a good thing he did, too, as the other two games were quick, dull draws. Ivanchuk and Cheparinov went at it hammer and tongs in a Classical King's Indian with 9.Ne1 Nd7 10.Nd3 f5 11.Bd2. It's a slightly old-fashioned line with tons of theory, but it's still lots of fun seeing if White's queenside breakthrough will come before Black delivers checkmate. Ivanchuk played a novelty on move 25, though it was his opponent's reply that probably constituted the more significant new idea. In any case, the position remained in a complicated balance for a long time, but starting at move 32 Cheparinov - possibly in time trouble, despite the 24 "free" moves - lost the thread (maybe the whole spool) and resigned on move 40 about to be a rook down.

There's plenty of time left, but things look good for Ivanchuk at this point:

Standings after Round 4:

1. Ivanchuk 4
2. Topalov 2.5
3-5. Radjabov, Aronian, Cheparinov 1.5
6. Bu Xiangzhi 1

Round 5 Pairings:

Topalov - Bu Xiangzhi
Aronian - Ivanchuk
Cheparinov - Radjabov

Tournament site here, the games with my comments here.

Today's round was rather funny. Ivanchuk defeated Bu Xiangzhi easily, as a series of bad moves (which formed a single idea, so perhaps we can award a shared '??' to the series as a whole) left Bu with a totally lost game after White's 9th(!!) move. Objectively, the young Chinese star could have resigned at that point, but no one wants to lose such a ridiculously short game. So, after 46 minutes thought, he continued, but although he lasted to move 32 his position was never anything but completely lost.

That kept Ivanchuk perfect at 3/3. In clear second with 2/3 is Topalov, who showed good judgment against Cheparinov, his regular assistant. Topalov got a fair-to-lousy position against Ivanchuk's Classical French yesterday, which suggested that Team Topalov's prep in that variation was somewhat lacking. Accordingly, Topalov chose the Black side of that opening today, and Cheparinov too avoided the normal 8.Qd2. Yesterday Topalov played 8.a3 and got nothing; today, Cheparinov chose the even more unusual 8.Ne2 and also got nothing. On the other hand, he wasn't worse, and on move 26 he could and should have forced a draw with 26.Bc5. Failing to do so, he was objectively lost, and despite a move repetition a few moves later Topalov pretty confidently reeled in the full point.

The third game, Radjabov-Aronian, was drawn. Their game was the ever-popular Anti-Moscow Gambit, and although Radjabov achieved a threatening-looking position, it's not obvious that there was ever anything concrete. After a flurry of exchanges, the players reached a dead drawn ending after 37 moves, and 19 moves later they reached the deadest of all drawn endings: K vs. K.

Standings after Round 3:

1. Ivanchuk 3
2. Topalov 2
3. Cheparinov 1.5
4-5. Aronian, Radjabov 1
6. Bu Xiangzhi .5

Pairings for Round 4:

Radjabov - Topalov
Ivanchuk - Cheparinov
Bu Xiangzhi - Aronian

Tournament site here, video reports here, games with my comments here.

By way of warmup for next week, and maybe the week after, I played in another one-day tournament in my area. I went 4-0 this week too, but against weaker opposition than last time - only one player was over 2000. Still, even a little tune-up can be useful!

Today's round at the MTel Masters in Sofia, Bulgaria, was rather less thrilling than yesterday's, but thanks to the no-draw offer policy the spectators still got a full show.

Taking the drawn games first, Aronian-Cheparinov looked like an argument to repeal the anti-draw offer policy. I don't think the players were going out of their way to make a draw from the opening, but by move 22 the game was clearly headed in that direction. For almost 20 moves, almost nothing happened, so the players probably realized that if they wanted to avoid spending the night in a glass cubicle, they'd need to swap off some material. Being super-GMs, they were up to the task, and the resulting opposite-colored bishop ending was so drawn the arbiter was forced to broker a peace deal. The Bu Xiangzhi-Radjabov game was livelier, with a Carlsbad-ish structure resulting in the usual race between White's queenside hopes and Black's kingside counterplay. White had the better chances, but Radjabov's aggressive counterattack forced White to be very precise. Bu missed his one big chance on move 29, and after that the game rapidly petered out into a king vs. king finale. (That's a draw, the tablebases inform me.)

One game was not drawn, and that was the battle between Topalov and Ivanchuk. Despite what you may have read recently, White does not win by force in the Classical French, especially if he fails to achieve a good knight (on d4) vs. bad bishop ending. In fact the roles were reversed: White wound up with the bishop and Black with the knight, but the decisive factor was Black's control of the half-open queenside files.

Standings after Round 2:

1. Ivanchuk 2
2. Cheparinov 1.5
3. Topalov 1
4-6. Aronian, Bu Xiangzhi, Radjabov .5

Pairings for Round 3:

Cheparinov - Topalov
Radjabov - Aronian
Ivanchuk - Bu Xiangzhi

At least two of the games are potentially interesting in light of back stories. Cheparinov has been Topalov's main second for several years, so it will be interesting to see what openings they choose and how they react psychologically. As for Ivanchuk vs. Bu Xiangzhi, their only previous game featured one of the Ukranian great's many legendary crack-ups.

Tournament site here; games (with my comments) here.

Thanks to a goof-up on my part, the video for the 3rd place game in the US Chess League's 2007 Game of the Year contest is in the wrong location (at least for now). Here's the link.

[Reminder: This was probably the best game of the year, not only in my opinion but in that of two IMs I've spoken with, and in USCL blogger Arun Sharma's, too. So it's definitely worth your time to check it out!]

There weren't any whiz-bang games, but all the games were long and decisive. Both the locals - Topalov and Cheparinov - won, and they were joined in the winner's circle by Ivanchuk.

Radjabov - Ivanchuk was a balanced game most of the way, with Radjabov having a slight edge at a few points, but the decision to play 31.Rd5 was self-destructive. Maybe he wasn't losing there, but the trend was negative and by move 38 at the latest he was lost.

Aronian - Topalov started without any problems for White, but Topalov's play offered a nice demonstration of "Capablanca's Rule", that queen and knight typically work better together than queen and bishop.* Topalov's 36th move was especially interesting: a brilliant rook sacrifice initiating an 11-move combination resulting in a winning knight vs. bishop ending. It was a very nice idea, but it has to be said that it was an error - see the game page for details.

Finally, Cheparinov - Bu Xiangzhi was a nice case of light-squared domination by White. Especially instructive was Black's mistaken decision to open the position up with 26...g6 and 27...f5. Black possibly hoped to achieve counterplay with the break, but it didn't really happen. Worse, White's knight was able to reach f5, with great effect.

For round 2, these are the pairings:

Topalov - Ivanchuk
Bu Xiangzhi - Radjabov
Aronian - Cheparinov

Links and videos here; the games with my comments here.

* Whether this really deserves the status of "rule" is disputable - I believe John Watson has called this into question in Secrets of Modern Strategy. Still, while there are always loads of exceptions to such rules of thumb, there's enough to it that it deserves consideration.

If a man wrote this, he'd be tarred and feathered (or worse), but here are the words of Nona Gaprindashvili, former women's world champion and the first woman to earn the "men's" (full) grandmaster title:

- Yes, men and women should play separately, since male players have a number of advantages before the start of the game. On the one hand, ever since their birth boys are genetically predisposed to compete and fight. On the other hand, the physiological processes that take place within the male and female bodies are not in favour of the latter chesswise. Third - the nervous system, the psychological stability is better in men. Fourth - the active chess life of a woman comes to an end when she creates a family, or at best it can last until she bears a child. From this moment on she can never abandon herself to chess completely, while a man, if he has earned enough to take good care of his family, can be 'exempted' from his parental obligations. If you take into account all these points you will understand why women should not compete in male tournaments.

Maybe some of these points could be used to explain why men have been more successful in chess (though the argument would be controversial, of course), but it doesn't seem even remotely plausible as an argument that women shouldn't compete in (primarily) male tournaments. Indeed, Gaprindashvili herself hasn't followed this advice, neither when she was young (she played in Hastings in the early 1960s, when she was in her early 20s), middle-aged (most notably Lone Pine 1977, which she won ahead of dozens of grandmasters) nor in her relatively old age (three years ago, in her mid-60s, she nearly won the "men's" senior championship). In short, it's a strange comment.

(Source here.)

HT: Chess Today

From tonight's Chess Today:

The 4th Pivdenny Bank Chess Cup lineup has been finalised. This rapid tournament will take place in Odessa from 30 May - 2 June. I [GM Mikhail Golubev - DM] will represent the host city as well as GM Yuri Drozdovskij. Other participants are no less than: Anatoly Karpov, Viktor Korchnoi, Ruslan Ponomariov, Boris Gelfand, Pavel Tregubov and Valery Beim. I have already asked whether there will be a prize for 8th place; it will be useful to know this. The official site will be at worldcup.pivdenny.com.

Come on, Mikhail, have some confidence! Your opponents may share your opinion and overpress against you, so be ready to collect the points.

The chess "Oscar" has nothing to do with Hollywood and the AMPAS. It's an award by journalists - those polled by the Russian chess magazine 64-Chess Review (sadly, I wasn't one of them) - awarded annually to the person receiving the most votes for the best player of the past year. In what shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, Viswanathan Anand won going away, with Vladimir Kramnik finishing second and Gata Kamsky third in the voting. Kramnik probably had a slightly better 2007 than Anand, if one doesn't count the world championship in Mexico City, but that's a rather huge omission, and Anand deservedly won his 5th Oscar. (Note: If Kramnik beats Anand later this year, in Bonn, and regains the title, the roles will be reversed: Anand has clearly had the better year so far, but nothing tops the title.)

More info and useful links here.

I was browsing IM Jovanka Houska's 2007 book Play the Caro-Kann, and while looking through the introductory section on the Panov/Botvinnik Attack I read something incredible. In a subsection called 7th move sidelines, I came across this:

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 Nf6 5 Nc3

5 Nf3 is known as Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap - Black has to watch out for one big trick. Best is simply to play 5...Nc6, transposing to the main line after 6 Nc3, but 5...Bg4? would be a mistake after 6 c5! Nc6 7 Bb5. The point is that Black has big difficulties defending the c6 point; for example, 7...e6 8 Qa4 Qc7 9 Ne5 Rc8 10 Bf4 and White is winning!

There's nothing objectionable about the analysis*; rather, what struck me was the reference to Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap, as if this was standard lore in treatments of the Caro-Kann. How did Bill Vallicella, an outstanding philosophical blogger but a 1500-1700 club player not engaged in publicizing his games, suddenly achieve such fame? I had come across his trap either from an email by him or on a post on his predominantly philosophical blog, but when did a move he may have played but a single time turn into an idea requiring mention in a pretty major new theoretical work?

Houska doesn't cite a source, and I certainly didn't recall seeing it in any published materials, so naturally it was off to Google. Entering "Vallicella Caro-Kann", I discovered the main source, conveniently entitled "Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap"...and you can, too - just click here. Then laugh.**

* Actually, while I wouldn't disagree with her positive suggestion, I don't believe 5...Bg4 is in fact a mistake; the real error comes later. After, e.g. 7...e5 I don't see a White advantage after 8.dxe5 Ne4 or 8.Qa4 Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 exd4, and even the arguably best 8.Nc3 promises little or nothing after 8...Nd7 9.dxe5 Bxf3 (10.Qxf3 d4; 10.gxf3 a6).

** If anyone knows IM Houska personally, please ask her to write me (via the Contact link) - I'd like to trace the path from Vallicella's idea to her book.

Marcel Martinez's fantastic win over Dmitry Zilberstein. This was my choice for first place, but some of the judges - at least one of them - really punished it for its largely being home prep. We (I'm one of the judges in the contest) were given freedom to evaluate the games as we saw fit, so while I can't really complain about Adamson's decision, I can certainly lament it! You can read the judges' report here, replay the game here, and see my coverage of it on ChessVideos.tv by the end of the week.

In this post I challenged all of you to make the best sense of this position, from the game Alekhine - J. Morrison, Manchester (simul) 1923:



It's White to move, and promising tactical possibilities are afoot on the h-file and the b1-h7 diagonal. In the game, Alekhine chose 20.Rxh7 and won, but lamented this move in his notes. During the game, he calculated 20.Nxg4 Bxg4 21.Rxh7, but found only a perpetual with 21...Kxh7 22.Qxg6+ Kxg6 23.Be4+ Kh5 24.Rh1+ Bh3 25.Bf3+ Kg6 26.Be4+ etc. The problem is that the otherwise desirable 25.Rxh3+ Kg4 leaves both the Bf4 and the Rh3 hanging. An impressive calculation in a simul, but Alekhine claims in his notes that 20.Nxg4 was the right move, as long as 20...Bxg4 is met by 21.Be3. Black's queen will presumably run away from the various possible discoveries, and then White goes back to the Rxh7 idea. The bishop won't be hanging on f4 after 22.Rxh7 Kxh7 23.Qxg6+ Kxg6 24.Be4+ Kh5 25.Rh1+ Bh3 26.Rxh3+ Kg4, so White can conveniently and attractively finish Black off with 26.Bf5#.

Now that you know a little of what Alekhine saw and was thinking, you might want to return to your chessboards (or monitors) and see what else you can come up with. When you've worked it all out, you can have a look here.

The city of Baku, Azerbaijan, seems almost a factory for great chess players. Garry Kasparov, Teimour Radjabov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Vugar Gashimov, Vladimir Akopian, and the star of today's show, Emil Sutovsky. While he's a bit lower-profile than most of the other Baku natives these days, the Israeli transplant has had a career almost everyone - including almost every GM - would be proud of: grandmaster, former world junior champion, former European champion, winner of nearly 40 international tournaments and a career peak rating of 2697.

Further, it's not only his results that have been exceptional; he is renowned for playing beautiful attacking games. Perhaps his greatest game so far came against Ilya Smirin, from the 2002 Israel Championship. Smirin, himself a great player (a few months before this game he was over 2700), played a novelty in an anti-anti-Sveshnikov variation, but Sutovsky was either better prepared or experienced some over the board inspiration. Whatever the story, this week's hero devised a real two piece sacrifice that gave him enduring attacking chances, but nothing that could be calculated to a finish in advance. Sutovsky's idea proved absolutely correct, and after a number of accurate building moves, he finished the job with a beautiful final blow. All in all, a masterpiece in miniature.

It's a game worth seeing, and watching the show this Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET is a great way to pass the time between the just-finished FIDE Grand Prix (in Baku!) and the pending MTel Masters. The show is free and directions can be found here. Hope to see you then!

Every Wednesday night, I present a live show on ChessBase's playchess.com server, and once the show is over it is uploaded into the server's archives. In this entry I'll explain how to access both live and archived shows.

Chess historian par excellence Edward Winter has written occasional articles for ChessBase asking readers for help with various historical mysteries, but his latest piece reverses things - here he is informing us. This first installment of his Chess Explorations addresses a number of persistent myths, such as Max Euwe's allegedly chivalrous decision to grant Alexander Alekhine after defeating him for the title, as well as the mistaken labeling of the 1909 Lasker-Janowski match as a world championship event. If you're interested in our game's past and want to get your facts right, he's the man to read.

These are good times in the chess world, as practically the instant one super-GM tournament finishes, another begins straightaway. This one, the MTel Masters in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a double round-robin with the following players:

Veselin Topalov BUL 2767
Levon Aronian ARM 2763
Teimour Radjabov AZE 2751
Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2740
Bu Xiangzhi CHN 2708
Ivan Cheparinov BUL 2695

The games start Thursday, and they place for five consecutive days - one trip through the round-robin. After a day off, they do the same thing: five straight days going through the second round-robin. It should be a great event, as all the players are fighters with dynamic styles - the Sofia anti-draw rules should prove unnecessary.