The Chess Mind

Saravejo: All three games were drawn quickly. (Maybe they've essentially ceded the tournament to Morozevich and want to get it over with?)

The King's Tournament: Two quick draws so far (booooo!), but the other three games are approaching respectable move numbers.

Leko-Carlsen, game 5: Ongoing, but Leko is a pawn up with a big time advantage in a Dragon Sicilian. A win would level the match with three games to go.

Ivanchuk-Shirov, game 1: An entertaining Ivanchuk win on the White side of an anti-anti-Sveshnikov (is there a better name for 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 [a trick to avoid the Sveshnikov: after 3...Nf6 - hoping for 4.d4 - 4.Bb5 is generally considered a favorable Rossolimo] 3...e5?), complete with sacrifices and promotion races.

Pivdenny: No idea!

Time to hit the road and resume driving! Maybe some of my wonderful readers can provide updates in the comments, and also update, when possible, the news of the Kamsky-Topalov match?

This won't be the sort of full coverage I'd have preferred to give, complete with replayable games (which will return soon), but I think the following should be of interest. The following comments will mostly address the Anand-Vallejo Pons match, with which we begin:

Game 1: Why did Vallejo play 12.Bxe6? Black's bishop isn't going anywhere, so White has at least one "free" move to make in the meantime. Two other moves come immediately to mind: 12.Rd1 and 12.Nc3. The first is especially obvious but unexpectedly interesting, because Black has the counter-shot 12...Bxf2+, with the point that 13.Qxf2 hangs the rook on d1, while 13.Kxf2 Qc5+ lets Black pick up the Bf5. This not being checkers, however, White could continue with 13.Kh1 or 13.Kf1, when Black's queen on d6 and bishop on f2 are both hanging while the pressure on e6 remains. The position looks like a fun mess, worthy of further analysis.

As for the second move, 12.Nc3, that would seem to be the safer route. If Black castles short, then13.Rd1 followed by 14.Bxe6 looks like a better version of the game for White. If, however, Black castles long, then after 13.Rd1 Bxf2+ may again be possible (14.Kxf2 Qc5+; 14.Qxf2 Qxd1+ 15.Nxd1 Rxd1+ and Black regains the queen). All very interesting!

Finally, about game 1, it's quite surprising, at the end of the game, that after both sides promoted neither could achieve a decisive attack on the enemy king, despite the kings' very exposed positions.

Game 2: As in game 4 of the Carlsen-Leko match, White (Anand) essayed the Exchange Variation of the Caro-Kann with 4.Nf3 and 5.Ne5! Is this the start of a trend in big-time chess, or just something fun for a rapid game? Whatever the story, both Carlsen and Anand won their games.

Game 5: This game saw the Dragon/Accelerated Dragon discussed in some detail on this blog long ago. I'm not sure it's especially relevant to my earlier analysis, but Dragon fans should check it out.

Game 6: In case anyone was scratching their head about the final position, it's true that Anand was 100% winning when they agreed to the draw. It's not universally followed, but there is a relatively common practice to accept/offer a draw when it clinches match victory.

Finally, a comment about two of Karpov's games from day 1 of the Pivdenny tournament. If you take a look at his game from round 1, against Ponomariov, and his round 4 game, against Drozdovskij, you'll notice a remarkable coincidence. In both games, a pure rook ending occurred where Black had f- and e-pawns against White's g-pawn. Not only that, but identical pawn structures arose as well, with Black's pawns on f5 and e4 against White's pawn on g3. (For all I know, completely identical positions might have occurred at some moment, but I didn't check.) How often does that sort of thing happen? Interestingly, Karpov had the pawn-up side the first time and the pawn-down side the second. While I think he'd have held the draw against Drozdovskij even without the prior experience, he might have been chuckling to himself and thanking Ponomariov for his "instruction" in the earlier game.

Oops, forgot the event formerly known as "The Tournament of Draws" in my previous post. Today, only one game of five was drawn, so I will now retire my joking moniker for the event. Current leaders after 7 rounds: Short (5 points), Mecking and Portisch (4).

Having driven a third of the way across the country today, I'm too tired to blog in any substantive way. (The solutions were "pre-written" yesterday, with an auto-posting time for earlier today.) For the benefit of my loyal readers, however, I'll offer a light summary of the day's goings-on.

First, Sarajevo: the Morozevich express continues to steamroller everything in its path. Today Predojevic was the victim, and now Moro has six out of seven and a slightly ridiculous 2985 TPR. The other games were also interesting: Sokolov seemed to have a strong attack and then a powerful bind against Movsesian, but it was either an illusion or he blundered, and Movsesian won. Similarly, Timofeev was the early aggressor against Dominguez, but he too lost. Dominguez's win keeps him within shouting distance of the lead - he has 4.5 - and has yet to face Morozevich the second time, so the tournament isn't quite over yet.

Second, Carlsen-Leko: rest day. (That was easy.)

Third, the Magistral Ciudad de Leon saw the first semi-final match between Anand and Vallejo. On paper it should have been an easy match, but they played on unprocessed paper (wood) instead, and Anand had to go to playoff games to win, 3.5-2.5. Tomorrow (Saturday) Ivanchuk and Shirov face off, and then the winner of that match plays Anand in the final.

Fourth, Pivdenny. This eight player, semi-speed chess (G/10 + 5 second increments) double round robin event is five rounds in, and so far Drozdovskij and Ponomariov lead with 4 points; Gelfand is half a point behind. Legends Karpov and Korchnoi are languishing with -2 scores (1.5-3.5), while Chess Today star Golubev is having a tough time of it so far with one out of five, but he'll do so damage the next two days!

Fifth, Topalov-Kamsky. According to the latest news (reported both on TWIC and in a comment to an earlier post by Andrey), there will be an announcement tomorrow (Saturday) declaring that the match is on and to be held in Ukraine. We'll see.

Tomorrow I'm driving another third of the way across the country, so it's time to sleep!

Yesterday, I offered these three positions, all of which exemplify a common tactical idea:


White to move and win


Black to move and win


Black to move and win

If you're still working on it, then don't click below; if you have, or if you're after a (big) hint, proceed:

Here are three not quite unrelated problems:


White to move and win


Black to move and win


Black to move and win

The solutions will be given tomorrow.

Here's the info, c/o GM Mikhail Golubev, one of the participants:

BASIC DETAILS
The 4th Pivdenny Bank Chess Cup begins on 30 May 2008 in Odessa, Ukraine, in the National Academy of Law (http://onua.edu.ua/odessa/eng/main.htm). It will be a double round robin, rapid chess tournament with 8 participating grandmasters: Boris Gelfand (2723, ISR) Ruslan Ponomariov (2719, UKR) Anatoly Karpov (2655, RUS) Pavel Tregubov (2629, RUS) Viktor Korchnoi (2598, SUI) Yuri Drozdovskij (2581, UKR) Valery Beim (2523, AUT) Mikhail Golubev (2474, UKR).

SCHEDULE
The time control (for each player) will be 10 minutes for the game plus a 5-second increment after every move. On 30 May, five first rounds will be played; on 31 May there will be another five rounds, and four final rounds will be played on 1 June. On each of these three days, there will be rounds at 13:00 (local time, GMT+2), 14:00, 15:00, etc.

WEB
The official website of the event is http://worldcup.pivdenny.com - we hope to publish the basic information in English (results & standings) there, though the site’s (main) language is Russian. The live transmission of games will be organised by the Shachcom company (http://www.ruschess.com).

PREVIOUS WINNERS
The winners of the three previous tournaments were:
2005 Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine)
2006 Joel Lautier (France)
2007 Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine)

ORGANISERS
The main organiser of the tournament is Bank Pivdenny (http://en.bank.com.ua), which is the largest bank in the southern part of Ukraine.

Pivdenny also organised the 2007 and 2008 ACP World Rapid Chess Cups, which were won by Peter Leko (Hungary) and Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan), respectively.

In Sarajevo, it looks like the rest day had no effect on the leader. Alexander Morozevich built on the 2916 TPR of the first cycle with a crushing win over Ivan Sokolov. (His TPR is now 2953!) In the other games, Predojevic - Dominguez was an uninspiring 15-move draw, but Movsesian - Timofeev was much more interesting, and instructive too. Movsesian sacrificed a pawn to reach an opposite-colored bishop middlegame where his activity and attacking prospects offered full compensation. That's one useful thing to know about opposite-colored bishops; they favor the attacker. However, there's also the other, better-known aspect of that imbalance: endings with opposite-colored bishops can be drawish, and Timofeev used that to his advantage. He went from a pawn up to two pawns down, but reached a safe ending where an airtight blockade assured him of half a point.

On to the day two of the Leko-Carlsen rapid match. In game 3, Leko pressed and pressed and finally achieved a winning position. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out how to win it. Still more unfortunately, he thought he figured out how to win it, but his idea involved a one-move blunder, and Carlsen held. This probably took a lot out of Leko emotionally, but whatever the case, Carlsen won the next game convincingly. The youngster played the fairly harmless 4.Nf3 + 5.Ne5 version of the Exchange Variation against the Caro-Kann, but while he didn't achieve anything out of the opening, he thoroughly outplayed Leko in the middlegame, seizing the lead in the match (2.5-1.5). Today's games, with my brief comments, can be replayed here.

Finally, the Tournament of Draws (the King's Tournament) finally saw all the players engaged in real chess. There were only two decisive games* of five (though that's as many as there have been in any round of this event), but the shortest game was 37 moves. Let's hope this round is the start of a trend; if so, I'll happily stop using the tournament alias.

* Yes, I know that there's a respectable sense in which any result is a decisive result. Lacking an elegant alternative ("non-draws"? "won games"? The problem with the latter is its ambiguity - someone can have a "won game" he doesn't win) way of expressing the same point, however, I'll stick to this usage, despite its drawbacks.

...to be given after re-presenting the quotation:

Anand, by the way, did not have a strong tournament, and it is quite well known that he is not a very patient person. In his youth he played very quickly, living only on his enormous talent. He never became the great player he could have been, and I predict he will not be.

The author of this quotation turns out to be Jacob Aagaard, writing in Excelling in Chess. I still think the comment was and is more or less insane, but Jonathan B of the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club blog, from which the quotation and its solution were taken, seems more sympathetic. The reasons I find the quotation absurd are that Anand is in fact one of the most deeply prepared players on the planet (thus not just living off his enormous talent), probably the best defender alive (and how does one defend without patience?), and in the top three for well over a decade. If Anand were a bit tougher psychologically and a little less risk-averse, especially with the black pieces, it's possible that his results could have been even better, but there isn't any player without some relative weaknesses in his or her game.

Ohhhhh, this is rich. Here's a press release from Alexei Shirov:

With this short press release I would like to bring attention to the following facts:

1. In spite of having passed all the possible deadlines, FIDE still has not announced the venue of the match Topalov-Kamsky. That means that the match should normally take place in Bulgaria because the Lvov offer seems not to have been materialized.

2. Mr. Gata Kamsky has declared that he does not wish to play in Bulgaria. According to the match regulations he should be replaced by me in this case.

3. It is absolutely clear that the silence and uncertainty should end and the firm decision about the forthcoming match should be taken. Nobody can wait forever and this concerns the reserve players as well.

Alexei Shirov, Tarragona, 29.05.2008

It's true that Kamsky needs to make a decision. There are no real organizational offers except to play in Bulgaria, so Kamsky must either reconcile to playing in his opponent's home country, drop out, or find some alternative organizer to propose something by yesterday, figuratively speaking. On the other hand, Shirov's haste to throw Kamsky under the bus is incredible. When the similarly situated Kramnik played Kasparov, two years after the failure to organize a Kasparov-Shirov match, he became persona non grata to Shirov. But now, just a few weeks after the original deadline, Shirov writes that "[n]obody can wait forever". Wow. If it had been Kramnik's fault that the Kasparov-Shirov match didn't occur, then there wouldn't be any inconsistency in Shirov's position, but it wasn't.

Am I missing something obvious here? Just to clarify: my view is that he can criticize Kramnik or want Kamsky pushed aside, but not both - at least not consistently. Finally, while I didn't really think it would come to this, the current denouement was forecast on this blog a couple of months ago, here.

The first day of the Leko-Carlsen rapid match has concluded, and if you blinked twice you'll have missed both games. The first one wasn't so bad, a Dragon Sicilian where Carlsen sacrificed a pawn with Black but achieved sufficient play to draw. The second game was far less interesting: Leko played the Caro-Kann, and although Carlsen added a little flair by using Bronstein's 5.Nc5, the game ended with a brief thud, drawn by three-time repetition on move 18.

That brings us to the Tournament of Draws (the King's Tournament), which again saw several players dropping the ball. Mecking-Portisch, Murariu-Sokolov and Suba-Khalifman were models of priority, drawn in 21, 24 and 21 moves respectively, but Short beat Vaganian and Andersson defeated Timman - with Black! Very disappointing.

The Leko-Carlsen games can be replayed here, with my brief comments.

Tune in on your favorite chess server, or watch live on the event website. Should be a fun event!

With summer upon us (at least as far as the academic world is concerned), some of you may have a bit more free time to work on your game. If you'd like to arrange chess lessons, whether live (generally in the Michiana area, but in Las Vegas this June) or online (on ICC or playchess.com), let me know. Another option is game analysis, whether just once, on an ongoing basis, or anywhere in between. If any of these options is of interest, please drop me a note here, and we'll work something out!

While the event was going on, I only offered brief comments about my play and almost none about any of the other games. Now, with a little more time at my disposal, I'd like to draw some attention to some other games from that event.

I'll start with an odd pair of games from Robert Loncarevic, one of the tournament dark horses. In two consecutive rounds, his game finished on move 13, and neither one was a draw! In round 2, he played a dubious line of the Petroff, lost a pawn for nothing, and gave up. That game could have continued a while longer, but when he won in round 3 the resignation was entirely appropriate - he was giving checkmate the very next move! As that game includes a rather neat opening trap, it's worth checking out, and in any case both games can be replayed (with my comments) here.

Here; permalink here.

The show generally focuses on older games, in the hopes of bringing the great games of the past to new generations of chess players, but that doesn't mean I have anything against recent games! This week, in fact, we'll take a look at a very recent game: Teimour Radjabov's win over Bu Xiangzhi from this month's MTel Masters event in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The game has a bit of everything: former prodigies who are now elite GMs facing off in a popular (but positionally grounded) line, a transition to a remarkable tactical moment too deep for many computers to handle, followed by an amusing and instructive endgame. It's a very smooth performance by Radjabov, demonstrating both his skill in positional play and his considerable tactical ingenuity. (It also serves to remind us that tactics are generally needed to subserve strategic goals.) And finally, it's a nice way to kick off a series of weeks on the game's new stars.

I hope therefore to see all of you this Wednesday (tomorrow, as of this writing) at 9 p.m. ET. The show is free for playchess.com members, and you can find more information about watching in this post.

I just finished watching Rustam Kasimdzhanov's ChessBase DVD on the Anti-Moscow Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5), and it's not a bad summary of the theoretical progression of the variation in super-GM play starting from the Radjabov-Anand rapid match in August 2006 going through Wijk aan Zee earlier this year. Kasimdzhanov does a nice job presenting the key ideas, some important move order issues, the games themselves and a few original ideas to boot. I'd recommend the disk to players (interested in the variation) from around 2100 to 2450, but if you do get it, you should hurry - theory is developing rapidly!

On the other hand, it may not be developing quite as rapidly as we think. Take the famous win by Kramnik over Aronian earlier this year, from Wijk aan Zee. That game continued (after the eight moves given above) as follows: 9.9. Be2 Bb7 10. O-O Nbd7 11. Ne5 Bg7 12. Nxd7 Nxd7 13. Bd6 a6 14. a4 e5 15. Bg4 exd4 16. e5 c5 17. Re1 Nxe5 18. Bxe5 O-O 19. Bxg7 Kxg7 20. Ne2 f5 21. Bh5 f4 22. b4 cxb3 23. Qxb3 Qd5 24. Qh3 Bc8 25. Nc3 (Improving on 25.Qd3, as played in Radjabov-Anand, Mainz 2006, game 7.)



and White went on to win many moves later. (The game and its predecessor can be replayed here.) Black can (and did) capture the knight, but White gets so much play on both sides of the board that it more than compensates for the pawns. (In fact, by the time the final simplifications occurred, Kramnik had gone from three pawns down to two pawns up.)

A brilliant novelty? Well, it is a brilliant move, and it was a novelty in the sense that it was a move that had never been played before. The only thing is that this wasn't some deep idea originating in the secret halls of Kramnik Laboratories; it was devised - and published! - by Anand in the notes to his game with Radjabov back in 2006. (Informant 97, game 318.) Not only that, but Anand also offered there what's now pretty much universally acknowledged to be Black's improvement, 22...d3! 23.bxc5! b4!, keeping the central files closed and White's Ne2 dominated.

It's true, of course, that the amount of information out there is colossal, and even those who have accumulated everything and have the best memories are taxed to the breaking point by that information. Still, this seems more a failure of research than memory on Aronian's part, as the theory of this particular subvariation consisted of only one game. And it's a good plug for the Informant, too!

In Sarajevo, the games Movsesian-Dominguez and Sokolov-Predojevic were drawn (the former quickly; the latter after a long and lively fight), but Morozevich brought home the full point by outplaying Timofeev in a virtuoso bishop ending. At the halfway point, then, after the first of the two round-robins, Morozevich leads with 4 out of 5, good enough for a 2919 performance rating. (If he keeps this up, he might make it to #2 on the July FIDE list!)

Meanwhile, in the ToD (the King's Tournament), four of the five games were drawn (three very quickly), but Vaganian spoiled the warm feelings by defeating Suba. After four rounds, therefore, the winning percentage remains a disappointingly high 20%, but hopefully fatigue will start setting in, lowering both the move count and any slight aggressive tendencies the players might still be suffering.

Let's have a look at the Morozevich ending - right here.

While the games have been coming out on the monroi.com site, the best place I've found so far for tournament information is here. Apparently there will be a playoff of some sort between the three players mentioned in the title for a $300 cash bonus and the title of Chicago Open champion, but pending those results there's a three way tie for first between Varuzhan Akobian, Tigran L. Petrosian and Hikaru Nakamura with 5.5/7.

Update: Due to their favorable tiebreaks, the playoff was a one-game Armageddon contest between Akobian and Petrosian, and this was won by Akobian.

One other performance worthy of note is that of Joshua Friedel, who not only defeated Nakamura in round 2, but also beat new US Champion Yury Shulman in round 6. If he had defeated Julio Becerra in the last round he would have tied for first, but his draw sufficed for a good payday. Perhaps more importantly, he moved closer to 2500 FIDE (and probably exceeded it), and that's important because without it the three GM norms he has earned are insufficient to give him the title. [The details in this paragraph have been corrected - HT: Dave Vigorito.]

Maybe tomorrow is scheduled to be a rest day in Sarajevo, but with draws in 24, 24 and 32 moves in round 4, the players will get all the rest they need today, too. Morozevich continues to lead by half a point with 3/4, Dominguez is half a point behind.

Meanwhile, in the Tournament of Draws (the King's Tournament), all mayhem broke loose with two wins in five games. Portisch was duly chastened by his violations of the competitive regime yesterday and drew in 17 moves, and Beliavsky-Khalifman was a quick draw as well. Murariu-Vaganian took 85 moves before they split the point, however, while Short and Mecking violated all protocol and decorum by winning against Andersson and Timman, respectively. We can only hope that such unsporting behavior is quickly ended.

I'm referring to Chinese chess players, that is, not players of the distinct game of Chinese chess. Here's the link.

The "Sunday puzzle" for the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club website is a quotation puzzle (!). Who said the following, 2001?

Anand, by the way, did not have a strong tournament, and it is quite well known that he is not a very patient person. In his youth he played very quickly, living only on his enormous talent. He never became the great player he could have been, and I predict he will not be.

Since by that point Anand had just become FIDE champion and had been near 2800 for some years, it's a remarkably brassy thing for a commentator to say or write. Anyway, I have no idea who said or wrote it, so you'll have to go to the S & B site to learn the answer. (But if you do know, please comment here!)

HT: Brian Karen

From Chess Today:

Russian websites Gazeta.ru and Novaya Gazeta informed, with references to ITAR-TASS and Georgian chess federation, that Georgian grandmaster Bukhuti Gurgenidze passed away on 24 May 2008. He was Georgian champion no less than eleven times. Nine times he participated in the USSR championship finals. In different years, Gurgenidze coached Georgian top female players: Gaprindashvili, Chiburdanidze, Alexandria and Ioseliani.

Many of you probably haven't heard of Gurgenidze, so in addition to the above let me add that he's credited with the Black system 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 g6 (Black often continues at some moment with ...h5 and ...Nh6), and a Wikipedia author gives him credit the gambit idea in the Rossolimo 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6 4.O-O Bg7 5.Re1 e5 6.b4, though I don't see any games of his in this line in my database. He's probably best known for a loss to Tal where he gets butchered, so to let him be remembered for positive games (as well), have a look here.

Today in Sarajevo, there were again two draws and a win, but the win was a nice one. Morozevich took over clear first, defeating Movsesian with a speculative but very dangerous knight sacrifice. (Games and crosstable here.)

Meanwhile, in the Tournament of Draws*, Portisch unsportingly defeated Murariu, but the remaining players took up the slack:

Timman-Short, drawn in 33 moves.
Vaganian-Beliavsky, drawn in 24.
Andersson-Suba, drawn in 20.
Khalifman-A. Sokolov, drawn in 14.

* Also known as "The King's Tournament"

I had considered following up the IM norm tournament that just finished with the Chicago Open, but decided there probably wasn't enough gas in the tank to make it worthwhile. That said, before returning home this evening I visited that event last night and this morning. It was a pleasant trip, meeting some old acquaintances and having a few people introduce themselves, having recognized me from the ads for my weekly ChessBase show. Naturally, there was some interesting chess going on, too, and the round 2 pairing between GM-elect Joshua Friedel and long-time GM Hikaru Nakamura was especially intriguing. The point is that while Nakamura would normally be a routine favorite, given the rating difference between them, he had lost to Friedel at least twice before. And now...it's at least thrice. It's not that Friedel isn't a very strong player; he obviously is. But it seems that he has some special mojo when it comes to facing Nakamura. Those interested in replaying that game, and seeing more of the action from the first three rounds, can find it on the monroi.com site.

Next up, Sarajevo. There's really not much to report here: after two days, four of the six games have been drawn, with the exceptions coming at Predojevic's expense. He lost in round 1 to Dominguez, and in round 2 to Morozevich.

Finally, the Tournament of Draws (aka "The King's [sic?] Tournament") in Bazna, Romania. Here were the results from round 1:

Beliavsky - Portisch 1/2-1/2
Murariu - Andersson 1/2-1/2
Short - Mecking 1/2-1/2
Sokolov - Vaganian 1/2-1/2
Suba - Timman 1/2-1/2

As fun as it is to hassle these guys, it seems from the move count that at least two of the games were hard-fought. Beliavsky's game (he's a reliable warrior) went 62 moves, and Short-Mecking made it to move 53. Still, I'd be very surprised if the overall drawing percentage in this tournament wasn't exceedingly high, especially if we exclude Beliavsky and Short from consideration.

There were only two games played tonight out of the originally scheduled five. That's because one player (Gauri Shankar) had dropped out and two other pairs of opponents played their final round games Thursday night. I drew with Angelo Young, while Mehmed Pasalic defeated Aleksander Stamnov to gain his third and final norm. (Congratulations!) That left two final contests: Robert Loncarevic-Mark Ginsburg, won by the latter, and Florencio Inumerable vs. Tom Bartell.

This latter game was of great importance, as a Bartell win would earn an IM norm. Up to that point in the tournament, Bartell had been undefeated and Inumerable winless (not counting a forfeit win over Shankar), but just as Loncarevic showed against Young and Pasalic, even the lowest-rated players must be taken fully seriously! Inumerable won - pretty convincingly, too, from my superficial glance - and so Bartell came up a point short. I'm confident that he'll succeed sooner or later though, and that this is nothing more than a temporary setback.

Final Standings:

1. Pasalic 6.5
2-3. Ginsburg, Tate 6
4-5. Monokroussos, Bartell 5.5
6-7. Inumerable, Young 4
8-9. Loncarevic, Stamnov 3
10. Shankar 1.5 (6 played games)

Sarajevo starts today and stars an interesting and strong field led by Alexander Morozevich (2774). It's a double round-robin, and the other players are Sergei Movsesian (2695), Lenier Dominguez (2695), Ivan Sokolov (2690), Artyom Timofeev (2664) and Borki Predojevic (2651).

Wait a few more days, and you'll have chess events coming out your ears. In rapid chess, there's a Leko-Carlsen match from May 28-June 1 and the event in Leon, Spain from May 29 to June 2. That tournament has Anand, Ivanchuk, Shirov and Vallejo - lots of fun.

You say these players are too young, and you want to see older players going at it? No problem: in addition to Sarajevo, there's also the 4th Pivdenny Bank Chess Cup in Odessa from May 30 to June 2. That has its share of younger players, but old rivals Karpov and Korchnoi are both playing, too.

Finally, if it seems that there's just too much fighting in the chess world, fear not: the King's Tournament in Bazna, Romania, is taking place again. It runs from May 24-June 4 and is unlikely to see many decisive games. Here are the culprits participants: Andersson, Beliavsky, Chiburdanidze, Khalifman, Mecking, Murariu, Portisch, Ribli, Andrei Sokolov, Suba, Short and Vaganian. At least six of the players tend to be pretty draw-friendly, so while it's nice to see so many great names playing together (except local GM Murariu, who may someday become a famous player but isn't yet), don't get your hopes up for a bloodbath.

Sorry sports fans, no norm this time around either, but I gave it a good run. Bartell decided at a certain point to dry up the game, and while that allowed me to go from a very slightly worse to a very slightly better position, winning would have been just about impossible. (Or at least that's how it felt at the time.) As that put me out of contention for a norm, Angelo Young and I played our ninth round game immediately afterwards - also a draw.

So I again wound up with 5.5/9, but it wasn't such a bad event, given the lousy start. It's a step back in the right direction, and I achieved reasonable form as the event went on. My preparation was pretty good but not perfect, and overall I think my opening play was decent even on those occasions when I was caught by surprise. Tactically there were some gaffes, so that's something I'll be spending more time on in my pre-event training. Likewise with my physical preparation: I could have used more reserve in the tank by the end of the tournament.

But enough about my event (for now!); let's address the other norm aspirants. Pasalic entered the round +3, but with White against Loncarevic he seemed in great shape for the coveted +4. Remarkably, Loncarevic held a difficult position and achieved a draw, so Pasalic will have to defeat Stamnov with Black tomorrow. I expect he'll find a way to do so, but that's definitely doing it the hard way. Bartell's draw against me means he's still at +3 as well, so he too will have to win his final game - also with Black - against Inumerable to get the norm. I wish them both the best.

In the last round, needing only a draw to clinch clear first, Yuri Shulman drew in 11 moves with Josh Friedel. That might seem at first like a strange decision on Friedel's part, but it really wasn't. For one thing, he couldn't catch Shulman even if he won. Second, the draw gave him his final GM norm, so he'll have the title as soon as the fees are paid and the paperwork is complete. In other action, Alexander Onischuk defeated John Fedorowicz to take clear second, and Sergey Kudrin took clear third.

On the women's side, things were much more exciting. Zatonskih won her game, while Krush was very lucky to even get a draw. That necessitated a playoff, which was a real see-saw affair. The first pair of tiebreak games was inconclusive: first Zatonskih won with White, then Krush got her revenge. The second pair was also inconclusive, but in a more surprising way: Krush won with Black, but then failed to hold with White. It came down to an Armageddon game, and when Zatonskih again won with the black pieces, she had become the champion. So congrats to her, and to Shulman and Friedel as well.

Meanwhile, in another tournament, I managed to win, thanks primarily to my opponent's lack of patience. I had little advantage if any, but my opponent was not interested in a maneuvering battle and lashed out with 18...Nxe4. I had seen this idea beforehand and thought it would be completely in my favor, and so it was. Black never enjoyed any attacking chances, and I took care to make sure they never materialized.

The big game of the round was Loncarevic-Young, which showed for the umpteenth time that no one should be taken for granted. On paper, and in reality, too, Young is a much stronger player than Loncarevic, but he was half an hour late and then spent a bunch more time talking with someone, presumably on business matters. That left him without much time to think, and when Loncarevic met the careless 11...g6? with 12.Bh6! the point was pretty much already his.

Or more accurately, I won't be doing my ChessBase show this week. Those of you who have been following my tournament exploits will have realized this already, but for any readers who are just checking in to see what the show topic will be, you'll have to wait until next week.

This has nothing to do with chess, except for the name of one of the principals in the story. Of course, it's not "our" Tony Miles, who died in 2001; our Tony Miles only speared people with his wit. Anyway, if you're interested in a bizarre and slightly grisly story, have a look here.

P.S. I know about the other recent, bizarre story of interest to the chess world, but for my audience of kids and their parents I'll refrain from posting about it. (Please honor the spirit of my desire by not commenting about it or providing a link.)

It has been up for a few days, but as they hadn't advertised it on the front page I didn't realize that it had been uploaded. So: for those who would like to see my presentation of the runner-up in the US Chess League's 2007 Game of the Year contest, you may do so for free and on-demand. The program can be accessed here.

The US Championship round can be easily summarized: everyone drew. That's an exaggeration, but all the games that mattered for the leaderboard were drawn: boards 1-6 on the men's side, and the big showdown on the women's side between Krush and Zatonskih was drawn as well. Going into the last round, therefore, Shulman maintains a full point lead over his closest pursuers, while Krush remains half a point ahead of Zatonskih. Here are the relevant last-round pairings for both tournaments:

Men's Pairings:

Friedel (5) - Shulman (6.5)
Kudrin (5.5) - Perelshteyn (5)
Onischuk (5.5) - Fedorowicz (4.5)
Becerra (4.5) - Akobian (5)

Women's Pairings:

Krush (7) - Rohonyan (5.5)
Battsetseg (4.5) - Zatonskih (6.5)
Tuvshintugs (4.5) - Abrahamyan (6)

Now for my latest adventure. I was again surprised in the opening, but fortunately he went into the opening that I prepared yesterday. He chose a good line, too, but his 12th move was simply a blunder. I nearly missed the problem with his move as well, but at last realized that 12...dxe4 13.fxe4 Bg4 followed by 14...Bf3 and simply ...Bxh2 wins gobs of material. At some point during my ruminations, he realized the problem as well, and just gave up the e-pawn in the hopes of reclaiming it later. Fortunately, some tactics on the b-file prevented him from re-establishing material equality, and then somewhere around move 22 or 23 I came up with the clever trick with 26...Bb2, winning more material. Ultimately, my extra exchange was enough to win, despite my less than beautiful queenside pawn structure.

A note for those of you who have been on the site but only/mainly following my games: check out Tate's win over Young. I didn't watch it too closely, but it looked exciting all the way.

It looks like it was an incredible round at the US Championships earlier tonight, with only one draw in the 12 games on the men's side (and likewise only one draw in five for the ladies). Most of the wins came on the black side, and that was the case for the top board. Yuri Shulman won a nice game against Becerra, and maintains a full point lead with 6/7. Kudrin and Onischuk have 5, while Friedel, Perelshteyn and Akobian have 4.5. Two rounds to go!

A quick update on the women's event: Krush and Zatonskih, the top two seeds, were running away with the event with 5/5, but yesterday Krush was nipped for a draw and today Zatonskih dropped a full point. Tomorrow's game ought to decide the title, as they finally square off with Zatonskih enjoying the White pieces.

Meanwhile, in my neck of the woods, I won a crazy war of a game against Aleksander Stamnov. (This game will almost definitely be covered in a ChessVideos show or two.) As far as I could tell from the databases, all Stamnov has played after 1.e4 e5, since approximately the dawn of mankind, is the Scotch. Naturally, I prepared for the Scotch, and so of course, he played the Center Game. Greeeeeat. That's an opening I'd faced twice in my entire tournament career, the last time 15 years ago, and hadn't really worked on it a great deal, to put it mildly.

So I spent a lot of time pretty much from the get-go, figuring things out, including the teensy bit of theory I already knew, and played extremely well! By move 15, I was probably winning, but then things started to go wrong. Somewhere around moves 16-20, there might have been some way to really tighten the screws (but not with 16...Nf2 or 17...Nf2 - Na4 in both cases makes things messy if not just good for White (unless I missed something)).

Still, all was probably well until 21...Nxc2. It's not that I missed Qd3 ideas; it's that I didn't see the particular Qd3 version that occurred in the game until it was too late. At this point, I was losing or at least near-losing, but it didn't matter: there was still some fight to be had. After the queen trade around move 31, I was aware of some real drawing chances, and thought there might even be a funny repeat of the Tate ending where I draw with king against light-squared bishop and h-pawn.

These were only hopes of a draw, but then came 34.g4. After this hasty move, 34...f5 pretty much insures a draw on the spot, though White can continue to play. And so he did, but not successfully - he was probably lamenting the lost opportunities, and maybe compounding his problems by thinking that he still "had to" win. From his reaction, it was clear that he missed 37...Rf3, and of course 39.Bd3 was a gift. Whether he missed 39...Rxd3+ or 43...c5, it came to the same thing: a decisive advantage for Black. And so, a 45 move win that felt like 70 moves.

In the US Champs, almost every game was drawn. Two games were decisive, but one of the two was the first board clash between Shulman and Kudrin, won by the former. He now stands alone in first place with 5/7; Kudrin, Becerra and Onischuk are a point back with 4/7.

Last but not least, I pulled things together a bit today. In round 3, I drew with Tate. In fact, I was winning at one point, but a strange hallucination reduced most of my advantage. Later on I managed to miss a tactic, but I think that by then the only effect was to go from the nominally better half of the draw to the nominally worse half. In round 4, I pulled out a win on the white side of an Anti-Marshall. I probably didn't get anything from the opening, but after a little while we reached a position where I was essentially playing to exploit his bad pieces - the knight and the bishop. I'm not sure how accurate I was, but it was nice - and ironic, too, in light of the previous sentence - that I concluded the game by sacrificing my own knight and bishop to promote.

From here on out, it's just one round a day, and since the band's not playing my chances for a good night's sleep are looking up.

First, MTel: Ivanchuk put an exclamation point at the end of his performance at the MTel Masters, defeating Cheparinov with the Black pieces. Cheparinov threw the luggage into the attack, but it never got anywhere. Indeed, at the end it was Ivanchuk attacking - and giving mate - concluding the tournament with a fantastic 8-2 score and a 2977 TPR. Topalov was unable to keep pace, drawing a spectacular game with Radjabov that might have been pure home preparation on the latter's part. (Note that Radjabov's queen sac was not a novelty, however.) Finally, Aronian-Bu Xiangzhi was also drawn, so the final standings look like this:

1. Ivanchuk 8 (of 10)
2. Topalov 6.5
3. Radjabov 5.5
4. Cheparinov 4
5-6. Aronian, Bu Xiangzhi 3

Second, the Cez Chess Trophy (i.e. the Kramnik-Navara match): Navara got a measure of redemption in the last, competitively meaningless games, drawing game 7 and winning game 8. That narrowed the gap, but it's still a hefty 5.5-2.5 match win for Kramnik.

Finally, the Capablanca Memorial was won by top seed Lenier Dominguez with 6/9; Amonatov and Khenkin were next with 5.5/9. (HT: Chess Today)

Starting with the biggest events and working on down:

MTel: Ivanchuk drew with Aronian (and Radjabov drew with Cheparinov), but Bu Xiangzhi-Topalov was a weird (read: badly played) game where Topalov made the last and most serious errors. With one round to go, therefore, all Ivanchuk needs is a draw to clinch clear first.

Kramnik-Navara match: Kramnik won today's pair 1.5-.5, to extend his lead in the 8-game match to 5-1. He has clinched the victory, but tomorrow's games will go on as scheduled.

US Championship: After 5 rounds, Shulman and Kudrin lead with 4 points; Becerra and Onischuk are at 3.5.

11th North American FIDE Invitational: Unfortunately, I'm providing a view from the bottom again. In round 1 I simply blundered against Pasalic in an otherwise thoroughly safe position, and in round 2 I was ground down by Ginsburg. Some days, it just goes wrong! The norm isn't looking especially likely (and it's not helping right now that in the not-so-Super 8 where I'm staying, there's a reception with the music absolutely blasting), but I'll fight to the end.

Vassily Ivanchuk's once big lead and dominating play are fading into the past. After his third consecutive draw, his lead is down to a single half point, and he was probably fortunate to draw. Bu Xiangzhi may be having one of the worst tournaments of his adult life, but he's still a 2700, and today he was demonstrating his normal level quite convincingly. He was better throughout and had a clear advantage in the ending, but after choosing 40.Rc6 instead of 40.Rb7 (keeping Black's king bottled up) Ivanchuk played very well to achieve the draw.

A good thing, too, as Veselin Topalov absolutely butchered his countryman and frequent second, Ivan Cheparinov, to reach an impressive +4 total for the event.

Finally, in the game Aronian-Radjabov, zeitnot played a decisive role in the result. White's position was precarious after 37...g5, but with more time to think Aronian probably could have maintained the balance. Instead, his 38.f5 misfired, and the follow-up, 39.Rg3, more or less lost on the spot. A good result for Radjabov, who has climbed to +1, but another blow in an ongoing disaster for Aronian.

Standings after Round 8:

1. Ivanchuk 6.5
2. Topalov 6
3. Radjabov 4.5
4. Cheparinov 3.5
5. Aronian 2
6. Bu Xiangzhi 1.5

Pairings for Round 9:

Bu Xiangzhi - Topalov (Topalov will win)
Ivanchuk - Aronian (Ivanchuk may win, but I'm expecting a draw)
Radjabov - Cheparinov

Links, videos (check out the Spassky "interview" [really a press conference]), and the games on replayable boards (at least once you install Silverlight) here.

Her story has nothing to do with chess (at least nothing I'm aware of), and there are undoubtedly hundreds, even thousands of others who demonstrated similar heroism during World War II. Even so, hers is a story worth retelling, a name worth remembering and a life worth honoring.

WSJ article
Wikipedia bio
Sendlerowa website

Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, for his win in the finals against IM Davorin Kuljasevic. It was the culmination of a great year for him in the U.S. Chess League, and his win pushed the final match into a blitz playoff. Unfortunately for him and his Boston Blitz teammates, the Dallas Destiny went on to win that playoff and the 2007 league crown, but Sammour-Hasbun's fine game netted him a very nice consolation price - a $1000 award.

The second place game was from the previous week of the playoffs and featured Dallas IM Drasko Boskovic's feisty win in a topsy-turvy battle with Miami GM Julio Becerra. This game won the tidy sum of $500. Ironically, this game received two first-place votes, while the GOTY didn't win any; the problem was that Becerra-Boskovic also received two eighth-place votes while no one voted Sammour-Hasbun's victory a place lower than fifth.

Sammour-Hasbun vs. Kuljasevic can be replayed here, Becerra-Boskovic here. The judges reports are here and here, respectively. And stay tuned for my coverage of these games on ChessVideos.tv.

For boring technical reasons, the last three posts are such that they won't permit comments. So, dear readers, if you'd like to comment on them, use this post's combox to fulfill your wish.

I've mentioned chess historian Edward Winter's work more than once on this blog (most recently here), and an early "Quotation Time" presented a chess quote from the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. As it turns out, Winter has written an article on Tolstoy and chess; have a look.

But not here. You'll have to go to my friend Alex Herrera's Correspondence Chess website and have a look at his CC Position of the Month for May. It's not easy - I confess I don't have a clue - not least because the position itself could cause migraines.

You might have seen this item around the web, about young Serbian GM Dusan Popovic's health crisis and what we can do to help. It seems to be legitimate - at least I've seen it on other sources that have typically been reliable - but those who know more are welcome to add more information.

Here are the results, with the players' scores going into the round given in parentheses:

Kaidanov (2.0) - Kudrin (2.0) 1/2-1/2
Onischuk (1.5) - Perelshteyn (1.5) 1-0
Gulko (1.5) - Shulman (1.5) 0-1
Becerra (1.5) - Yermolinsky (1.5) 1-0
Ludwig (1.0) - Shabalov (1.0) 1/2-1/2
Akobian (1.0) - Gurevich (1.0) 1-0
Ivanov (1.0) - Friedel (1.0) 1/2-1/2
Kraai (1.0) - Finegold (1.0) 1/2-1/2
Fedorowicz (0.5) - Vigorito (1.0) 1-0
Pruess (0.5) - Ippolito (0.5) 1-0
Kaufman (0.0) - Langer (0.5) 1-0
Shankland (0.0) - Galant (0.0) 1-0

That means there's a four-way tie atop the leaderboard, which may or may not be resolved in tomorrow's action. The pairings are...

Shulman (2.5) - Onischuk (2.5)
Becerra (2.5) - Kaidanov (2.5)
Kudrin (2.5) - Akobian (2.0)
Shabalov (1.5) - Kraai (1.5)
Yermolinsky (1.5) - Ivanov (1.5)
Perelshteyn (1.5) - Fedorowicz (1.5)
Friedel (1.5) - Gulko (1.5)
Finegold (1.5) - Pruess (1.5)
Vigorito (1.0) - Ludwig (1.5)
Kaufman (1.0) - Gurevich (1.0)
Shankland (1.0) - Ippolito (0.5)
Langer (0.5) - Galant (0.0)

The tournament site is here, but if you're going to replay the games, you might want to wait. Maybe they've fixed it, but when I looked earlier there were quite a few errors, probably due to players misentering moves in their monroi devices.

It seemed that Kramnik was worse in both games, but came back to win the third and nearly win the fourth as well. Tomorrow is a rest day (of sorts; Kramnik will give a simul), and the action resumes on Saturday.

Tournament site here, games (unannotated) here.

The Ivanchuk-Topalov game lived up to expectations but wound up a draw, keeping Ivanchuk a point ahead of his opponent with three rounds to play. Topalov will have an extra White, Ivanchuk an extra Black, so the battle for first remains real. In other games, Radjabov got his first win of the event and made it back to 50%, defeating poor Bu Xiangzhi, while Cheparinov-Aronian was drawn.

Standings after Round 7:

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

Pairings for Round 8:

Topalov - Cheparinov (This pairing worked well for Topalov the first time around.)
Aronian - Radjabov
Bu Xiangzhi - Ivanchuk (Ivanchuk has Black, but considering Bu's performance so far this is a good chance for the Ukranian.)

Tournament site here, games (unannotated) here.

The dates have not been given, but a location (Lvov, Ukraine) and a prize fund ($750,000) has been set. Brief details here, with the threat of more information tomorrow. The importance of this match is that its winner will face the winner of the Anand-Kramnik match (set for later this year) for a subsequent world championship match some time in 2009.

The brilliant game Martinez-Zilberstein only finished third in the 2007 US Chess League Game of the Year voting (thanks primarily to Adamson's 10th place vote), but I think the decision to dock it on account of Martinez's heavy prep was an unfortunate decision at best. (Not wrong, exactly, as we judges were given free reign to vote as we saw fit. Theoretically we could award votes to players based on the length of their last names.) I made the argument for the game as #1 during my ChessVideos show, and now USCL Commissioner Greg Shahade has spoken out in its favor as well. (Note that Arun Sharma, USCL blogger and Vice-Commish or whatever his title is, also picked the game as his #1 choice.*) Here's what he has to say:

I think that awarding a game fewer points because one of the key moves was opening preparation is completely unprecedented in voting for "best game competitions". Also even after this novelty, black isn't totally lost, they can definitely put up a strong fight, and the game went on for 20-30 more moves, which Martinez conducted in a glamorous fashion. Imagine how Kasparov would have felt if he played a brilliant game and the judges discredited it because he found one strong and spectacular move at home and then won 30 moves later. I think if the players were Nakamura - Christiansen, instead of Martinez vs Zilberstein, this game would have won in a landslide.

I agree with Greg, but to be "fair and balanced" (to quote a slogan), the effect of the novelty** is a bit stronger than he claims. The game only went another 14 moves, and the last six were unnecessary. Also, it's highly unlikely that Martinez's preparation ended with 22.Bh6; that would be insane. It's reasonably likely that it continued to at least 28.Ng5+ as well, so Martinez might have made every meaningful move in his home prep. (If someone in the know can say exactly when his prep ended, that might be helpful.) I still think it deserved first place, but the amount of prep shouldn't be underestimated.

* Note that I'm happy to use Sharma as a supporting witness on those rare occasions when he agrees with me.

** Actually, it was Zilberstein who made the novelty on move 18, (dis)improving on a game they played the month before, but as everyone is referring to Martinez's 22nd move as the novelty I'll maintain that practice.

I recall promising not to address this topic anymore, but what I wish to say in this post goes in a completely different direction than the usual laments. There won't be any complaint about short draws, prearranged draws or spectator disappointment at the lack of an outright winner. Instead, I'll tell a little story with the moral at the end.

The year was 1985, and an ambitious teenager (me) was regularly taking the trip from Las Vegas to southern California to get in some games against strong opposition at Labate's Chess Center. Back then I worked the graveyard shift, and after working all night I drove to Anaheim and was paired with IM Kamran Shirazi in the first round. After a surprisingly easy win, my reward was Black against GM Larry Christiansen. Despite playing the seedy Hennig-Schara Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4?!/?) I obtained tons of play for my pawn. Christiansen cleverly sacrificed a piece to take the initiative over, and after a while I returned it (or he won it back). The end result of all our running around was an endgame with matched material and a symmetrical structure, and a draw was agreed.

Needless to say, this was a thrilling day for me. Despite having been up for over 30 hours in a row (I don't recommend that anyone follow my example, and I hasten to add that my drive to California occurred when I had plenty of sleep) I had beaten my first IM and drawn my first GM - and comfortably! Here's where it gets interesting, though: we had a post-mortem. While it was a complicated game, I felt through most of the game and especially at the end as if I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

As Christiansen started ripping through variations, however, the picture changed dramatically. It's not so much that I miscalculated - I don't recall having messed up any of the variations I examined during the game. No, the problem was that I saw almost nothing compared to him! Idea after idea poured out of my esteemed opponent, and after a few minutes of this I wondered how I drew with this being, who was clearly of a different species than me.

Of course, I've been on the Christiansen side of things too, where I drew a lower-rated player who seemed not to see anything during the game, but managed to draw just the same. And I bet most if not all of you have had the same experience, too. Of course, different players have different strengths. Christiansen is an exceptionally imaginative tactician even among grandmasters and undoubtedly finds brilliant ideas they overlook, too. But in the case of the 1985 editions of Mssrs. Christiansen and Monokroussos, it's not likely that there was any respect in which the latter player outshined his opponent.

The punchline, then, is this: it's a pity, perhaps, that one player can so outclass another and still not be able to win a game of chess. In the long run, his superiority will show, so maybe it's not that big a problem, and it's also not clear that there's any way to fix the problem without killing the patient (the game as we know it). I wouldn't describe this as the "draw death" of chess, but it does seem that the drawing margin is very large. Another possible diagnosis - a more optimistic one - is that much of chess skill is tacit knowledge. A player simply learns where the pieces go, and that feeling enables a player not to completely escape from tactical dangers and the need to calculate like a chess engine, but to go pretty far in that direction.

Two final comments. First, while it may be a pity that I was able to draw that game despite the great difference in strength, I don't have even the slightest regret about the result.

And second, a postscript. After defeating an IM and drawing a GM with no sleep, you'd imagine that defeating an expert the next day with lots of sleep would be a cinch. Nope! I only drew in round 3, but finished well with a win over a master in round 4, coming in second or third. (Christiansen won with 3.5/4, I think, and he might have been tied with one other player - I don't remember.)

If anyone can put me in contact with Robert Hurdle, that would be much appreciated. We played once in the early 80s (in the 1983 U.S. Open, round 10, to be specific) and I'd like to add that game to my records, if possible.

The field is set at last for this IM norm tournament! It starts Saturday, May 17 and runs through Friday, May 23. Here's the participant list, which was not only added to but also changed this morning (IM Amanov out, GM Laylo in):

GM Darwin Laylo
IM Angelo Young
IM Mark Ginsburg
FM Mehmed Pasalic
FM Tom Bartell
FM Dennis Monokroussos
FM Gauri Shankar
FM Aleksander Stamnov
Robert Loncarevic
Florentino Inumerable

First the results:

Gurevich - Kaidanov 0-1
Kudrin - Ivanov 1-0
Yermolinsky - Gulko 1/2-1/2
Ippolito - Onischuk 0-1
Shulman - Pruess 1-0
Kraai - Akobian 1/2-1/2
Becerra - Fedorowicz 1-0
Perelshteyn - Langer 1-0
Finegold - Ludwig 1/2-1/2
Shabalov - Kaufman 1-0
Friedel - Shankland 1-0
Vigorito - Galant 1-0

Then the pairings, with point totals in parentheses:

Kaidanov (2.0) - Kudrin (2.0)
Onischuk (1.5) - Perelshteyn (1.5)
Gulko (1.5) - Shulman (1.5)
Becerra (1.5) - Yermolinsky (1.5)
Ludwig (1.0) - Shabalov (1.0)
Akobian (1.0) - Gurevich (1.0)
Ivanov (1.0) - Friedel (1.0)
Kraai (1.0) - Finegold (1.0)
Fedorowicz (0.5) - Vigorito (1.0)
Pruess (0.5) - Ippolito (0.5)
Kaufman (0.0) - Langer (0.5)
Shankland (0.0) - Galant (0.0)

The tournament site is here, while you can replay the attractive but strange game Becerra-Fedorowicz here. Its attractiveness is self-explanatory, but the strange aspect comes from the loser, well-known as a theoretician, playing a line long considered very bad, seemingly without a new idea in mind. Another case of errare humanum est, I suppose.

Here's a neat little position, given yesterday, from the game Pavlov-Sidorchuk, Ukraine 2008:



Can White (to move) win here, and if so, how? Enlightenment, if needed, is here.

Victor Bologan, as seemingly everyone knew when looking at the earlier post. Here's the quotation, embedded in italics within the full paragraph from Bologan's Victor Bologan: Selected Games 1985-2004, p. 184:

My victory at Dortmund underscored the inequities of the tournament structure - there's no intermingling of the various rating groups. I can't recall a tournament in which, say, both Adams and Moiseenko played. Along the same lines, Kasimdzhanov's victory in Libya shows that there is not any great chasm in playing strength between the "elite" and us "mere mortals". There are many more than ten people who know how to play chess, and those ten would also find it more interesting to play against new opponents, rather than just incessantly playing each other.

The context of the quote was his surprise victory in Dortmund 2003, ahead of Anand, Kramnik, Radjabov and Leko. (Incidentally, another non-"elite" player, Naiditsch, won the event in 2005.) Note that Bologan isn't claiming that there's no gap between the super-tournament regulars and players like himself; what he denies is the presence of a "great chasm".

And this seems to be right. In events where the "mere mortals" are allowed in to take the scraps, they occasionally run off with the main course. Khalifman won the FIDE World Championship in 1999 and in two other events should have eliminated Anand from the competition. (And two other final four players from that event were also outsiders - Akopian and Nisipeanu.) Ponomariov wasn't really a favorite when he won in 2001 and Kasimdzhanov wasn't in 2005. In round-robins, Bologan and Naiditsch were surprises, too, and the examples can probably be multiplied with a little research. Maybe they can't (or at least don't) achieve those results as often as Anand and Kramnik, but they're strong enough to do it sometimes.

What should be done about it? More intermixing of the very top players with with the high-2600/low-2700 crowd is clearly what Bologan wants, and his rationale seems plausible. One possible difficulty is that there are so many of these second-tier players now that it's hard to give them all a chance to participate in super-tournaments. On the other hand, the number of elites is growing too, and the lack of sufficient country club events means that they have to go slumming from time to time. So maybe the problem is taking care of itself.

Without wishing to dispute the point of view expressed in our latest "Quotation Time" puzzle, Vladimir Kramnik is so far demonstrating a gap between himself and erstwhile (and probably future) 2700 player David Navara, winning the first two games of the Cez Chess Trophy event handily.

Here are the games.

Nothing like a rest day to kill the momentum! Ivanchuk only managed to draw against Radjabov; in fact, despite having the White pieces, he was even a little worse near the end. The Bulgarian contingent moved up in the meantime: Cheparinov won, with Black, against the slumping Bu Xiangzhi; more importantly, Topalov defeated Aronian (with White) to pull within a point of Ivanchuk.

Standings after Round 6:

1. Ivanchuk 5.5 (3140 TPR)
2. Topalov 4.5 (2929 TPR)
3. Cheparinov 3
4. Radjabov 2.5
5. Aronian 1.5
6. Bu Xiangzhi 1

Remarkably, neither Radjabov, Aronian nor Bu have won a single game.

Pairings for Round 7:

Ivanchuk - Topalov (The big game! If Topalov wins, it's a new tournament; if Ivanchuk wins, the tournament is essentially over.)
Radjabov - Bu Xiangzhi (I sense someone making it to 50% tomorrow)
Cheparinov - Aronian

Tournament site here; games with comments here.

Most of us probably don't think of Anatoly Karpov, the 12th World Champion, as a great attacking player. A positional player and endgame specialist, absolutely, but not really a master of attack. And this view is understandable. For one thing, with Garry Kasparov as his successor, almost anyone's chess will look a bit tame by comparison. And second, his strengths in positional and endgame play were so pronounced that it's understandable that he's best known for them.

Yet Karpov was (and is) capable of beautiful attacking play - have a look at his games against the Dragon Sicilian if you want confirmation of that thesis. In fact, examples can be multiplied without any difficulty, and we'll present one of his most famous attacking efforts this Wednesday on our ChessBase show. The game is his victory over Hungarian GM Gyula Sax from Linares 1983, and it has all the classic elements of the traditional attacking game. First, a sharp opening: Karpov plays the Keres Attack against Sax's Scheveningen Sicilian. Second, sacrifices: Karpov gave up a pawn and then the exchange for speculative prospects and to keep Black's king stuck in the center - and there are further sacrifices of commission and omission later. Finally, after some subtle play, the game concludes with a sacrifice and a king hunt - the ideal finish.

It's a game with both entertainment and instructional value, which makes spending some time taking a closer look a wonderful way to spend a Wednesday evening. The show starts at 9 p.m. ET and is free, and you can find directions for watching here. Hope to see you there!

I've already mentioned the Pivdenny Tournament which starts May 30 in Odessa, Ukraine, but there are other events on the calendar that have gone as yet unmentioned.

First, one that has already started, but is in need of a website: the Capablanca Memorial in Havana, Cuba. Usual suspects Lazaro Bruzon and Lenier Dominguez, the two strongest players in that country, are both playing, but the field includes other strong players like newly crowned European champion Sergei Tiviakov. There doesn't seem to be a tournament website for some reason, but Chess Today reports that this site has picked up the slack.

Another ongoing event is a strong open tournament in Baku - the President's Cup. Notable names include Loek van Wely, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Alexander Beliavsky, Ivan Sokolov, Vadim Milov, Evgeny Najer and Arkadij Naiditsch. (HT for this one and the next one too are again to Chess Today.)

Finally, the former (and future?) world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, faces off in an 8-game rapid match against Czech star David Navara starting tomorrow (today for many of you - Wednesday). The Cez Chess Trophy event takes place in Prague from the 14th to the 18th; I'm guessing they'll play two games a day with the 16th as a rest day.

Lots of chess, but don't look for me to cover all of it; I'll be playing in the 11th North American FIDE Invitational starting this upcoming Saturday and running through Friday.

There were a few higher-rated players nicked for draws, but the only higher-rated player to lose was defending champion Alexander Shabalov, who lost to another former champion, Alex Yermolinsky. That game, along with Dave Vigorito's unfortunate loss to Alexander Ivanov, can be replayed here, with my brief comments.

Round 1 Results:

1 Onischuk - Kraai 1/2-1/2
2 Yermolinsky - Shabalov 1-0
3 Kaidanov - Friedel 1-0
4 Fedorowicz - Shulman 1/2-1/2
5 Akobian - Ippolito 1/2-1/2
6 Pruess - Becerra 1/2-1/2
7 Ivanov - Vigorito 1-0
8 Ludwig - Perelshteyn 1/2-1/2
9 Gulko - Kaufman 1-0
10 Langer - Finegold 1/2-1/2
11 Gurevich - Shankland 1-0
12 Galant - Kudrin 0-1 (the only win for Black!)

Round 2 Pairings:

1 Gurevich, Dmitry 2594 - Kaidanov, Gregory 2697
2 Kudrin, Sergey 2588 - Ivanov, Alexander 2628
3 Yermolinsky, Alex 2568 - Gulko, Boris 2623
4 Ippolito, Dean 2512 - Onischuk, Alexander 2728
5 Shulman, Yury 2676 - Pruess, David 2497
6 Kraai, Jesse 2569 - Akobian, Varuzhan 2666
7 Becerra, Julio 2648 - Fedorowicz, John 2514
8 Perelshteyn, Eugene 2626 - Langer, Michael 2307
9 Finegold, Benjamin 2613 - Ludwig, Daniel 2429
10 Shabalov, Alexander 2709 - Kaufman, Larry 2398
11 Friedel, Josh 2539 - Shankland, Sam 2299
12 Vigorito, David 2439 - Galant, Sergey 2176

Tournament site.

This fascinating position, with Black to move, has been the subject of three earlier posts (1, 2 and 3):



Black can win the a-pawn right away with 1...Bd8 followed by ...Bxa5, or with 1...Bd6 first to induce the h-pawn's advance and only then ...Bc7 and ...Bxa5. We looked at the first try in the first post and the second in the next two; it turns out that both are inadequate to draw, though White must display real ingenuity to bring home the point. That leaves a third possibility, 1...Bc5, and only after the f-pawn moves to try 2...Bd6, 3...Bc7 and 4...Bxa5.

That line also fails, with White again needing some brilliant play in the main line. That's Black's last try in the pawn ending, but there's still another question to be addressed: can Black avoid ...Bxa5 and hold the bishop ending? Finally, I've conveniently ignored a much simpler way for White to win all of the pawn endings, a maneuver that renders all the brilliant finesses irrelevant. The conclusion is therefore that the diagram position above fails as a study, because White a second, simple and prosaic win. Still, it almost works, and as there are some very nice lines, I'd like to think that a serious study composer could make something out of this. Ideas?

Meanwhile, you can replay the 1...Bc5 analysis here.

This time around, historian Edward Winter offers a number of neat old positions to solve. The first is especially well known (but not for the reason you might initially think if you're attempting to solve it for the first time), and reminds me of the famous "improvement" of Nunn* and many others to Fischer-Bolbochan, Stockholm Interzonal 1962.



This position corresponds to a variation in Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games that arises after 35...Kh8 (instead of 35...Rxf4 as played) 36.Nxg6+ Qxg6 37.Rxg5 Rf1+ 38.Ka2 Qxf4 39.Qh3+ Kg8. Here we have the diagram position, and Fischer concludes his line 40.Qxf1 "leads to a win." Nunn, who typeset an algebraic notation reprinting for Batsford in the mid-90s, made a double error. First, he offered 40.Qh7+ Kf8 41.Qh8+ Qg8 42.Qh6+ Qg7 43.Qxg7 mate as an improvement (it's not; why not?); second and more seriously, this line wasn't offered in a footnote, an endnote or an editorial bracket; rather, it was entered into the text proper as if Fischer himself had written this!

No one will be surprised to read that Fischer went nuclear over this, and you can read all about it here - and should, too - as the same Edward Winter with whom this post began demonstrates both his accuracy as a researcher and his incisiveness as a writer. But don't go there until you first figure out the problem in Nunn et al's pseudo-correction, and don't forget to visit the Winter article on ChessBase.com when you're done.


* While I absolutely disagree with some of the decisions Nunn has made in his old editorial work for Batsford (he made similar changes to Chernev's old book Logical Chess Move by Move), his own books are excellent - as are many of the books he oversees with Gambit Publishing. So please don't take the above as anything like a blanket condemnation of his work, implicit or otherwise.

I believe the following applies, mutatis mutandis, all the way down the food chain:

Kasimdzhanov's victory in Libya shows that there is not any great chasm in playing strength between the "elite" and..."mere mortals". There are many more than ten people who know how to play chess, and those ten would also find it more interesting to play against new opponents, rather than just incessantly playing each other."

Who said it, what was the context, and what do you think of it? The answers to the first two questions will be given (or more likely confirmed) in a day or two.

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!

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.

Coming into the last round, two players (Wang Yue and Vugar Gashimov) led with three players (Magnus Carlsen, Alexander Grischuk and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov) just half a point behind. These were the key pairings:

Wang Yue - Mamedyarov
Grischuk - Radjabov
Adams - Gashimov
Bacrot - Carlsen

In the Wang Yue - Mamedyarov game, the first-named player came out of the opening with a slight edge. A win would have given him clear first (and a loss would have vaulted Mamedyarov into a first-place tie), but though he tried for quite a while he was unable to increase it and the game ended in a draw. The other leader, Gashimov, played the Petroff against Adams, and that game never saw him come anywhere near an advantage. Adams had a tiny edge most of the way, but nothing serious.

Now to the rest of the chase pack, Grischuk and Carlsen. Grischuk, like Wang Yue against Mamedyarov, obtained a stable edge against Radjabov, but he too was unable to turn it into something tangible. Carlsen, with Black, didn't obtain anything special in the opening, but he did achieve something none of the other players did: a strategically complex position. Bacrot chose the Nimzo/Queen's Indian hybrid, where White obtains the bishop pair and some extra space but is saddled with doubled c-pawns. Carlsen further sharpened the play with a dynamic exchange sacrifice on move 28. In fact, the sac seems to have given him the advantage, and - excepting a blunder on move 37 - his technique the rest of the way was excellent.

In the other games, Karjakin and Kamsky drew, Svidler continued his comeback with a win over Inarkiev, while Cheparinov's comeback suffered a final setback with a loss to Navara. Here, then, are the final standings (ranked by TPR):

1-3. Gashimov, Wang Yue, Carlsen 8 (of 13)
4-5. Mamedyarov, Grischuk 7.5
6-7. Adams, Svidler 6.5
8-10. Radjabov, Kamsky, Karjakin 6
11-12. Cheparinov, Navara 5.5
13-14. Bacrot, Inarkiev 5

The tournament website is here, while the Bacrot-Carlsen game, with my light commentary, is here. I'll also take this opportunity to say that although I still think Karjakin doesn't receive as much press as he ought to, the significant disparity in his results vs. Carlsen's this year leads me to retract, for now, any claims of parity between the two young super-GMs.

This has absolutely nothing to do with chess, but it's such a bizarre story I thought I'd post on it anyway. See Virginia Man Killed in Civil War Cannonball Blast, and let's hope the Revolutionary War doesn't take any more lives.

The players had been getting draw-happy the last few rounds of this World Cup event, but not today. Five of the seven games were decisive, and the two draws went 56 and 92 moves - the latter to bare kings. Better still, the games were very entertaining and generally well-played. Carlsen defeated Adams in brilliant technical fashion, spiced with a very nice combination severely punishing Adams' 26th move. Cheparinov-Karjakin was less exciting but a very good fight. Karjakin was better throughout, but couldn't convert an extra pawn in a rook ending, and the game was drawn in 92.

The game of the day was Gashimov-Grischuk. Grischuk had been leading with Wang Yue, but with Gashimov just half a point behind his position was hardly safe. Grischuk repeated a dangerous line of the Steinitz Deferred that he used four rounds before, and Gashimov was ready with a strong novelty. Early indications are that Black has serious problems after Gashimov's 12.Qd3, and even if an antidote will be found, the practical problems were too great, and White won convincingly.

The other leader, Wang Yue, also had Black, and he too had some trouble. Inarkiev was a pawn up by move 27, but despite the presence of all three sets of heavy pieces, the drawing tendency of the opposite-colored bishops proved the most important factor - Wang Yue held.

Svidler has complained of poor form throughout the event, but he bounced back today with a win over Kamsky. For a while it looked as if nothing special was happening, but around move 30 it started becoming apparent that White (Kamsky) had real difficulties with his pawn structure. Svidler finished with a series of power shots demonstrating the power of his central pawns and the bishop pair.

Mamedyarov-Bacrot was a lively game, where Bacrot's bishop pair fully compensated for his slightly weak pawn structure. This remained the case until move 37, when Mamedyarov was forced to give up the exchange for a pawn. Black's bishop pair was gone, but the balance - a dynamic balance - remained for a long time. Finally, around move 50, Mamedyarov started to get the upper hand, but Bacrot was still in range of the draw until an error on move 66. Thanks to the nice idea of 70.Ne6 + 71.Nc5 (probably what Bacrot missed), Mamedyarov was able to win the game.

Finally, Radjabov-Navara was a thrilling game for the spectators, but painful for Radjabov. He attacked Navara with everything, including the kitchen sink, and achieved a winning position as a result. When it was time to cash it in, however, he missed several strong continuations, but was winning until his 28th move. Whether he missed 28.Qe5 or his opponent's defensive rejoinder (28.Qg5? Qxg2+!), the lion's share of his advantage was gone. There was no need for him to lose after that, and if it hadn't been for a sense of what he had lost beforehand, I suspect he wouldn't have lost. Humans aren't computers, however, and Radjabov blundered on move 38 and lost.

Standings after Round 12:
1-2. Gashimov, Wang Yue 7½
3-5. Carlsen, Mamedyarov, Grischuk 7
6. Adams 6
7-11. Cheparinov, Kamsky, Radjabov, Karjakin, Svidler 5½
12-13. Bacrot, Inarkiev 5
14. Navara 4½.

With more than a third of the field in contention for first place, we should be in for a terrific last round. Here are the pairings:

Karjakin - Kamsky
Navara - Cheparinov
Grischuk - Radjabov
Adams - Gashimov
Bacrot - Carlsen
Wang Yue - Mamedyarov
Svidler - Inarkiev

This is a fairly substantial interview, as these things go, in part due to the interviewer's attempt to rile Anand up with some now ancient comments by Kramnik. (Note that you can watch the interview, too, on the same page.)

HT: Chess Today

With two rounds left in the first of the year's FIDE Grand Prix tournaments, the event in Baku has two leaders: Alexander Grischuk and now Wang Yue. Wang Yue defeated Svidler on the white side of a Gruenfeld, while all the other leaders drew their games. Only one other game had a decisive result, and that was the very strange contest between tailenders David Navara and Ernesto Inarkiev - have a look at the video on this page.

Standings after Round 11:

1-2. Wang Yue, Grischuk 7
3. Gashimov 6.5
4-6. Mamedyarov, Carlsen, Adams 6
7-8. Radjabov, Kamsky 5.5
9-11. Bacrot, Karjakin, Cheparinov 5
12-13. Svidler, Inarkiev 4.5
14. Navara 3.5

I spent the day playing in a team tournament, and with a 4-0 score started to recoup the points lost a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. Two opponents weren't so highly rated (1555 and 1676), but wins over a 2100 and especially a 2330 were both more challenging and satisfying. The latter game was very difficult, as I was a bit worse for quite a while. At a couple of points I might have been losing (though I'm not sure), and I was in serious time trouble for a long time (in a sudden death time control with no increments or delay), but I kept scrapping.

One moment near the end was amusing. After my opponent made a series of moves that looked like he was converting his advantage into a simple win, I made a move that suddenly demonstrated that I had counterplay and an unloseable position. This realization was just settling in, and was confirmed by my opponent, who reacted with a start. Had he moved quickly and offered a draw, it might have been accepted, given my lack of time and that I had been suffering for so many moves. Fortunately for me, he started thinking, or lamenting, and that gave me time to realize that my position was now winning, and despite my lack of time I was able to convert the advantage. A tough loss for my strong opponent, and a somewhat fortunate win for me - but at least I did something to bring about my good luck.

Happily, my team also won, so a good time was had by all. Joy is always better when shared!

Ok, that's an exaggeration. But a reader of this blog found the opposite-colored bishop ending we recently covered in some detail sufficiently fascinating that he re-posted it over on chess.com. (Hopefully he'll provide a direct link to one of the particular posts at some point, not just to the blog per se - maybe he can do that if/when he presents (possible) solutions.)

Update: The direct link has been provided - thank you. Also, those interested in discussing the ending over there should check out this link instead of the one above. (Scroll down that page to read and offer comments.)

If you read Russian, click here for much more information. If, like me, you can't, then here's the quick listing with vote totals, thanks to Chess Today:

1 Aronian-Anand 1-0 (199 points)
2 Kramnik-Morozevich 1-0 (138 points)
3 Morozevich-Sakaev 1-0 (135 points)
4 Cheparinov-Navara 0-1 (116 points)
5 Morozevich-Ivanchuk 0-1 (104 points)
6 Sargissian-Lupulescu 1-0 (99 points)
7 Shirov-Radjabov 0-1 (97 points)
8 Morozevich-Akopian 1-0 (94 points)
9 Lysyj-Ehlvest 1-0 (80 points)
10 Grischuk-Svidler ½-½ (76 points)

Material for future ChessBase shows? Maybe!

From the game Alekhine - J. Morrison, Manchester (simul) 1923:



It's White to move, but not necessarily to win. Some analysis will be presented at some point the next few days, but see what you can come up with in the meantime - it's a really fascinating position. For those of you who would like a hint at a couple of places to start investigating, click below.

I just finished watching a ChessBase DVD by Rustam Kasimdzhanov on the French - one of three - and I was pleasantly surprised. GM Kasimdzhanov, a former FIDE world champ, has a 3-disk series on meeting the French, and the second disk examines 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc3 7.Be3. His coverage comprises 14 clips that together run 3 hours and 17 minutes: one clip is an Intro, one a brief theoretical overview, 12 clips covering 11 games, and a final summary "Outro".

The disc is a success in three respects (I will note a couple of limitations later). First and foremost, Kasimdzhanov does an excellent job of illustrating the importance for White of the d4 square, and in demonstrating how he can use it (especially with a good Nd4 vs. bad light-squared bishop) to win thematic French endings. The careful viewer will not only learn some theory, but will really understand how to win (some of) the resulting positions. (Note: this thematic ending is far from the only idea discussed on the disk, but it receives coverage in keeping with its importance.)

Second, Kasimdzhanov does a decent job of presenting in outline the important variations White needs to know. Of course he can't cover everything, but much of what is important is at least touched upon. The viewer playing White is unlikely to see anything concepts after 7.Be3 he won't have been prepared for by the video's host.

Third, it's a fantastic source of really beautiful games. Many of the 11 games were new to me, and even just for the pleasure they provided the disk was worth my time. Kasimdzhanov's choices were brilliant, as the games were not only extraordinary but thematic as well.

Now for the limitations. First, and this is true of most video DVDs not supplemented by databases, the total amount of information is far less than one gets from a book or a database. Of course, one doesn't want too much information, because then one isn't sure what to focus on and what to disregard, but for strong club players (approx. 2000 and up) a bit more info is probably necessary.

Second, Kasimdzhanov doesn't say too much about what White ought to avoid. He does present many of Black's ideas, but I don't recall any Black fantasies/White horror stories that are the counterparts to the Nd4 vs. bad bishop White fantasy/Black disaster. More specifically but along the same lines, Kasimdzhanov sometimes omits mention of theoretical improvements for Black. Here's one example, albeit one that's probably not relevant to his repertoire.

After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Be3 cxd4 8.Nxd4 Bc5 9.Qd2 O-O 10.O-O-O a6 11.h4 (Note: Kasimdzhanov's "official" recommendation here is 11.Qf2) 11...Nxd4 12.Bxd4 b5 13.Rh3 b4 14.Na4 Bxd4 15.Qxd4 f6 16.Qxb4 fxe5 17.Qd6 Qf6 18.f5 Qh6+ 19.Kb1, he continues to present the game Kasparov-Short, Amsterdam (VSB Euwe Memorial) 1994, which was brilliantly won by White. Kasimdzhanov is rightly enthusiastic about Kasparov's idea with 18.f5!!, and continues to present the game, which went 19...Rxf5 20.Rf3!! Rxf3 21.gxf3. White is a pawn down with a bad kingside structure, but Black's retarded development and White's attacking prospects given him the advantage. What Kasimdzhanov doesn't mention is the move 19...Nf6!, which has been played quite a few times since Kasparov-Short (most prominently by Stellwagen and Brynell), and Black's results have been excellent. Even if it turns out that White can prove an advantage there, it's not the sort of position one can figure out on spec.

I would suggest, therefore, that if you're over 2000 OTB or a correspondence player, you supplement this disk with something else, like a quality database and/or a book like volume 6 in fellow former FIDE champ Alexander Khalifman's "Anand" series. But for just about anyone else, this DVD will give you all you need to face 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 with confidence. Highly recommended.

[Full disclosure: I do a weekly show with ChessBase, so I have some motivation not to write a negative review. However, there isn't and never has been any pressure on me to write any reviews at all, so my positive feelings about this disk are genuine and unsolicited.]

Emil Sutovsky had been in first in every round, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, but the last round was his Waterloo. Going into the last round of the European Individual Chess Championship, eight players were tied for first. In three of the four games, a draw was agreed in fewer than 12 moves. In the Tiviakov-Sutovsky game, however, White went for the gusto, and he won. Tiviakov has occasionally been in the elite (he was a Candidate in the 1990s), but this is his best result in several years. Congratulations to him, and to all the players who have qualified for the World Cup - or rather, will qualify. There are ties for some of the spots, and these will be determined by playoffs tomorrow. So here are the not-quite-final standings - only #1 is in fact #1; the other places (not just those for the World Cup) will also be settled tomorrow.

1. Tiviakov 8.5 (of 11)
2-10. Volkov, Tregubov, Movsesian, L'Ami, Vachier-Lagrave, Grachev, Baklan, Kryvoruchko, Nyback 8
11-34. Sutovsky, Laznicka, Pavasovic, Efimenko, Papaioannu, Khalifman, Najer, Rauf Mamedov, Akopian, Areshchenko, Fressinet, Smirin, Lupulescu, Bologan, Khismatullin, Galkin, Gustafsson, Sargissian, Andreikin, Hracek, Roiz, Vajda, Markowski, M. Gurevich 7.5

There was a concurrent women's event; clear first went to Kateryna Lahno with 8.5/11, half a point ahead of Ushenina, Zhukova, Cmilyte, Mkrtchian, Skripchenko and Dembo.


In the FIDE Grand Prix, no game was shorter than 42 moves, but 6 of the 7 contests were drawn anyway. Only Cheparinov won, defeating Radjabov on the black side of a Caro-Kann. The standings at the top are therefore unchanged, but Cheparinov can take solace that he has recovered from his 0-4 start to reach a 4.5-5.5 score and a TPR almost equal to his rating. Maybe all those years working with Topalov have led him to resemble him as a streaky player too.

Standings after Round 10:

1. Grischuk 6.5
2-3. Wang Yue, Gashimov 6
4-6. Mamedyarov, Carlsen, Adams 5.5
7-9. Radjabov, Bacrot, Kamsky 5
10-12. Svidler, Karjakin, Cheparinov 4.5
13. Inarkiev 3.5
14. Navara 3

N.B. On the tournament site, there's a reasonably substantial video interview with Gata Kamsky. I'll draw your attention to one of his comments, as it piggybacks on a recent post. When discussing how kids should study the game, he says they should begin with the ending, as the foundation of everything. Then they should turn to the middlegame, and only afterward proceed to studying openings. Very good advice, even if book publishers don't want to believe it.

Finally, here's the Tiviakov-Sutovsky game that gave the winner the prestigious title of European champion.

The next time you're in solitary confinement, there's nothing like a game of chess to while away the time.

Link.

On a completely non-chess related note, but also from today's Wall Street Journal op-ed pages, here's a darkly humorous reflection on eating one's national emblem. Mmm...kangaroo.

After today, we're down to one remaining round at the European Championships, but for many of the top boards the event already seems to have ended. Of the four boards featuring players tied for first place, all the games were drawn and only one made it past move 12. It wasn't too much different in the next score group, but Kryvoruchko quick win over Smirin brought him into a tie for first, while Caruana's loss to Bologan (who was in the third score group) saw the players switch places. So with one round to go, we have an eight-way tie for first: Movsesian, Volkov, Sutovsky, Baklan, L'Ami, Tiviakov, Tregubov and Kryvoruchko.

As for the FIDE Grand Prix, the players are enjoying their second and final rest day.

In the countdown to the US Chess League's 2007 game of the year, we've reached the second of our prize-winning games, the 4th place contest between Larry Christiansen and Patrick Wolff. The former won a very nice attacking game, which I've covered on my ChessVideos show for this week. It's free and available on demand; just go here and start it up.