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Chessville
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Senior and Junior in Big Apple Chess Championship Match by Max Panfilov (exclusively
for Chessville) (Text and images copyright Max Panfilov unless otherwise stated © 2003) If you are in New York city metro area and you happen to play chess, there is a golden opportunity for you to be in one of the most sought-after events. You would have to pay some bucks to get to Manhattan (tunnel/bridge tolls) where the show is, but once you are there, you would not regret it. For all of you who could not get to New York last Sunday, here is the pictorial report so you can almost feel as if you were there in the grand chess event. If you still
think whether it's worth to get there for the next game, don't even hesitate!
Why? If you enjoy chess, this chess match is one of the best to watch. In
addition, when you actually enter the building where the action is, everything
is free! All the guests gathered in the conference room on the 9th
floor where they had a chess board setup on the stage section. It was as close to
guest chairs as about couple feet. Majority (including me, huh) thought that it's
where they are going to play and they were so happy. Well, we were wrong. Nobody
knew about the 12th floor yet. Such a setup was announced when they were already
in the opening of the game.
To watch the 3D version of the video feed from 12th floor or the stage with
the board on the 9th, you would have to put special glasses on. The glasses were
provided for free to everyone. They looked like oversized version of the regular
sun glasses and no electronics were in it. Just simple glasses with special
lenses. It was a different kind of technology than what is needed for 3D
videos you would need to watch on x3d website. As you can imagine, about half of
the audience were wearing those black glasses! It's a fun experience to get in
front and glance at the crowd that had cool black glasses on. Not
everyone was just sitting put in their chairs though. Nice chairs by the way. There was a special table (actually several of them) in the corner of the main room that was
occupied by x3d/ChessBase team: Leontxo Garcia, Mig Greengard,
Frederic Friedel, and John Fernandez (picture on right).
The main commentary was given to the audience by GMs Yasser Seirawan and
Maurice Ashley from the
stage in the main room. And I should say they did a very good job! Not to
mention they were standing all the time during the game. Well, they sat down for
just a minute overall.
Unfortunately, Garry Kasparov did not show up in that conference room before the game. And they
did not promise he would be in the mood to come down here after the game either.
Only after Kasparov crushed Junior in less than 30 moves, they announced that
Kasparov will in fact come down to the audience! That's just because he was way
too happy he won the game.
It was deep night outside and it was snowing. Nevertheless, Manhattan uptown was full of people outside. Neon lights, huge TV screens, and all the rest made night a day-like atmosphere. Quick stroll to the parking garage through the Times Square was another feature of the grand event day. * * * [Event "X3D Man-Machine match"] [Site "New York City"] [Date "2003.01.26"] [Round "1"] [White "Kasparov(GM)"] [Black "Deep_Junior(C)"] [Result "1-0"] [Opening "QGD semi-Slav: Stoltz variation"] [ECO "D45"] [NIC "SL.08"] [Time "14:20:47"] [TimeControl "7200+0"] 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e3 e6 5. Nf3 Nbd7 6. Qc2 Bd6 7. g4 dxc4 8. Bxc4 b6 9. e4 e5 10. g5 Nh5 11. Be3 O-O 12. O-O-O Qc7 13. d5 b5 14. dxc6 bxc4 15. Nb5 Qxc6 16. Nxd6 Bb7 17. Qc3 Rae8 18. Nxe8 Rxe8 19. Rhe1 Qb5 20. Nd2 Rc8 21. Kb1 Nf8 22. Ka1 Ng6 23. Rc1 Ba6 24. b3 cxb3 25. Qxb3 Ra8 26. Qxb5 Bxb5 27. Rc7 {White wins} 1-0 * * * * * *
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Admission to the event is free, food is free (the picture on the left shows the
buffet with some food, snacks, water, soft drinks, etc.), drinks (non-alcoholic of
course) are free, and the chat with famous chess celebrities is free as well.
Not to mention all other features and atmosphere you can expect from the event
like this. Oh yes, one requirement to get in, bring a jacket! If you wear jeans
or anything like that, you will not be admitted no matter what. Registering in
advance via 
The event is taken place in New
York Athletic Club, which is located close to the south part of Central Park.
Here is the setup: admission is on the first floor of the building, conference
rooms where you are going to end up is on the 9th floor, and chess monsters
Kasparov and Deep Junior are actually playing on the 12th floor in a closed room.
Only couple VIPs can enter that special room during the actual game. Nice view (from the conference room
on 9th floor) of the Manhattan over the Central Park in the picture above
right. People thought it was supposed to be organized so Kasparov
would be playing behind a huge sound-proof glass so the whole audience would be
able to see them all the time. Well, no luck this time.
The video feed
was supposed to be done from the 12th
floor to the 9th one where the crowd is. There were many TVs and two huge
screens for the live broadcast of what was happening on the 12th floor in 2D and
3D. When the game started though, there was not even a single 1D yet for the audience.
Picture above left shows Leontxo Garcia and Mig Greengard covering
the match live over the Internet.
You
can see Mig Greengard and Frederic Friedel trying to solve all the issues and
start the broadcast in the picture on the right. When
the first frames of the video feed showed up on the screens, it was already 5th
or so move on the board. At that moment, our commentators and analysts Ashley
and Seirawan on stage were asking audience to let them know what was played so
they could setup the board with played moves. Still not sure how
Ashley and Seirawan were receiving the moves later because from time to time
audience were letting them know what move has been played. The audience could
see instantly the moves from video on TVs (picture on
the left: live video from upstairs on one of the TVs in the room).
Later during the
game, all the technical problems were solved by x3d to broadcast the match
to the conference rooms. It took them about half an hour to fully
setup all the video including the 3D version. The 3D video was shown on the huge
screen in the main room next to the stage as well as on even bigger screen in
the adjacent bigger room. That other room is the one that had the food buffet
with people lined up next to it!
People were moving around from room to room to get some commentaries in the main
room and watch bigger 3D and get some food in the other. There was also a
hall that actually have entrances to the room from the elevators.
The hall was
pretty crowded sometimes as people were chatting there or some interviews were
being taken. FIDE
president Ilyumzhinov is interviewed by Russian TV company NTV (left). Frederic
Friedel from ChessBase is in the hall (right). By the way, there were many Russian speaking people in the
audience and it was not uncommon to hear chat in Russian. It was a frequent
scene when someone was being interviewed in one room or the other or in the
hall. You could eavesdrop the interview and have first-hand knowledge of
happenings. Every chess celebrity was easily accessible and even if you are not
a journalist, you could have a quick enjoyable chat with any chess master or champion
to congratulate and discuss his/her recent accomplishments.
Huh, there were
several kids (yes, they had their ties and jackets on as well) running around
the floor trying to find every titled player and get an autograph.
You can see Boris Gulko in the pictures on the right. I don't know
how many people they tracked down but I am pretty sure the sheets of paper they
were collecting autographs on were full.
There
was also an interesting person in the hall. He was sitting in the corner all the
time next to the table where he had some pictures laid out for sale. Those were
high-quality up-close pictures of recent Kasparov-Karpov match. When he was
asked how much each picture costs, the answer was: "25 dollars... sorry
it's that much but my name is not cheaper." The guy turned out to be the
famous photojournalist that covered all kind of events worldwide. His name is
Lev Maksimov (picture above left) and he is
81 years old.
They were
doing live commentary of the game over the Internet. They were pretty busy but I
still managed to take a picture with Mig!
Yes, the rumors that Mig is very tall
are confirmed, look at me standing next to Mig (picture
on left)... and I am 6 foot (180 cm) tall. Mig is a very popular guy
among chess fans around the world. His style of writing and covering chess
events are very attractive. He also recently started his own website/service
called 
And the game was more than just few hours long! To hear
instant analysis from Ashley and Seirawan (picture on
the right) is one of the best features of the
event (yes, free food is one of them too). They were juggling chess pieces on
the board trying to find out all the tricks and plans and explain them to the
audience. However, at one moment, even Ashley and Seirawan were stunned. Just
after they were trying to explain that it's impossible for Black to defend e5
pawn and that Deep Junior (playing black in 1st game) can't really do any
human-like sacrifices, Deep Junior makes an exchange sacrifice that made Ashley
and Seirawan silent for about a minute. You could hear loud "wows" in
the room. A moment later the commentary continued and everybody was getting back
to normal wondering around the rooms.
Susan
Polgar (picture on the left) was later invited to the stage where she announced to the public that her
sister Judit Polgar won the 2nd place in Wijk ann Zee (one of the strongest tournaments)
remaining undefeated. Susan was very proud of her sister. She also shared some
moments of her life being a Mom of two kids (2 and 4 years old). "...being
pregnant, then nursing, then pregnant again, then nursing again...," said
Susan laughing. She mentioned that one of her kid is already coming up to her
every morning asking to play chess, "Mommy, Mommy, let's play
chess."
In
addition to Susan, there was also another now-famous female chess player in the
crowd, Anna Hahn. She is newly crowned 2003 US Women's Champion and won the
playoff by beating former champions Jennifer Shahade and Irina Krush. The
picture of Anna Hahn is on the right. She now lives in Jersey City
(New Jersey) nearby New York city but was born in Riga, Latvia. There were many
more interesting famous chess players and it would take another article to list
them all. Just to name a few more: Former Deep Blue trainer Joel Benjamin, Maxim
Dlugy, William Lombardy, Ilya Gurevich.
Otherwise, we would not be lucky to see him. So,
he came down, quickly gave the short analysis of the game and instantly
disappeared through the backdoor. Funny story how he actually appeared on stage!
Once the Junior resignation was announced, crowd began gathering next to the
hall exit where the elevator is. Only logical that Kasparov would enter the room
from the hall as it appeared the only entrance. Everyone was looking that
direction while he actually appeared on stage like magic. There happened to be a
door or another exit right next to the stage behind the big screen. Garry looked very happy! Well, even though he does not seem like that from the
pictures (Garry Kasparov and FIDE
president Ilyumzhinov in the picture above left), he was all smiling, joking, excited, pretty energetic! When the game
just started, they said that maybe if we get lucky Kasparov would come down to
us after the final game!!
Well, he came down after the 1st one after all!
Audience was really happy to see him even for a short period of time. Amir Ban
and Shay Bushinsky (programmers of Deep Junior) came up on stage right after
Kasparov took off. Opposite to Garry, they looked very depressed. The
picture of Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky (center) on the right does
show them happy though. Amir and Shay spent couple minutes on stage trying to
ease the pain of loosing the very first game. After they 
