Turkish Chess Federation has sued the European Chess Union

The Turkish Chess Federation has sued the European Chess Union on October the 3rd, 2007 in Lausanne. The President of the Turkish Chess Federation, Ali Nihat Yazici (photo), invited the President of European Chess Union Boris Kutin to resign his position as soon as possible. An open letter was published yesterday. full story »

Rybka: $100,000 challenge to FIDE

During the “tour”, I’m hardly able to keep up with the chess news myself, let alone write about it. But I can make some exceptions of course, for instance when I receive an open letter from Vasik Rajlich, the programmer of the strongest computer program in the world, Rybka. He’s offering a $100,000 challenge from Rybka to FIDE, who will be represented by the winner of the Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge 2007. “The challenge consists of a 24 game match, at classical time controls, on unlimited hardware and with unlimited opening books, held at 2 games per day over twelve days, with Rybka giving a handicap of one point plus draw.” To put it mildly, Rajlich is surprised about many aspects of the “Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge” between the programs Deep Junior and Deep Fritz, being held in Elista during the final phase of the current Candidates Matches. And he’s right of course; Fritz is not in the top 3 of computer programs anymore and Junior is to be found somewhere deep down in the top 10. Rybka is leading the computer rating lists by a huge margin for about 1,5 years now. It seems to me that with the challenge the Rybka team is (rightfully) trying to prove that the “The Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge”, between two Chessbase programs, is nothing more than a commercial spectacle and most importantly a farce. full story »

New open letters Dresden

On Tuesday last week GM Erik van den Doel sent an open letter to us and others in which he complained about the quality of the food in his hotel and the price that had to be paid for it, during the European Championships. He wondered where the chess players’ money exactly went. Today we publish the reaction of ECU president Boris Kutin and Van den Doel’s reply. full story »

Where did our money go?

The European Championships in Dresden was quite succesful from an organisational point of view. Unfortunately ChessVibes had to report about some negative points as well. And we have to add one more. Today we received an open letter by one of the participants, GM Erik van den Doel. He and other players were very disappointed about the hotel food and after doing some math, they are confused about part of the money they paid for accomodation. full story »

Open letter by Boris Gelfand to the FIDE President

While the whole world is focussed on the match of the century (at least so far), it’s quite important to remember that besides this success of FIDE, the organisation has also been blundering the last few weeks (or months!?), just like Topalov. Boris Gelfand is the first player to raise questions about the candidates matches scheduled for October. full story »