Archive for January, 2010

Garry Kasparov’s “The Chess Master and the Computer” (The New York Review of Books, February 11, 2010) offers not only an excellent review of Diego Rasskin-Gutman’s Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind but extensive reflections by the world’s greatest chess player on the effects that computers have had on the game.  I especially liked the way he sums up some of those effects:

There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it’s no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of needing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn’t care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

The availability of millions of games at one’s fingertips in a database is also making the game’s best players younger and younger. Absorbing the thousands of essential patterns and opening moves used to take many years, a process indicative of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours to become an expert” theory as expounded in his recent book Outliers. (Gladwell’s earlier book, Blink, rehashed, if more creatively, much of the cognitive psychology material that is re-rehashed in Chess Metaphors.) Today’s teens, and increasingly pre-teens, can accelerate this process by plugging into a digitized archive of chess information and making full use of the superiority of the young mind to retain it all. In the pre-computer era, teenage grandmasters were rarities and almost always destined to play for the world championship. Bobby Fischer’s 1958 record of attaining the grandmaster title at fifteen was broken only in 1991. It has been broken twenty times since then, with the current record holder, Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, having claimed the highest title at the nearly absurd age of twelve in 2002. Now twenty, Karjakin is among the world’s best, but like most of his modern wunderkind peers he’s no Fischer, who stood out head and shoulders above his peers—and soon enough above the rest of the chess world as well.

 Hat tip The Chess Mind.

Just occasionally, the worlds of chess and murder have intersected: players
of our game have become either killers or victims. In addition to links to his
detailed coverage of the Wallace Murder Case and the fatal shooting of a Hastings
stalwart, the Editor of Chess
Notes provides citations regarding such figures as the Lipstick Killer,
Moors Murderer and St Albans Poisoner.

Detractors had pointed out that Alexei Shirov’s blistering 5.0/5 start was achieved without playing any of the tournament favourites. Today the Latvian GM encountered one, Hikaru Nakamura – and dropped the full point. Magnus Carlsen scored his third win, against Vassily Ivanchuk, who self-destructed on move eight. Nigel Short came tantalizing close to beating Vladimir Kramnik. Full report.

At last: Nigel Short chose a favourite variation of the main line Spanish and held a comfortable draw against Alexei Shirov. The Spaniard is now at 5.5/6, with his performance rating at “just” 3094. With his second win Vladimir Kramnik has joined the follower group 1.5 points behind Shirov. In Group B it is Anish Giri and Group C Ray Robson who are dominating. Both are 15. Round six report.

When left on its own, a knight frequently has difficulties holding together
one flank in problems. If the pawns are not occupying one of the few
formations which suit it, it generally cannot manage the task. This motif underlies the piece sacrifice
35.Rxc4!? Rxc4 36.Nxc4 Kxc4 37.Ke4! – played in
the game Lock-Webb from the Masters in Hastings – with which White set his opponent serious practical problems. How would you evaluate the resulting position?
Can Black still hold the draw or will the white pawns triumph? GM Karsten Müller has
analysed the position for Chess Base Magazine Online.

Can anything stop this man? A fifth consecutive win, with the black pieces against Loek van Wely, put Alexei Shirov a point and a half ahead of the field. Vladimir Kramnik scored his first victory in this tournament, while World Champion Vishy Anand is stuck at 50%. In Group B 15-year-old GM Anish Giri leads, as does 15-year-old GM Ray Robson in Group C.

Big report with pictures by Fred Lucas.

Many books have been written about the American chess genius and world champion Bobby Fischer. But now there is a remarkable new one, by German GM Karsten Müller, whom you will know from his articles and multimedia lectures in ChessBase Magazine. This book contains almost 1000 Fischer games, all of them annotated by GM Müller – a monumental task. Interview with the author.

When Magnus Carlsen lost a pawn against Loek van Wely on his
10th move in well-known way, many might wondered whether he had
not fallen into a familiar opening trap. After all, on the CD-ROM “1000 Opening
Traps” the pawn loss was branded a mistake, and so far statistics clearly
seemed to confirm this. Yet reportedly the Norwegian had followed a
recommendation of Garry Kasparov, and it soon turned out that Black gets quite a
lot for the pawn.
Buy
“1000 Opening Traps” in shop anyway
Replay Van Wely – Carlsen
with annotations

Daaim Shabazz met the Haitian chess team at the 2006 Olympiad – a genuine and enthusiastic group. They missed the Olympiad in 2008 because of a series of hurricanes. The country had a small, but thriving chess community before the earthquake struck. Since then Daaim has been unable to make contact with anyone in the Haitian chess community. An appeal for assistance.

Here are my unofficial, projected pairings for round 2 of the Kenilworth Championship :

A total of 445 players competed in the first qualifier for the FIDE Internet Championship, and tested the tournament software on the Playchess server to its limit. Everything went smoothly, and ten players have qualified for the final on January 30. The second qualifier is on Wednesday evening, the third on Saturday afternoon, with three more to follow. You can play in as many as you like.

Edgar Colle (1897–1932) was a Belgian chess who scored excellent results
in world-class tournaments. He died tragically at the age of 34, and is mainly remembered
for the Colle Opening System 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3. This, as Dennis Monokroussos
relates in this week’s Playchess lecture,
was not what he was able to play in a beautiful game against Ernst Grünfeld.
Be there at 9 p.m. EST.

Vassily Ivanchuk needed 26 moves to finish off Loek van Wely. Magnus Carlsen had Nigel Short on the ropes, but let the British GM escape with a draw. Kramnik was in trouble against Tiviakov but survived. Alexei Shirov scored his fourth win in succession, to lead with a 4.0/4 score and a 3483 performance. You’d think that was a record, but he will have to win the next five games to do that. Curious?

A complicated position arose during time trouble in
Tomashevsky (2708) vs Fier (2653). The pawn structure leaves us in no doubt:
it was a King’s Indian. The sacrifice 35…Bxg4 is on the cards, but
calculating through all the consequences accurately is hardly possible. What
does your intuition tell you?
A) The sacrifice is unsound. Black does not get sufficient compensation.
B) The sacrifice is playable. The position remains balanced.
C) 35…Bxg4 decides the game in Black’s favour.
The solution is here,
but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

He is a well-known firebrand in the chess world. In Wijk he is currently playing at a 3500 level. But Alexei Shirov is also a prolific chess teacher, and his ChessBase DVDs are amongst the most popular. Take for instance one of his latest, on the Philidor Defence, a surprise opening that can give rise to extreme open and closed positions. Shirov’s treatment is reviewed by a field biologist in the Yukon.

Last year Garry Kasparov visited Asia – for the first time since the Philippines Olympiad in 1992. He was in India and in Malaysia, where our reporter Edwin Lam did a Q&A with him. Kasparov spoke engagingly and candidly about Asia, his early career as a chess player, his protégé Magnus Carlsen and his Chess Foundation in America. Not a line of blah in this interview. Must read.

What a round: White lost no fewer than four games in the top group, without winning any. Alexei Shirov continued his storm in the Dutch resort with a third victory in succession, beating Tiviakov. Nakamura, Ivanchuk and Carlsen also won their black games (Garry Kasparov was pleased as Punch about his protégé’s victory). Round three report with beautiful photos by Fred Lucas.

Shirov won two in a row, Carlsen and Nakamura drew first blood – those are the stories from the Super-GM in Wijk aan Zee. But there is something extraordinary in the B-Group: a 15-year-old has won his first two games, both in dashing style, to take the lead. According to a Dutch newspaper Anish Giri holds the “promise of greatness in Dutch chess”. Special report.

Want to go to Moscow to play in the FIDE World Blitz qualifier in February?
Meet top international players over the board? With all expenses paid? Well
you can take a crack at it by participating in the Internet qualifiers on Playchess.com.
The first is in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday – especially interesting
for US and Far East participants. You will find all the
details here.

With the world’s strongest kibitzer watching anxiously Magnus Carlsen pulled off his first win in the Super-GM in Wijk aan Zee, beating Dutch GM Jan Smeets in a tense 41-move game. Nakamura played an aggressive, exciting win over Loek van Wely, and Alexei Shirov scored a second full point against Fabiano Caruana. In Group B Anish Giri won a second game and leads. Full report.

The Kenilworth Chess Club Championship began Thursday night with its smallest field (just 17 players) in five years.

2008 Champion NM Mark Kernighan, expert Arthur Macaspac and 2009 KST winner Ian Mangion are the top-seeds.

Last year’s victor, SM Yaacov Norowitz, is not defending his crown. Past champs FM Steve Stoyko & NM Scott Massey are among others sitting-out.

1st round pairings & results:

All the higher-rated players won but boards 1 & 2 had major scares.

Mike Wojcio missed a win in the opening against Kernighan and Dan Komunicky time-forfeited in a winning, pawn-up ending versus Mangion.

1. Kernighan 1-0 Wojcio
2. Komunicky 0-1 Mangion
3. Mark Schwarcz 1-0 Ted Mann
4. Lou Sturniolo 0-1 Don Carrelli
5. John Moldovan 1-0 Mikhail Kruglyak
6. Bert Shiffman 0-1 Richard Lewis
7. David Pawlowski 1-0 Joe Renna
8. Jim Cole 0-1 Glen Hart

Macaspac received a 1/2 -point bye.

Java-replay
PGN

Late-joins are being accepted & one additional player would make an even number. Please see post #611 & contact TD Geoff McAuliffe before next Thursday, if you’d like to enter.

• The Sacred Key to All Rook Endings: The Lucena Position by Jeremy Silman at his site.
  
• The Lucena Position by David Surratt at Chessville
  
• Chess Endgame Lesson: Lucena Position
• Chess Lesson #10: Rook and Pawn Endings, Lucena
• DNAunion: Chess: Endgame: Rook&Pawn:Lucena 

Loek van Wely, playing in Wijk an Zee for the 19th time is succession, started
off with a fine text-book victory over Nigel Short, while Alexei Shirov, playing
the black side of Ruy Lopez Moeller, punished Peter Leko’s exchange sacrifice
in a fine endgame performance. Live coverage with audio commentary is available
on the Playchess server. Big pictorial report.

… Jan Timman wrote about this encounter between two absolute top grandmasters of the 70s and 80s. Here Black played
21…Bb5 and later succumbed in a remarkable attack. How would you assess the position after
21…Nxc7 instead?
A) The second player maintains his plus pawn without risk;
B) White gets the advantage;
C) the result is a draw by perpetual check.

The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.