The Chess Mind

...can be found here. My thoughts on the match are pretty close to Nunn's - maybe the match could have been a bit less lopsided, but the man-machine enterprise is essentially a doomed enterprise for our side.

(Goldowsky makes a similar point, but the comparison with sprinters was a bit funny for a couple of reasons. First, while both sprinters and (human) chess players have biological limitations, the sprinter's limitation ensures a maximum performance far below what's absolutely possible. The chess player's mental limitations do not clearly prevent him from playing a perfect game, or at least one close enough to perfection to stay within the game's sizable drawing margin. The second amusing point was the claim that sprinters top out at 10 m.p.h. We humans are slow, but not that slow: even top marathoners exceed 10 m.p.h., while the sprint record is at least 27 m.p.h. - see here. Quibbles aside, I think he's right: it's time to put the man vs. machine matches to bed.)

I've had the book for a while, but I had forgotten about this quote until I re-read it today:

Mark [Dvoretsky] has developed a method that can catapult a talented player from Elo 2200 to grandmaster level in 4 to 5 years. (From Artur Yusupov's Forward to Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual)

As with the Podgaets quote cited in an earlier post, there's a precondition for the claim - not just anyone is promised the GM title. Still, it's good news for 2200s (or only talented 2200s? It's not clear from the quote whether "talented" modifies "2200" or is defined by that number) - at least with 4-5 years spare years for catapulting.

I'm not sure I'd take that as a guarantee, but I do think that if those strong enough to use Dvoretsky's books do so in earnest, they will get significantly stronger.

Donninger, the chief programmer of the Hydra chess computer, deserves all credit for his part in producing that beast. After five games in their six-game match, Hydra is decapitating poor Adams (how else would a Hydra accumulate all those heads?) by a frightening 4.5-.5 margin.

Perhaps all this success has gone to his head or he has been drinking too much celebratory champagne - at least if the ChessBase news item has accurately quoted him:

In our quest to prove the power of Hydra we could not have hoped for a better outcome. This is a far more difficult opponent than Kasparov, and Adams has played extremely well. So we are very pleased with the performance of our machine.

Adams is a far more difficult opponent than Kasparov? Is he talking about IM Sergey Kasparov? With all due respect to Adams - and he deserves a tremendous amount of respect, as twice nearly the FIDE champ and one of the world's super-elite for a decade - the claim is absurd, to use the mildest word I can think of.

But let's pretend it's a prima facie viable claim, and examine the evidence.

Kasparov: World champion for 15 years.
Adams: Never world champion.

K: Highest-rated player in the world for more than 20 years.
A: Never in the top 3. (Some websites claim he reached #3 in 2002, but that's false - go here and see for yourself.)

K: Highest-rated player of all time.
A: See previous comparison.

K: Currently rated 2812
A: Currently rated 2737

K: Against Adams his record is +13 -2 =10 (one loss was in a simul); +10-0=9 since 1995.
A: Invert the preceding.

Okay, that's somewhat unconvincing as a pro-Adams argument, but maybe Donninger thinks not that Adams is a tougher opponent per se, but only as a foe for computers. Such a claim is less obviously false, if only because Adams' past track record against computers is relatively minimal. But let's at least take a look at what evidence there is, and see if there's even a little case to be made. (The games are included are G/25 or slower.)

Kasparov:

vs. Deep Thought, 1989: won 2-0
vs. Fritz 4, 1995: won 1.5-.5
vs. Deep Blue, 1996: won 4-2
vs. Deep Blue, 1997: lost 3.5-2.5
vs. Deep Junior, 2003: drew 3-3
vs. X3D Fritz, 2003: drew 2-2

Adams:

vs. Fritz 6, 1999, lost 1.5-.5
vs. Deep Junior, 2000: won 2-1
vs. Pocket Fritz, 2001: won 2-0 (note: Pocket Fritz, while a very neat little program for the Pocket PC, only played 2300 chess at best: great for the non-professional, but not of the caliber of "regular" Fritz (or more accurately, Shredder, since Pocket "Fritz" was the work of the Shredder programmer))

I'll concede that these stats don't reveal a clear advantage for Kasparov, in part because the events and programs were to some degree incommensurable. But they certainly don't offer any advantage to Adams, either, and thus no grounds for rejecting the non-computer-based conclusions above. A claim that might be true is that Adams performs closer to his peak than Kasparov does when each faces computers, but that's a different matter.

Adams is a great player, and the Hydra team's accomplishment is already a remarkable one. Why the preposterous embellishment - especially when no one is likely to believe it? In fact, Adams himself doesn't believe it: as Mig reports it, Adams expected to have a tough time, as Hydra is better than Fritz and Junior, while Kasparov is better than him.

Oops.

Though the film came out in 2003 and has been available on DVD in Europe for over a year, "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" has only just become available on DVD here in the U.S. of A.

The film takes a dramatic look back at Kasparov's infamous 3.5-2.5 1997 match loss to IBM's "Deep Blue" computer from a largely pro-Kasparov perspective. The two culprits of the match loss, from Kasparov's point of view, were (alleged) human intervention and the IBM team's psychological warfare at his expense. I'll discuss each in turn.

1. Human Intervention?

In 1996, Kasparov lost game 1 of his match with an earlier version of Deep Blue, won game 2, and after a pair of draws, won two more games against the computer, and very easily at that. Having won the match 4-2, and having then won the first game of the 1997 match in good style, things seemed to be completely under control.

Then came game 2. The computer outplayed Kasparov on the White side of a main line Ruy Lopez, and after move 26 the following position arose:



Black is in trouble here, as he is getting squished in a position devoid of counterplay. Kasparov has a moment of hope here, as White can now win a couple of pawns with 36.Qb6 Rd8 37.axb5 Rab8 38.Qxa6, but this will allow Black to gain some counterplay with 38...e4. It may or may not be enough, but it gives Black a chance to save the game. Note: there's nothing clearly wrong with 36.Qb6. There aren't any hidden tactical points at the end of a combination that win for Black or even force a draw. White really does win material and maintains an overall advantage, at least as far as the computer can tell; it's just that Black gets some counterplay as a result.

Instead, Deep Blue played 36.axb5 axb5 37.Be4!, immediately snuffing out Black's hopes for counterplay by preventing the ...e4 advance and thereby sealing in the Black pieces. It's an uncontroversially strong move, but what makes it remarkable here is that the computer prefers it to the safe win of two pawns!

That was disturbing enough, but things got worse.



In this position, Deep Blue played the seemingly safer 44.Kf1, preventing the Black queen from coming in to f2, and after 44...Rb8 45.Ra6 Kasparov resigned.

Unfortunately, as Kasparov found out in the evening between games two and three, Black has a draw in the final position: 45...Qe3! 46.Qxd6 Re8! 47.h4 h5! 48.Bf3 Qc1+ 49.Kf2 Qd2+ 50.Be2 Qf4+ with perpetual. Paradoxically, 44.Kh1 would have won easily, as 44...Rb8 45.Ra6 Qe3 46.Qxd6 Re8 47.Ra1! Qxe4 48.Ra7+ Kg8 49.Qd7 is terminal, but after 44.Kf1 it doesn't work: 47.Ra1 Qxe4 48.Ra7+ Kg8 49.Qd7 Qd3+ with a perpetual.

Between these two surprises - the computer's playing a deeply human move on move 37 and then missing a "simple" perpetual check a few moves later - Kasparov concluded that something was rotten in IBM land. Likening Deep Blue's play in game two to Maradona's famous "hand of God" goal in the 1986 World Cup - a blatant accusation of cheating - Kasparov for the first time requested Deep Blue's game two "logs" - printouts of the computer's thinking - in order to make sense of these two shocking moments.

Psychological Warfare

The IBM team was understandably angered by Kasparov's accusation (assuming, of course, that they're innocent!), and was a bit less than forthcoming with those logs. One reason was a concern that it might give Kasparov sufficient insight into the way the computer evaluated different positions, but it also became a way of further unbalancing Kasparov's psyche, as they actually admit. What Kasparov had thought was a friendly match, done in the interest of science (as well as mutual pocket-lining, no doubt), had turned into a mega-corporation's assault on him, the victim, in IBM's efforts to win at any price.

This was Kasparov's perception, at least, and the filmmakers seem happy to encourage this view as well. One silly technique, repeated ad nauseaum, are various shots of a replica of the "Turk", a 19th century gizmo that purported to be a chess-playing machine, but was in fact operated by a human scrunched up in a small compartment under the board. (Just the way Deep Blue seemed to be the one playing 37.Be4, but "really" wasn't. Get it? Subtle, right?)

Film-making techniques aside, do we have any reason to accept this perspective on what happened as the objective truth of the matter? To take the easier part first, I think the psychological warfare charge can be accepted straight away, as even the IBM team acknowledges that they were trying to psych him out. It's a bit funny to me that Kasparov is complaining about such a thing, however, as he was known throughout almost his entire career for both his psychological toughness and for himself psyching out many of his opponents.

(An example: I once saw him give a simul to a group of 30 or 40 players with ratings under 1800 - most of them young children - and even in that setting he worked himself up into a competitive fervor beforehand, pacing like a caged lion. For the first go-round, he'd shake hands and flash his smile on cue for the pictures, but after that his expression was deadly serious. Sometimes he'd even glare, as if he were playing not kids with ratings in the 1400-1600 range, but a team of young Azeri GMs.)

About the cheating charge, I find it very unlikely, and certainly not well-substantiated by the limited evidence of the two iffy moves. One complaint Kasparov raises is that in game 1, the computer showed little regard for king safety, but in game two, things had changed.

Talk of "king safety" as an evaluation function seems to me far too coarse-grained. There are thousands of factors that go into the computer's evaluation of a given position, none of which translates directly into our general concept of king safety. The computer will handle some positions in a way we'd deem overly cautious with respect to its king, and on other occasions strike us as foolhardy. The types of positions in games 1 and 2 were just too different to draw reasonable comparisons, in my opinion.

And speaking of king safety, how are to account for White's blundering into a potential perpetual check? I'm afraid it's just our old friend, the horizon effect, an example of which can be seen in this recent post. As in that study, White can drag out the perpetual through a number of permutations before any position gets repeated a third time. The computer can't just "see" that a repetition will be forced; it has to calculate that the position will occur. Altogether, I believe it takes around 40 ply after 43...Qb6+ to force a three-time repetition, and that's a huge search depth even for Deep Blue.

The aftermath of this game was quite strange, and not adequately dealt with at all by the film. One gets the sense that the match was essentially lost at this point, and that Kasparov's terrible game 6 loss, after three intervening draws, was the inevitable result of IBM's psychological warfare. Yet Kasparov had very good winning chances in each of games 3-5, especially in game 4. Had he won any of those games, the match would have almost surely ended in at least a draw, and recent chess history might have been very different.

Is the DVD worth getting? That depends. It's certainly no documentary, it's short on hard facts, and the repeated cut-away shots of the Turk leave me a bit unsure as to whether the director has a cornball approach to movie-making, thinks the audience is really too stupid to get Kasparov's charge, or is mocking Kasparov by showing images of skullduggery everywhere.

If you're interested in seeing some historical footage (including some clips of Kasparov from the 1980s), listening to the principals reminisce about a very high-profile moment in chess history, and want to encourage filmmakers to believe that there's an audience for chess movies, then buy or rent it.

The DVD comes with a few extras: a director's commentary, a very brief "biography" of Kasparov, a painfully slow replay of the match's games with what I assume is ChessMaster's voiced commentary, and 8 hours' access to a restricted version of ChessMaster 10000.

(Long aside: It's a very strong engine, but if you're in the market for a chess engine, my recommendation is for Shredder 9, for three reasons.

First, Shredder has dominated the SSDF rating lists for years - see here.

Second, while both CM 10000 and Shredder connect you to chess servers, there's no comparison between the two on that score. The ChessBase (the parent company of Shredder) playchess.com server is very well-attended and titled players are there just about 24 hours a day - even Anand and Kasparov have shown up, and I've played Mickey Adams, Yasser Seirawan, Hikaru Nakamura and other strong GMs there. They also broadcast live events and feature delightfully entertaining instructional shows (like mine!).

My trip to the CM 10000 online server, on the other hand, was like whistling in a ghost town, but, to be fair, it might be that those on the 8-hour plan are restricted from seeing all the real action. (If that's the case, please let me know, as while I hope to make the best case I can for ChessBase over ChessMaster, I don't want to do so at the cost of the truth.)

Third, there's a compatibility issue. ChessBase is the leader in chess software, and by purchasing Shredder, you have the ability to handle and interact with any other ChessBase databases you may purchase. I assume (but don't know) that CM can handle .pgn files, but I'd be shocked if it could handle .cbv and other ChessBase files.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I work for ChessBase! That said, I purchased lots of ChessBase software for many years prior to joining them, so the foregoing is much more a case of my putting my mouth where my money is, not shameless corporate shilling. Nevertheless, I believe in full disclosure, so take that into account.)

See here.

In brief, the United States Chess Federation has decided to endorse an unproven drug that allegedly speeds up reaction times from a company that has been fined in the past for misleading advertising. (No word on whether the decision to endorse the drug was made before or after sampling said product.)

Humor aside, I have my doubts about all the hand-wringing by Polgar and her blog's commentators. No doubt this product and company are iffy at best, but:

1. Such drugs are coming and may very well prove efficacious. Beating up on the USCF and the purveyors of the particular drug may be appropriate and fun, but misses the larger picture.

2. We already tell kids to do all sorts of things to enhance their performance: eat right, exercise, and take vitamins. It may well be that this particular product is 21st century snake oil, but if there's a product that does work and doesn't have adverse side effects, what's the problem? That it's not "natural"? Neither are multi-vitamins, genetically-modified foods nor many other things we ingest on a daily basis.

3. How does this differ in principle from chess players buzzing themselves on coffee or other caffeinated beverages?

Please note: I'm not endorsing the product in question, not endorsing experimenting with illicit performance-enhancing drugs of any sort, and not recommending throwing away one's money and risking one's health on something so trivial as - allegedly - slightly improving one's speed of calculating variations. But I am saying that there are interesting and important issues lurking in the neighborhood that their pile-on has neglected.

There's an interesting article up on the ChessBase news page entitled "Give up Western Chess - play Chinese Chess instead!"

The article is part one of an interview with David H. Li, who not only advocates that westerners consider the Chinese version of the game, but argues that it as superior to the game we know and (most of the time) love.

Li makes many interesting claims of varying plausibility, but I'll limit my comments to the following passages:

[1] Professor David H. Li: Western Chess pays too much attention to the Queen, as the most powerful piece on the board. Even worse: since a Pawn can be promoted to be a Queen, Western Chess pays too much attention to the Pawn as well. Neither rule makes any sense, if one views chess as a kind of war simulation game. There has been one game, dubbed the “Game of the Century” (that is to say: the 20th century), featuring Bobby Fischer who commands the black army and who is battling Donald Byrne at the 1956 U.S. Open. During that very encounter Fischer sacrifices his Queen, allowing himself to gain tempo as well as positional advantage to produce a mate in due course. I do suspect that the Queen sacrifice has been the sole reason for this game having gained that much fame. In honour of that single-minded focus on the Queen on the part of Western Chess, I am proposing a new name for Western Chess: “Queen-Qi”, thereby corresponding to the Chinese version of chess, “XiangQi”.

[2] Professor Li: Your examples are only underscoring the pretence that Western Chess – or QueenQi – is supposed to be a war-simulation game. Conforming to a recent book, “Birth of the Chess Queen” by Marilyn Yalom of Stanford University, the special power given to the Queen in Western Chess was mainly due to Queen Isabella, who ruled Spain in the Middle Ages. With a few exceptions in the several millennia when wars were fought: How many times do you see a female commander-in-chief?!

First, I don't understand what it means to say that Western chess (henceforth simply "chess") pays too much attention to the queen. Chess is a game, a human artifact, and we can create a game to have any rules we want. If we enjoy the game, we'll keep playing; if not, then it's on to the next one. But there's no question of "cutting nature at its joints" here.

Second: perhaps what Li thinks when he says that the queen receives too much attention is that there's something deeply unrealistic about her powers, from a military perspective. As Li asks, rhetorically, "How many times do you see a female commander-in-chief?!"

I suppose there are two ways we can think of this as (allegedly) unrealistic: that women are rarely in possession of such powers, and/or that anyone - male or female - won't be so much more powerful than the rest of the army's members.

Let's address one point at a time. Women have been military leaders (both real and titular) and many more have been soldiers, but it's true that they have held these posts (much) less often than men. So what? Is it really important that piece names reflect reality as closely as possible? If so, the whole game is in trouble. Moving castles? Warlike bishops, and more powerful than the knights, the professional soldiers?

While we're at it, how about piece movements? Are there soldiers who can only move their bodies to certain locations but not others, when those locations are qualitatively identical? What remotely plausible story can be told to explain why a knight can move from g1 to f3, but not to g2, f1 or f2? Better still, it's very thoughtful of each side not to move more than one piece at a time, and to take turns. And then there's the battlefield itself: perfectly level, fully visible and immune to weather, all of which allows both armies complete information.

In short, if Li's problem with chess is the lack of realism with the queen as commander-in-chief, he's straining a gnat to swallow a camel.

As for the claim that no piece ought to be that strong, that it's militarily unrealistic for any individual or unit to be so dominant over all her (or his, if we changed the piece's name) comrades, that seems to me false. If we take each piece to represent human soldiers, then maybe, but if we think of them as military units - whether people or weaponry - then it seems to me (relatively) realistic. A nuclear weapon dominates conventional bombs, which dominate guns, which dominate the bow and arrow, which dominates a club, which dominates one's bare hands. Hierarchies in weaponry are par for the course.

Another absurdity in chess, taken as really representative of war, is the universal efficacy of checkmate as assuring victory. Consider a game in which one side gives checkmate after sacrificing a whole series of pieces. (Anderssen-Dufresne, for example.) In a real war, if one side completely decimated the other side's army but lost its commander-in-chief, it would simply appoint a new one and continue demolishing the opposition.

So in my view, it's nonsensical to take chess as closely representative of war. But, and this is my third major point, it's irrelevant in any case, as no one I know thinks about chess in that way. Sometimes chessplayers use military metaphors to describe the action - but so do tennis players and even dieters (the "battle of the bulge").

Now for a word about "The Game of the Century", the famous Donald Byrne-Robert Fischer game from the 1956 Rosenwald tournament. Contrary to what Li thinks, that moniker doesn't represent the consensus of the chess world that the game really was the best played in the 20th century; rather, it was the journalistic reaction of by-then American IM Hans Kmoch. Further, the exclamation was not merely provoked by the queen sacrifice, fine as it was, but by the even more spectacular 11...Na4!! and, above all, by the fact that the game was played by a 13-year old boy. (Nowadays prodigies seem to grow on trees, but in his day Fischer was unique, with no one else even in the conversation.)

Finally, while queen sacrifices do grab the public's attention, Li greatly exaggerates the role of such sacrifices in fans' appreciation of the game. To take one example, I quickly leafed through the updated version of Burgess, Nunn and Emms' The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games, and this reasonably representative sample of the creme de la creme from 1834 to 2002 featured only 18 queen sacs in 112 games.

In sum, whatever the merits of Li's historical claims and of Chinese Chess (and I will read the follow-up article with interest), his critique of (Western) chess is far from compelling.

[Note: those curious about the Anderssen-Dufresne and D. Byrne-Fischer games mentioned above can see them by clicking here.]

A few days ago I quoted GM and trainer Misha Podgaets with some good news and bad news about the grandmaster title. The good news was that, in his view, even a middle-aged high expert/low master could (in his hands) become a GM; the bad news was that this was at least as much a reflection on the devaluation of the title.

This view, that the GM title, like the old gray mare, ain't what she used to be, is pretty widespread. But click here and read item 3780.

The good news is that if chess fans have always thought the title was too permissively awarded, then perhaps this is just one of those perennial misperceptions (kids have it easy these days, their music is especially bad, the road to school no longer entails going uphill both ways in the snow, etc.), not based in reality.

On the other hand, this might be bad news: maybe the GM title is in persistent decline. One objective way to determine the answer might be to examine the range of ratings of players with the GM title. Nowadays, the spread is approximately 300 points (not counting Kasparov): there are several GMs in the high 2700s, and there are lots of GMs in the high 2400s. (To achieve the title, one must have crossed the 2500 barrier at some point in one's career, but it isn't necessary to remain there - and many GMs don't.) Perhaps one can consult Jeff Sonas's site to determine the range in pre-ELO days, or could ask him directly?

A few days ago, I addressed a lament concerning Black's fate after 1.d4 followed by 2.Nf3. These modern-day Jeremiahs wanted to know what the initiative-deprived Black player can do to liven things up.

I offered some thoughts on the subject in the earlier post, but this time I'm going to point out that it's not all sweetness and light for White when choosing this move order. It has its costs, ones that should be taken quite seriously. Here are some examples (I'll include cases with 3.Nf3 as well):

1.d4 d5 2.c4 allows a couple of nuisance lines:

(a) 2...e5 (the Albin Counter-Gambit)
(b) 2...e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4 (the Hennig-Schara Counter-Gambit)

On the other hand, by playing 2.Nf3, White misses out on some interesting opportunities, too:

(a) The opportunity to face the Albin Counter-Gambit.
(b) The opportunity to face the Hennig-Schara Counter-Gambit.
(c) The QGD line 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 c6 7.Bd3 O-O 8.Qc2 Nbd7 9.Nge2, with the idea of a central pawn advance: O-O, Rae1, f3, Ng3 and e4.
(d) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Bf5?! 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3, as with a knight on f3 instead of c3, Qb3 is no longer a double attack.
(e) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Bf5 3.cxd5 Bxb1 4.Qa4+ c6 5.Rxb1 Qxd5 6.Nf3 offers White better prospects for an edge than 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Bf5 3.c4 e6.

Now for 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3

This avoids the following:

(a) The Budapest (2.c4 e5)
(b) The Benko Gambit (2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5)
(c) The Nimzo-Indian (2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4)

On the other hand, one loses out on

(a) The opportunity to face the Budapest.
(b) The opportunity to play the Taimanov Variation against the Modern Benoni, widely considered Black's biggest problem. (2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.Bb5+!)
(c) A slew of lines against the King's Indian: the 4 Pawns Attack (2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f4), the Saemisch (5.f3) and various lines with Nge2.
(d) The Queen's Gambit line addressed in the 1.d4 d5 2.c4 section - with a knight on f3 the transpositional possibility 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 c6 7.Bd3 O-O 8.Qc2 Nbd7 9.Nge2 is precluded.

Further, one can play 2.c4 and still avoid the Nimzo-Indian and the Benko by varying on move 3.

The moral of the story then, as I see it, is that White players objectively gain nothing by playing 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 or 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 (unless their goal is to play the Torre Attack, in which case this discussion is moot). They avoid certain aggressive Black lines, but as in each case the line can either be avoided later or ought to be encouraged, the advantage is illusory. Thus, as the goods they are forsaking are genuine ones, 1.d4 players should simply learn good lines against the Budapest, Albin and Hennig-Schara gambits. The free points will be worth it!

Last Friday's mail brought the June 2005 issue of Chess Life, and I learned something interesting but disappointing. In "Evans on Chess", Larry Evans begins his response to a question from Henry Haynes with a quotation from an undated New York Post column by GM Andy Soltis:

Organizers refuse to pair players against opponents who fear retribution from their government. This is so routine that computers, which make pairings at major Swiss system events these days, are programmed to avoid matchups between Israelis and players from certain federations. At the biggest international of 2004, the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, the pairings for one round had to be thrown out at the last minute when arbiter Geurt Gijssen discovered what he called a 'politically forbidden pairing.' So all the other pairings had to be recalculated, causing a massive delay. (Cited in p. 52 of Chess Life.)

Very sad, though of course it's not the fault of the players but of their respective governments. But how about last year's FIDE World Championship in Tripoli, Libya? I was disappointed that the tournament had little trouble drawing participants even after it was made clear that players from Israel would not be permitted inside the country. I understand the prestige of the event and the lure of the paycheck, but it's not as if this was the last paycheck in the history of chess nor so lucrative as to allow its particpants to retire or even take the next year off. There are more important things than money (shock, horror), and I think if the players had united, they might have forced FIDE President Kirsan Iljumzhinov to relocate the event.

To answer the question of the title, then, the FIDE motto is wrong (as it has always been, sadly), we are not all one family. (Or if we are, it's a seriously dysfunctional family!)

The rapid match between Leko and Adams (see here and here) concluded today with a relative whimper. Adams won the first three games, Leko won the next three, and today, perhaps tired out from all the excitement, the players drew the last two games to conclude a 4-4 tie.

Some people dislike such a result, or at least feel frustrated by it. I received a very interesting letter about the finish of this match from a man whose friend, a relative newcomer to the game, concluded that "the world of chess competition is an absurd farce." My correspondent continued:

Rightfully, he couldn't come to terms with the discrepancy of the "draw" as a legitimate result, and as he put it, "Why the hell would an organizer sink money into a competition that doesn't have a winner or a loser? Why would they even allow the possibility (of such an outcome)? Who do they give the trophy to?"....good questions.

Are they? I suppose they could encourage the players to settle matches that are even at the end of "regulation" by pistols at ten paces, but are ties really so horrible?

Soccer, football and hockey games can all legitimately end in ties, and a fan who therefore requested his money back would be laughed out of the ticket office. Boxing matches end in draws, Olympic medals can be shared by those achieving identical scores or times, and all this without complaints that those sports are farcical.

Many chess competitions have some sort of tie-break, others don't, but when it comes to the pseudo-problems of ties and draws, I think that many in the chess world - especially those just coming into the game - need to take a deep breath, count to ten, relax in the bath and repeat the phrase "a hard-fought draw (or tie) is not a bad thing".

Chess is almost surely a draw with best play (and I suspect there's a pretty healthy margin for error, too), so it's not really all that surprising that many games between the world's elite are drawn. What counts is that there's real fight; given a genuine effort, let the results fall where they will.

Likewise, events may wind up with a tie for first as well. Sometimes, there's no special reason to break the tie, so why bother? Call me crazy, but I suspect that requiring all chess events to have some sort of clear winner is not going to generate an otherwise unlikely media frenzy. Is it necessary to settle some sort of pecking order? Doubtful: Leko is higher-rated than Adams and finished ahead of him in both of the other events in which they both participated this year. Was this some sort of ultra-prestigious event requiring a clear winner? Not that I know of: it wasn't a qualifier for some further match or tournament, and as far as I know it was a one-time only event.

It seems to me that this complaint often (not always) comes from those who are ultra-competitive, and see life as some sort of zero-sum game. If you face such people over the chessboard, rejoice! By playing solid (not passive, but solid) chess, you'll often win positions that would normally be drawn, as your opponents are likely to do all sorts of crazy things just to avoid a draw. Occasionally they'll win, but more often than not (against their peers), they'll throw away lots of half-points. Happily, they tend to remember and over-value the successes, which tends to reinforce their unintentionally generous behavior.