And there’s Cappelle too

You’re not paying attention and suddenly five big events are taking place. This weekend the big festival of the little town of Capelle la Grande started too. full story »

What’s worse: cheating or false accusations?

Last year’s story about a Dutch chess player who was studying his position with PocketFritz during an official game, quickly became known all over the world. Cheating should be banned as much as possible - everone agrees on that. But what to do when an innocent girl is falsely accused of cheating? Isn’t that equally bad? It happened last week at the Vandoeuvre Open. full story »

Review: On the Edge of Elista, Topalov-Kramnik 2006

When the editor in chief asked me to review this book, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Almost everything has already been said about the controversial match between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik, which was held in Elista slighty more than a year ago. For this review I wanted something new to write about. So, let me give a small disclaimer in advance: this review is not about the actual Toiletgate controversy and the arguments from both camps. Instead, I will try to focus on the perspective and the general idea behind the book. In my opinion, it is not at all about ‘Toiletgate’, but about something else altogether. full story »

Dutch chess player banned after using PocketFritz

Poll added, on the right, in the grey column.

Last Saturday, while playing a game for his club, a Dutch chess player got caught outside the playing hall, holding a PDA. On the screen, a chess position was visible. It appeared that the player had entered the actual position of the game into PocketFritz. His game was declared lost, and yesterday the player was punished severely by the competition manager of the Dutch Chess Federation: a ban till the end of the season 2009-2010. full story »

Judgements FIDE Ethics Commission published

On the FIDE website the rulings of the FIDE Ethics Commission concerning five cases have been published. Four can in a way be called minor cases (because of the fifth one): a penalty for the President of the Moroccan Chess Federation, a reprimand for journalist Dimitrije Bjelica, a ban for South-African organizer Jackie Ngubeni and a reprimand for Nigel Short (who called Azmaiparashvili a “dunderhead“). The fifth was what everybody was waiting for: the Ethics Commission’s judgement of Kramnik & Hensel’s complaint against Veselin Topalov and Silvio Danailov regarding their public accusation during the 2006 World Championship match in Elista that Kramnik had been cheating. To cut a long story short, FIDE tells Topalov & Danailov “don’t do it again”. full story »

‘Cheating Topalov recorded’

For quite a while now, in the chess world there is a big fuzz about alleged cheating by the world’s highest rated player Veselin Topalov from Bulgaria. Rumours that started after his huge success at the Wch in San Luis (Argentina), at the end of 2005, that were intensified by the article by Martin Breutigam in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Russian newspaper Kommersant now claims to have in their possession a video made by a Dutch chess fan, who claims to have put on tape suspicious gestures of Topalov’s manager, Silvio Danailov. Just for the record: it wasn’t Chessvibes! full story »

Cheater banned for ten years

In a world where microchips are getting smaller and smaller, and mobile phones are turning into tiny personal computers, for a lot of people the temptation to cheat with chess is also getting bigger and bigger. And indeed, it’s not that difficult anymore to get help from outside the playing hall during a chess game, wearing any kind of modern communication devices. Umakant Sharma from India is the first to get caught and punished severely after using a bluetooth device during a tournament at Delhi earlier this month. He’s been banned from chess for no less than ten years. full story »

Who what where?

A new day, a new hope. Apart from Seirawan’s letter (see previous post) there are two more documents (at least) that are relevant:

• An open letter by Ilyumzhinov to Kramnik
• A second open letter by Kramnik

full story »