At Moscow’s Central Chess Club the Russian Championship Superfinal takes place from October 3 to 15. Play starts daily at 15:00 hours Moscow time, which is 13:00 CET and 07:00 EST.

After beating Inarkiev with White and then Morozevich with Black, Svidler turned his good start at the Superfinal into a great start: yesterday he also beat Riazantsev. In doing so he took sole lead, since Lastin drew against Sakaev, and after all of today’s games ended in a draw, Svidler kept his lead going into the first rest day tomorrow.

Russian Championship Superfinal 2008 Round 4 Standings

In the third round, Svidler reacted well to Riazantsev’s new idea 13…Rab8 and especially 19.a3! was a very precise move (there 19…Nxc2? fails to 20.Qd3). After a forced series of moves including the great 25.Kd4!! White ended up with a knight and two rooks against a queen and after Black missed a way to complicate matters (30…f6! 31.exf6 e5! as given by Maxim Notkin in Chess Today) White’s advantage soon became decisive.

Jakovenko managed to tear down Alekseev’s Berlin Wall slowly but surely and especially the pawn ending was very instructive for those who haven’t seen the Zugzwang idea in the final position yet. Not showing any mercy, Timofeev was responsible for Inarkiev’s third loss. The rest of the games ended in a draw and especially for Morozevich that might have been somewhat disappointing as he had reached a promising ending from, again, a Grünfeld with Black.

Today apparently almost all of the players were longing for the rest day of tomorrow, and so in five of the six games the “fight” ended relatively quickly in a move repetition - the easiest way to avoid the Sofia Rule.

Not joining this peacefulness, Riazantsev almost defeated Vitiugov, but after missing several wins in the queen ending, he had to settle for the half point as well. In a highly theoretical Anti-Moscow Gambit, 16…Nxe4 was a novelty where Rybka actually prefers the known move 16…c3 as played in Grischuk-Gelfand, Odessa (rapid) 2007. And indeed White got a big advantage but after several accurate moves, Black was still holding on.

However, he probably should have gone for 31…Qc7 because after 32.Qa8+ Ke7 33.Rb1 Black can take on c4 and after exchanging the rooks and winning a7 with check, the resulting queen ending is still very difficult to win for White. In the game White must have been winning at several points but Vitiugov miraculously escaped - the Q+2 vs Q is already a theoretical draw!

Here are the games of rounds 3 and 4:

Links:

• 1st report: “Super start Superfinal”
• 2nd report: “Svidler beats Morozevich, leads with Lastin”
• Official website
• Live games
• TWIC’s games in PGN

The 16th Computer World Chess Championship was held September 28-October 5 in the Beijing Golden Century Golf Club in Fangshan, Beijing. It was part of the Computer Games Championship which also included tournaments for draughts, checkers, backgammon, Go and others.

Originally twelve chess programs would play, but later this number was brought down to ten. Unfortunately among them were not Fritz and not Zappa. For some reason Fritz stopped playing in computer tournaments, and the programmer of Zappa, the engine that beat Rybka in a match last year, is not active anymore.

Luckily there were enough strong programs to expect an exciting world championship. Besides Rybka, the big favorite for the title, the participants list included Hiarcs, Junior, Cluster Toga, Shredder and Sjeng.

Both Shredder and Junior have won several computer world championships. During the last two years Hiarcs has been playing very well in international tournaments and after its great second place behind Rybka in May this year, Sjeng also belonged to the list of dangerous outsiders.

The venue of the 13th Computer Games World Ch and the 16h Computer Chess World Ch

A World Championship is always “unlimited” which means that every participant may use any hardware he or she likes. On a personal note, I still have difficulty “accepting” this concept and would prefer to see a world championship in which opponents play on the same hardware, but alas this was not the case.

This situation was not a bad one for Vasik Rajlich - the Rybka programmer - because shortly before the tournament he had managed to get Rybka running on a cluster of 5 PCs and so he could use 5 x 8 = 40 processors. This hardware configuration makes Rybka about 150 ELO points stronger than on an ordinary Quad.

The programs Cluster Toga and Jonny were running on similar clusters, Junior tried its luck on a brand new 12-core PC while Hiarcs and Shredder were using 8-core Skulltrail machines. It should be mentioned that the only Chinese participant, Mobile Chess, was playing on a Nokia mobile phone :-).

This is what a computer chess playing hall looks like.
Usually there's a friendly atmosphere where chatting is allowed!

The tournament went great for Rybka. After seven rounds, there was only one rival left: Hiarcs had 6 points (Rybka 6.5 uit 7) while the rest was too far behind. In the penultimate round, Rybka played Hiarcs and reached a winning position within twenty moves, which meant the tournament was decided and Rybka had won her second world title.

Rybka only drew with Cluster Toga and Junior and won her other seven games. Hiarcs was the deserved runner-up; it only lost to Rybka and defeated Shredder and Junior among others.

Computer World Championship 2008: Hardware and Results

• SOS: Sum of Opponent Scores
• SoDOS: Sum of Defeated Opponent Scores

Computer World Championship 2008 Cross Table

Many thanks to Jeroen Noomen for providing the photos and a large part of the above text

Links:

• Tournament website
• Games in PGN

By Arne Moll

The fact that you could actually find out what ‘theory’, an objective authority, had to say about some of the individual choices you made during the game, was, for me, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the game.

Recently, I had an e-mail conversation with Dave Munger, a professor of psychology who blogs at Scienceblogs and is the president of Research Blogging, a site which promotes serious blogs on peer-reviewed science articles. He asked me if there were any scientific standards for chess writing or blogging. Suddenly, I realized there were none.

Or not really, anyway. Of course, chess is a well-known field of research in various subjects, for instance psychology (pattern recognition, etc.), mathematics and artificial intelligence, and there have been countless peer-reviewed publications on chess in these research areas. But what about chess as we chess fans know it? What about Nimzowitsch and his theories… in fact, what about the Sicilian Najdorf?

Well, we have Chess Informant and the New in Chess Yearbook series, which definitely use certain standards (like standardized symbols). Was this what Munger meant? Surely, there’s more to chess writing than using certain symbols? For example, are the annotations in these volumes actually consitstently checked by the editors? I’m sure someone checks all variations, but do standards exist for doing this? Perhaps the Informant editors check the variations by hand, or with Rybka, and the New in Chess editors check them with Fritz? Who is right when the engines give different evaluations?

And then, of course, there’s the obvious fact that chess writing is not only about moves, but also about concepts and theories. What can we say about the scientific basis for Nimzowitsch’s Mein System? Can a chess author ‘prove his point’ by simply referring to Nimzowitsch, like a mathematician may refer to Euclid or Gödel? Surely, he has to demonstrate, in analysis with concrete variations, what he means? Come to think of it, it’s not clear how we should evaluate ‘authorities’ in chess in the first place. Is it enough to consider Jonathan Rowson an authority simply because he is a grandmaster and working in the field of science himself? What about Max Euwe’s strategy concepts? Or, if we consider chess history writing, is Edward Winter the final authority when it comes to the truth?

Still, I wrote to Munger, it should be possible to introduce scientific standards in chess writing. Some kind of symbolic notation would probably be essential. Ending each variation with a clear evaluation (rather than the vague ‘needs to be checked’) would be another useful thing. I would also add specifying the engine (and the computer configuration) that has checked the variations (and mentioning where the engine and the human disagree in their evaluation.) Perhaps referring to other publications would help a lot to put things in perspective. Maybe you can think of more standards which could be useful for chess publications?

A final question is whether we want such rigid standards? Who could benefit from them? Clearly, it would make life hard for some authors who only write chess books to make as much money as possible, instead of trying to find out any ‘truth’ in chess. (And there are a lot of them!) It would make it more difficult for an author to claim that the Grand Prix Attack leads to a forced win for White, or that there is a waterproof defence against 1.d4. And people could refer to those publications on the Research Blogging site, which would be nice. But would buyers care? Would you? Would scientific chess books get more attention in the press? Or less? Finally, do we want authors to make money with scientific publications?
Shouldn’t science - including chess science - be free for all?

At Moscow’s Central Chess Club the Russian Championship Superfinal takes place from October 3 to 15. As mentioned in our first report, an ill Alexander Grischuk was replaced by Konstantin Sakaev.

Konstantin Sakaev, who replaces for the second year in a row
(last year Alekseev fell ill) | Photo: Mark Gluhovsky

Russian Championship Superfinal 2008 Round 2 Standings

After beating Inarkiev in the first round, Svidler had to play the theoretically most difficult game of the tournament: with Black against first seeded Morozevich. But as a successful keeper Svidler kept his goal clean, and actually scored himself.

He was well prepared for Moro’s English Opening and reached a satisfactory position after fifteen moves. After White missed the interesting possibility 29.d4!? Black’s position became slightly better and the strong manoeuvre Nb4-c6-d4 increased that advantage. After some tactics, perhaps White should have tried 39.f6!? because soon he found himself playing with three pawns down.

Then Black missed a much more easy win with 52…Rxd8 but still he could reach the famous Alekhine-Capablanca rook ending by force. With reversed colours, Morozevich defended differently than the great Cuban: he didn’t us his king to stop the passed a-pawn and he didn’t move his own h-pawn. This allowed Black to “freeze” his pawn structure with 66…g4! and after replying 71.f4!? with the strong 71…h4! it was over. If White just waits with 72.Kc3 then 72…h3 followed by Ke6-d6 and White’s Kc4 can always be met with Re7.

Lastin and Alekseev beat their opponents in fine positional style and like Maslak, poor Inarkiev suffered his second loss but this time after trying a nice and promising piece sacrifice. Do have a look at Inarkiev-Vitiugov after 38…Ng2 because this position looks just great. There, instead of running immediately, 39.Nxg2 hxg2 40.Rf2! is highly unclear.

Svidler, having a great start, here against
Inarkiev in round 1 | Photo: Mark Gluhovsky

A disappointing second-round game for Alexander
Morozevich | Photo: Mark Gluhovsky

Links:

• Official website
• Live games
• TWIC’s games in PGN

It’s a rare thing that a chess player gets such big coverage in mainstream media, and actually during the last weeks before a world championship match chess media normally don’t get to speak to the two players either.

Frederic Friedel, editor of the English Chessbase website, translated this week’s Der Spiegel interview with current world champion Viswanathan Anand.

(…)

SPIEGEL: How did you prepare for the World Championship?

Anand: I have been studying Kramnik since the end of April, up to ten hours a day, here at home in my cellar, where I have my office. I have a database and construct game plans. I try to neutralise positions in which Kramnik is strong. He is doing the same thing with my game, which I must of course take into consideration. Let me put it this way: I must remember that he is thinking about what I am thinking about him. In any case one is working for months with the computer, trying to find new paths.

(…)

SPIEGEL: What is the role of emotions?

Anand: They are decisive. The moment in which you realise that you have made a mistake is the most unsettling you can imagine. You have to try to keep control of your emotions. Chess is a form of acting. If your opponent senses your insecurity or your annoyance or your dejection, then you are bolstering his courage. He will take advantage of your weakness. Confidence is very important – even pretending to be confident. If you make a mistake but do not let your opponent see what you are thinking then he may overlook the mistake.

(…)

You can read the whole interview here or the original (in German) here.

Sochnev,A.
2004

White to play and draw

Next week the solution.

Solution last week:

At Moscow’s Central Chess Club the Russian Championship Superfinal takes place from October 3 to 15. Normally this event is played at the end of the year, but like the Tal Memorial the Superfinal has been moved forward on the calendar - probably because of the Dresden Olympiad in November and/or the 3rd FIDE Grand Prix.

The following participants are fighting for a prize fund of 5 million rubles (approximately 140,000 Euros): Alexander Morozevich (2787), Dmitry Jakovenko (2737), Peter Svidler (2727), Evgeny Alekseev (2715), Artyom Timofeev (2670), Ernesto Inarkiev (2669), Alexander Riazantsev (2656), Alexander Lastin (2651), Evgeny Tomashevsky (2646), Konstantin Sakaev (2640), Nikita Vitiugov (2638) and Konstantin Maslak (2544). Unfortunately Alexander Grischuk had to cancel his participation due to illness - he was replaced by Sakaev.

The rate of play is 1 hour and 40 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to end the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move. Like last year, the players cannot offer a draw directly to their opponents; it has to be done via the arbiter. Play starts daily at 15:00 hours Moscow time, which is 13:00 CET and 07:00 EST. Live games, as usual, at russiachess.org/online/.

The Superfinal had a super start, with four decisive games. Rating favourite Morozevich tried his new love, the Grünfeld, again. Against Sakaev’s novelty 12.Bd3 he immediately replied very creatively but Grischuk’s stand-in held is own for a long time. The ending might even be a tiny bit better for White but as from move 34, probably in timetrouble White started to make mistakes.

Svidler deviated from Gelfand-Leko, Dortmund 2007 (12.Bg5) with the more modest 12.b3 and soon reached a very promising position because Inarkiev allowed 17.e5! which could have been prevented by 16…Bf4. Black had to give up an exchange but there was not much compensation.

Lastin-Tomashevsky was a very sharp Archangelsk Ruy Lopez where Black was probably doing fine until a few moves before the end. His 37…Bf5 was already not the best square, giving White some chances for tricks, and at the end the difficult defence 39…Qe2 40.Bd5 Rf8 was necessary.

Maslak-Riazantsev was an instructive example of a bishop dominating a knight on the rim. The two draws of today showed that the Sofia Rule sometimes works very well: interesting endings fought out till the end, and with some instructive moments too.

Links:

• Official website
• Live games
• TWIC’s games in PGN

* Do chess players think in words?
* Does chess explain how a benevolent God might exist in a world permeated by evil?
* Is chess really a game?

This book will definitely give you some food for thought with chapters on technology, ethics, hip-hop and backward analysis. For a list of authors and more information, check our website.

A book with almost the same title but quite a different content is The Philosophy of Chess, a 2007 reprint of an 1857 original by William Cluley. Here you can find a long essay on the mid-19th century thinking on chess and on contemporary chess openings, mainly king’s pawn openings. More information here.

The first World Mind Sports Games is held in Beijing, China from October 3 to 18, 2008. Twenty five to thirty gold medals will be vied for by more than 3000 competitors from over 150 countries. There will be five mind sports competitions: Bridge, Chess, Go, Draughts, and Xiangqi (Chinese Chess).

The Games will be under the aegis of the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) and organized by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) of which FIDE is a founding member. Venues are the China National Convention Center and the Beijing International Convention Center.

For chess there are the following sections: Men’s Individual Blitz, Women’s Individual Blitz, Men’s Individual Rapid, Women’s Individual Rapid, Mixed Pairs Blitz, Mixed Pairs Rapid, Men’s Teams Blitz, Women’s Teams Blitz, Men’s Teams Rapid and Women’s Teams Rapid.

The rate of play for the ten events:
Blitz Chess: 3 minutes with increment of 2 seconds per move. Individual (Men & Women), Pair (Mixed Team), Team (Men & Women)
Rapid Chess: 25 minutes with increment of 5 seconds per move. Individual (Men & Women), Pair (Mixed Team), Team (Men & Women)

Here are the participants lists as published by FIDE on July 21st. They’re not definite and certainly not official lists (nothing about participants can be found on the official website!). As Chessdom reported, a Russian sponsor who should have been responsible for part of the air tickets seems to be withdrawing. They also stated that Topalov is not playing.

World Mind Sports Games | Chess | Participants List Men

World Mind Sports Games | Chess | Participants List Women

Most of the details about entries, rules and regulations of the 1st World Mind Sports Games can be found here at the FIDE website. Below is the schedule of the chess part of the event:

By Georgios Souleidis

Next weekend, from Friday October 3rd to Sunday 5th, one of the strongest team competitions starts its new season: the Schachbundesliga. 16 teams, each consisting of 16 to 18 players (only 8 play each weekend) compete until March 2009 for the German championship. OSG Baden-Baden is the big favourite with 16 grandmasters in their squad, headed by Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen.

The strongest challengers are Werder Bremen with Shakhryar Mamedyarov, some strong Ukrainian players like Eljanov, Efimenko and Areshchenko and SV Mülheim-Nord with Dmitry Jakovenko, former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov and France’s number one Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

Teams Bundesliga 2008-2009