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9-29-2007

Your local, on the 8x8s:

A Chessville chess team has thrown down the gauntlet to the USCF board!  Associate Editor Rob Mitchell issued the on-line correspondence chess challenge on Friday September 14^th.  Restless for some response, our editor has also contacted the English Chess Federation, the Scottish and Irish too, also the Canadian Federation.  Somewhat to our editorial surprise the English Federation is the first to take notice, and ‘make further inquiries’; to which we at Chessville have responded, “do you want to play us or other chess federations?”  And latest… the Canadian chess Fed is also interested!

And that’s the news from Walla Walla.

Meanwhile, a big US Chess Event kicks off, The 2007 Miami Open Chess Tournament – LIVE

Alex Shabalov, Hikaru Nakamura, Izoria Zviad, Victor Mikhalevski, Varuzhan Akobian, Julio Becerra, Pascal Charbonneau, Darmen Sadvakasov, Gilberto Hernandez, Irina Krush, Igor Zugic…

The tournament is organized by Blas Lugo who attracted over 300 players!
     Follow live games: www.monroi.com
     Official web-site http://www.themiamichessopen.com/index.htm
     MonRoi coverage http://www.monroi.com/tournamentgate/Miami/
     HOT Video!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FmCswJsoec

(Taurus, cont.)  Wearing people down by playing without a clock and taking ages and ages about your move… waiting for them to make an impatient move immediately after the 5^th big pause, guarantees that better players will avoid you – and you can go back to beating Aries.

Gemini: typical of you to get into time trouble because even though you move fastest of all types, you have another idea before your hand even touches the piece, and while you are thinking about that move, 5 other ideas also show up. Sometimes both your hands shoot out at the same time to make completely different moves. Even so, stick with chess and don’t switch to darts or javelin.

Cancer: its hard to get over a loss, especially when an obviously unfair condition arose to disturb your naturally deep and sincere concentration, but get over yourself you big cry baby! Get out there again and keep playing. The time to quit is after winning, not losing!

Honorable Chess Gossip:

CLASH OF THE TITANS By Nataliya Krasavtseva: From 20th to 27th of September, Mexico hosted a Computer match between the two strongest chess programs in the world. The match took place during the Final of the World Chess Championship.

The program Rybka (World Computer Chess Champion 2007) played against Zappa (World Computer Chess Champion 2005, and vice champion in 2007). Zappa defeated Rybka by the score of 5.5 - 4.5.  If Rybka [Rybka’s Handlers] had not destroyed its own chances by continuing to play and lose drawn games, the result would have been 5.0 to 5.0.  Some people report computer chess as if it were interesting.  Personally, I think it’s a ‘perch-faller’.  Deep Zzzzzzzz’s.  Source: http://chessok.com/

Letter from Holland: Dear Parrot:

Always looking for high risk lines to unbalance chess computers , can you tell me what the Dilworth gambit in the Ruy Lopez is? A knight sacrifice? I just learned about the so-called Leipziger line (1900, about 3000 games) or Razzle Dazzle or Halloween in Four Knights: 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6 and now 4. Ne5!? [Ne5 5. d4]. Official 20th century theory (Euwe-Keres) states it is "refuted", but far from it. It was considered "ïmpolite"! The Cochrane line in Petroff 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Ne5 d6 and now 4. Nf7 shows up occasionally in GM-tournaments nowadays, probably computer re-evaluated. A similar one in Two Knights Bronstein-Rohan (www.howtofoolfritz.com Tim Krabbe's "most fantastic 110 chess moves" has landed in the theory books.

Albert H. Alberts. [Mr. Alberts will notice this week’s Player’s Corner, in his honor.]  Any Chessville reader wanting to engage Mr. Alberts with his studies of MAMS [see 2 Chessville reviews] and contribute to MAMS 2, drop the Parrot an e-mail, and introductions will be made…

The World Chess Championship Tournament took place in Mexico City 13th-30th September.

VISWANATHAN ANAND
IS THE NEW FIDE WORLD CHAMPION !!

Chessville coverage & Chessville Forum // Download all the games // Official site // Chessvibes videos

World Senior Chess Championship is taking place in Austria, Jude Acers is playing in it – and who knows what’s happening? – not the official site or Fide, but this site offers the following as final scores, http://reports.chessdom.com/world-senior-chess-championship

Here is the leader board:

The 2006 winner was Viktor Korchnoi.

9-22-2007

Your local, on the 8x8s

A Chessville chess team has thrown down the gauntlet to the USCF board!  Associate Editor Rob Mitchell issued the on-line correspondence chess challenge on Friday September 14^th.  Chessville chat is that while many people are clamoring to get on board with the Chessville team, the board will chicken out.  The Parrot also checked if the BCF [British Chess Fellas] wanted a game, and they don’t.

College Chess USA

Dear college chess community, Registration is now open for the upcoming online individual College Chess League (CCL) tournament that starts on October 14th.  This tournament is open to all student chess players in the America’s and we will announce several category winners.  The tournament starts on Sunday, October 14, and your team registrations must be in by noon Friday, October 13.

This year’s Individual Online Championship Schedule (Games are played online on Sunday afternoons at 3 PM EST (= 2 PM CST = 1 MST PM = 12 PST):

The dates for 2007 are:
     Round 1 -- October 14
     Round 2 -- October 21
     Round 3 -- October 28
     Round 4 -- November 4
     Round 5 -- November 11

Prior to registration, please review the rules:  http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=generalRules
And register at http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=register.

We have many Grand-Master level players, and beginners.  If you want to be a spectator, free to log on ICC and root for your team, and watch the games.  If you would like to hear more about this event, please go to http://www.collegechess.org. We will also be using the ICCL email list to send out further information about upcoming tournaments, so we would appreciate it if you sign up on the ICCL mailing list.

Also, we would like to remind you that the National K-12 Collegiate Championship will take place in Houston on December 7 - 9. The Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship, our premiere OTB event, starts on December 27-30 in Miami. To register for the Pan-Am Games, go to http://www.mdc.edu/panamchess/.

Please take a look at our other planned events at http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=schedule

Thank-you for your support of college chess!
     Sincerely, Gregory Alexander, USCF College Committee Associate Chair

The event will take place in Hotel Centro Historico Sheraton in Mexico City.  The match will be played on two identical 8-cores computers.  The prize fund of the match is 10, 000 USD (the winner takes all).  In case of a tied match the prize fund will be shared equally.  Source: http://chessok.com/

Susan Polgar found this Chess-Blog site this week: “I am always amazed with new technology and it can definitely help all of us do a better job to promote chess, the game we all love.” She said.  Here is a link to a YouTube clip about chess blogging and forums from Canada:  http://jrobichess.blogspot.com/.

Meanwhile the USCF Chess Forum is still in the doldrums.  Some people are banned from it for mentioning that you can’t cite that the site is censored, while 2 new board members have voluntarily left until ‘it is cleaned up’.  I note that when I looked the Forum which is insured for $11,000 of member’s money per year, it had these usage statistics:

Who is online
In total there are 12 users online :: 7 registered, 4 hidden and 1 guest. Most users ever online was 24 on Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:49 am

I was ‘the guest’, and I presume the hidden 4 were the moderators making sure that the 7 actual visitors were not saying anything.

Worst Chess Joke Of All Time: [don’t read this, you’ll regret it]

A group of chess enthusiasts had checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.  After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.  "But why?" they asked, as they moved off.  "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

The World Chess Championship Tournament takes place in Mexico City 13th-30th September.  The Parrot will also keep score of White versus Black, and Draws, which after 8 rounds looks like:

White 9 : Black 2 : Draws 22,
     ...exactly a 1:2 ratio of decisive games to draws.

Round 8 standings
     1 Anand - 5.5
     2 Gelfand - 5.0
     3 Kramnik - 4.5
     4 Leko - 4.0
     5-6 Grischuk, Aronian - 3.5
     7-8 Svidler, Morozevich - 3.0

Caption: Intense concentration in Aronian v Leko.

Since everyone everywhere is reporting on the World Championship the Parrot will restrict comments to current standings and the W:B:D ratios.  I know, I know, these are closely fought drawzzz, and no point being fed-up with them…

To cheer myself up I stole the picture of this trio from Susan Polgar’s website, which incidentally has very good coverage, and I believe she has or intends to, interview Anand.  UPDATE: I see these are now published, and are good reading.  In addition GM Polgar has been making broadcasts in Spanish and to Russia, plus conducting a press conference in 4 languages.

I like the picture because Peter Svidler is maybe the most cheerful chess player there is, and always the life of the party.

I am personally also rooting for Vishy Anand to succeed. I happen to know that he was very generous to a fellow Indian conducting PhD researches in Chess, and that this is also par for the course for the gent!

Official site: www.chessmexico.com

World Senior Chess Championship is taking place in Austria and Jude Acers is playing in it, the web site features guest celebrities in these type sizes:

Setting aside the ‘little’ woman it’s a bit hard to make any sense of the web site, but presumably someone can, and I’ll try to report the results of it next week, I couldn’t actually find any this. No pictures yet, not even of big and little guest. Official site: http://www.austria2007.com/engl.htm

The Czech Coal Carlsbad Chess Tournament took place 7th-15th September. Players: Alexei Shirov ESP 2735, Vladimir Akopian ARM 2708, Ruslan Ponomariov UKR 2706, Sergej Movsesian SVK 2667, David Navara CZE 2656, Viktor Korchnoi SUI 2610, Viktor Laznicka CZE 2594, Jan Timman NED 2560.  Official site: www.praguechess.cz.

Chess in Goa, India

The All Goa  Under -15 chess championship organised by  the Associacao Academica de Moira in collaboration with the Goa State  Chess Association attracted 81 entries. The tournament will serve to select the team to represent Goa at the Sub-Junior Nationals to be held at Chennai from 2 - 10 October.

Boys Section

In the 3rd round of the All Goa Under - 15 chess championship played at Associacao Academica de Moira, State champion Anurag Mhamal (3) shwed excellent technique to beat Rakhshith Rai in a drawish looking endgame.In  the most intereting game of the day both Umang Kaisare and Mohinish Naik(3)  launched fierce attacks against each others kings. Umang (3) broke through first and won. Cyrus Pereira(3) defeated Anirudh Bhat( 3) from the black side of the Queen's gambit declined.  Others with 3 points are Agasti Tariand  Vipul Kulkarni, while Keegan Furtado and Harikrishna M are on 2.5

Girls Section

In the girls section op-seed Celianne Carvalho beat Vaishaki Pilankar easily, While Jessica Pereira(2) defeated Olivia Mascarenhas(1). Others on 2 points include Diksha Chavan who beat Riya Sawant,and Sukanya Chari who put it over Rima Naik.

Augusto Pinto, 40, Novo Portugal, Moira, Bardez, Goa, India
E pintogoa@gmail.com or ypintogoa@yahoo.co.in

9-15-2007

The Major emphasis this week is on international chess, with the World Championship shifting into gear in Mexico.  But the Parrot did find a very interesting discussion going on in Chessville’s own forum – and anyone wanting to do a little chess-tourism in New York City should check out the rare chess pictures at the Parrot’s tail end.  [Editor:  Also check out The Parrot's Rare Chess Pictures - Album 1!]

The Parrot also caught up with NM Dan Heisman at the forum who agreed to be interviewed.  Dan is an active chess teacher in the US, and was interviewed here about 6 years ago, and is also very active at Chessville’s forum.

Funniest Find of the Week:  Anyone out there still playing postal chess?  Here is an international invite:

Dear Parrot, My Name is Marco Hansen and I live in Lippstadt/Germany. I am 37 Years old… I like to play Postal Chess (Card or Letter only) with someone who likes to,… I like to share friendships from everywhere around the world…! I speak and understand German…,English and Netherlands. My Address is: Marco Hansen, Eickelbornstr 8, 59556 Lippstadt Germany. E-Mail: marco_hansen@t-online.de.

Now, the Parrot checked out this guy in his best German, and he seems OK!  He wrote back: “I can’t stop laughing at your funny words…”  So this week the Parrot’s best Schwabisch is the funniest thing around.  Grüss!

The World Chess Championship Tournament takes place in Mexico City 13th-30th September. Participants: Viswanathan Anand 2792 (born 1969), Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2769 (1975), Alexander Morozevich RUS 2758 (1977), Peter Leko HUN 2751 (1979), Levon Aronian ARM 2750 (1982), Peter Svidler RUS 2735 (1976), Boris Gelfand ISR 2733 (1968), and Alexander Grischuk RUS 2726 (1983). Rest days: 17,22,26 September. Tiebreak games if required 30th September. Play starts at 14:00 local time (-6 GMT). Prize fund: US$1.3 million.  Official site.

After a very careful start with 4 draws, Kramnik and Anand each score a point in round 2 to face each other in round 3. The Parrot will also score White versus Black, and Draws which after 2 rounds looks like W1 : B1 : D6

Round 2 standings
1-2 Kramnik, Anand - 1.5
3-6 Gelfand, Svidler, Grischuk, Leko - 1.0
7-8 Aronian, Morozevich - 0.5

The Liverpool Chess International (Official website) - Final Individual and match scores: