Alekhine's Parrot

TheParrot Says…Welcome to the archive of the weekly leader of chess events around the world.  Chessville welcomes your Feedback to TheParrot on this week’s news by writing to TheParrot@Chessville.com where selected letters will be featured.

This week the author of the new title Chess Bitch interviews with Chessville on the future of chess from a woman’s point of view, and the reception given to her new book.  Chessville’s readers may not know that the NY Times refused to even use the word “Bitch” from the book’s title even though they commissioned an article by the book’s author about the book.  The Sunday Express in England will also publish an article on women in chess featuring special mention of Jennifer Shahade.

Current Major International Tournaments:

The Super-Final of 58th Mens Championship of Russia took place 18-30 December in Moscow in the Mikhail Botvinnik Central Chess Club.  Sergey Rublevsky wins to become Champion of Russia!

Official site     Chessville coverage

Cyber-Brits!

First British Internet Schools Championship. British schools are being invited to register for the first Internet Championship.  Contact either:

     Andrew Martin. Email: Andrew@wizard100.demon.co.uk
     Peter Purland. Email: petepurland@btopenworld.com

Dear Chess Parents: “We are pleased to announce that one of our own instructors, Daniel Lucas, has accepted a new position to become the editor of the United States Chess Federation's nationally-distributed magazine "Chess Life". We are thrilled for him as he accepts this prestigious and challenging new opportunity.  Daniel has been playing chess since his dad taught him during the 1972 Fischer/Spassky match. He has been a board member of the Georgia Chess Association and editor of Georgia Chess magazine for seven years, winning the Best State Magazine award from the Fred Cramer Committee for Chess Journalism three of the last four years. He served as President of the Chess Journalists of America from 2003-2005. In the time that Daniel has been with Kid Chess, his student at Shakerag, Sumit Sohani, tied for second at the 2005 State Individual Championships and his Morningside team tied for 3rd at the 2005 State Team Championships.  Please join us in congratulating Daniel Lucas as he assumes this role of national leadership in the USCF."

The FIDE World Chess Cup took place 26th November - 18th December 2005 in Khanty Mansyisk, Russia.

Official site

And the winner is…

Levon Aronian

Final standings (top ten advance to 2006 FIDE World Championship):

Between the participants of the main tournament there are: World champion under 20 Elisabeth Paehtz 2408 (GER), Tatiana Kononenko 2423 (UKR), Natalia Pogonina 2401 (RUS), Olga Zimina 2397 (RUS), Tatiana Shadrina 2386 (RUS), the winner of the Memorial-2003 Irina Sudakova 2366 (RUS).

Susan Polgar is one of the most respected and successful Grandmasters in all of chess, and whose dedicated work in scholastics, especially with girls, will continue to energetically form the technical and ethical basis of participation for a future generation of chess players in the United States.

New to Chessville
in December 05

Marketing Chess
in the 21st Century

A special series of extended interviews with Mr. Paul Troung, shown on far left of photo with his extraordinarily successful Woman’s Silver Medal Olympiad team, and their advisor Gary Kasparov.  Paul is also the business manager for GM Susan Polgar.

Meanwhile, another woman very active on the US chess scene, the twice US Woman’s Champion in ’02 and ‘04, Jennifer Shadade, has agreed to be interviewed by Chessville about the ideas and the reception of her new book about women in chess, Chess Bitch.

Forthcoming

Wikipedia the on line encyclopedia has recently featured large numbers of new biographies about chess players perhaps stimulated by the activities of New York City chess personality Sam Sloan – and many of these entries are useful quick references. But substantial disagreement exists about who can create or change the entries, and what the content should contain. Reader beware! The parrot will follow the trend of creating and adapting biographical material in this particular form.

The FIDE World Chess Cup takes place 26th November - 18th December 2005 in Khanty Mansyisk, Russia.

Levon Aronian wins the FIDE World Cup after beating Ruslan Ponomariov in the finals, 3-1.

Judit Polgar is running a survey at her site assessing people’s
attitudes to the presentation Woman in Chess.
Register your vote and see the overall attitudes of voters at:
http://juditpolgar.maribelajar.com/modules/news/

Between the participants of the main tournament there are: World champion under 20 Elisabeth Paehtz 2408 (GER), Tatiana Kononenko 2423 (UKR), Natalia Pogonina 2401 (RUS), Olga Zimina 2397 (RUS), Tatiana Shadrina 2386 (RUS), the winner of the Memorial-2003 Irina Sudakova 2366 (RUS).

Round 7 leading standings:
1 N.Pogonina (RUS) - 5.5
2 E.Paehtz (GER) - 5.0
3 I.Sudakova (RUS) - 4.5
4-5 T.Shadrina (Rus), O.Zimina (RUS) - 4.0
Official site: http://chess.port33.ru

The Super-final of 58th men’s Championship of Russia takes place 18-30 December in Moscow in the Mikhail Botvinnik Central Chess Club.  In the robin-round tournament take part 12 GMs: Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Svidler, Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Grischuk, Alexey Dreev, Evgeny Bareev, Alexander Khalifman, Sergey Volkov, Sergei Rublevsky, Dmitry Yakovenko, Evgeny Naier and Alexander Motylev.  The first three GMs have personal invitations, the next two take part according to results of the previous super-final, the rest were qualified from the top-league of the Russian Championship.

Free plug for a chess center in the San Diego area:

Cafe Cabaret in Normal Heights is having weekly Chess Tournaments every Monday and Tuesday Nights Starting December 12th.  Monday Tournaments are for beginning to intermediate players while Tuesday nights are for advanced players.  Tournament starts at 6:30 p.m. sharp. Only 20 spots per tournament will be available.  Weekly winner will receive a $20 in coffee/espresso drink voucher.  If Interested please reply or stop by the café to register:

Cafe Cabaret, 3739 Adams Ave, San Diego, CA 92116
619-284-1819      www.cafecabaret.net

And another for Chess in LA last Sunday Exposition Park Chess Club Tel: 1 323 732 0169 [http://chess.expoparkla.com/], hosted a free, un-rated, three-round chess tournament at the Exposition Park Library.  Winners were: 1st Quad: Dan Fine 3-0; 2nd Quad: Mustafa Dawoodbhoy 3-0

USCF’s membership numbers in serious decline as reported at http://detroitchess.com/USCFmem2.htm:

Dec of  '01 = 90,500
Dec of  '02 = 93,600
Dec of  '03 = 90,000
Dec of  '04 = 84,000
Dec of  '05 = 82,500

Details are interesting with big swings* in Adult and Scholastic columns:  *Reg. Adult membership Jan '01 was 27,000 and is currently 20,800;  *Youth membership Jan '01 was 12, 289 and is currently 10, 537;  *Scholastic Jan '01 was 33, 814 and is currently 18255

The USCF board have not engaged in public dialogue since the elections, not even on official business.  No more details on the ChessCafe deal which remains secret, and no comments or engagements on decline in memberships.  Even official business takes nine days to acknowledge, as opposed to answer – at least, this is the Parrot’s experience.  What are 30 people up to?

Speculation is now on the ‘crash’ number below which USCF becomes untenable as an organization.  The December '05 number of 82,500 is almost 5,000 members above this year’s all time low in memberships.

The FIDE World Chess Cup takes place 26th November - 18th December 2005 in Khanty Mansyisk, Russia.

US interest since last week is sustained by Gata Kamsky as lone survivor, and who has already scored one win in Rd 5 over his formidable young opponent from Petersburg, Konstantin Sakaev.