Too late to leave?

“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock,” said Harry Lime in Orson Welles’ The Third Man. In FIDE, for twenty years they lacked democracy and love for chess, and what did that produce? The zero-tolerance rule. Read more

The new Laws of Chess: what has changed?

As of today, July 1st, 2009 our beloved game of chess has a new edition of its official rules: the Laws of Chess. The best known, and most-feared change is the so-called “zero-tolerance” rule: a player who arrives just a few seconds late at his board, loses the game. We asked top arbiter and chairman of the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee, Geurt Gijssen: what has changed, and why? Read more

Three draws in Bazna

All games in the third round of the Kings Tournament in Bazna ended in a draw and so Shirov, Ivanchuk and Gelfand kept their shared lead. Only Radjabov had serious winning chances, in his game against Shirov. Read more

Ivanchuk: “I have a question”

At the end of the last press conference on Sunday in Le??n, when press officer Leontxo Garcia asked if there were any more questions, it was Vassily Ivanchuk who said: “I have a question.” In the second blitz game the players had reached the famous Rook and Knight versus Rook ending, which Carlsen tried in vain to win, for 53 moves. Ivanchuk asked why the arbiter did not interfere. Read more

Sokolov beats all, Fier leads by a point

Ivan Sokolov defeated all of his opponents in the first half of the Crown Group, and Alexandr Fier is leading by a point in the Open Group, where amongst others we find veteran GM Vlastimil Hort in second place. We’re talking about this year’s Essent Tournament in Hoogeveen. Read more

[lang_en]In the spirit of the rules?[/lang_en][lang_nl]In de geest van de regels?[/lang_nl]

[lang_en]Yesterday, Peter wrote an interesting article about the Turkish club competition. I was especially fascinated by the team-setup.[/lang_en][lang_nl]Gisteren schreef Peter een interessant artikel over de Turkse clubcompetitie. Ik was met name gefascineerd door de team-opzet.[/lang_nl] Read more

[lang_nl]Schaker geschorst voor gebruik PocketFritz[/lang_nl][lang_en]Dutch chess player banned after using PocketFritz[/lang_en]

[lang_nl]Zie ook de poll rechts, in de grijze kolom.

Afgelopen zaterdag werd een Nederlandse schaker tijdens een competitiepartij buiten de speelzaal betrapt met een PDA in zijn hand. Op het schermpje was een schaakstelling zichtbaar. Het bleek dat de actuele stand van de partij door de betreffende speler in PocketFritz was ingevoerd. Zijn partij werd voor hem verloren verklaard en gisteren werd hij er door de competitieleider van de KNSB zwaar voor gestraft: een schorsing tot en met het eind van seizoen 2009-2010.[/lang_nl][lang_en]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.[/lang_en] Read more