Celebrate Chess

The overall picture

2013-01-29T08:15:00.001-08:00

When is a game not a game? The answer is, of course, when it instructs. For example, the social skills necessary to communicate effectively with your Bridge partner are clearly relevant in a wider context. And so it is with chess. If you want to win a chess game you must avoid rigidity. Becoming fixated on queening a passed pawn may very well blind you to the need to defend a weak spot in front of your vulnerable king. You need to be aware of the overall picture, to know what is going on in all corners of the chessboard. Perhaps you will then learn to apply this lesson in the great chessboard of Life too - with obvious benefits.

Let's consider the wealthier individuals amongst us. My point is not to criticise the rigidity they exhibit in focussing on wealth acquisition at the expense of all else but merely to point out that, in terms of aquiring an overall awareness of life's richness, they may have missed out. They do not see the weak spot in front of their king, even if the passed pawn, on which they diligently focus, is successfully pushed home. To quote from a recent article by George Monbiot (published in the Guardian 29th January 2013) - "the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being". He goes on to say that

"Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well-established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of the rest of the nation is no barrier to the desire to dominate it. In fact it appears to be associated with a powerful sense of entitlement"

Perhaps chess, in some small way, teaches you the disadvantages of obstinately pushing one single agenda - to the exclusion of all other objectives such as "the concerns and norms of the rest of society". Chessplayers become accustomed to seeing how events on one part of the board, seemingly disconnected, nevertheless affect events on another. This concept of the 'overall picture' is developed further in this extract from an article about 'interconnectiveness' in a Buddhist website, thus:

"Buddhism teaches that our lives are constantly developing in a dynamic way, in a synergy of the internal causes within our own life (our personality, experiences, outlook on life and so on) and the external conditions and relations around us. Each individual existence contributes to creating the environment which sustains all other existences. All things, mutually supportive and related, form a living cosmos, a single living whole"

Incidentally, I know a (strong) chessplayer who is also a Buddhist. He is Ivan Petrovitch and here is one of his poems, "BECOMING".

We have to dance overtop abysses
To laugh at everything and everyone
We have to overcome the here and now
To be a bridge and not the end
We have to dwell with uncertainty
To doubt, to doubt, to doubt
Everything is open to question
Values, concepts and precepts
“balance” and madness
most noble sentiments
science, history, religion,
nothing, absolutely nothing,
can be deemed “final”
finishing is atrophying stagnating, dying...

Ivan Petrovitch

Garry Kasparov and the Pussy Riot trial (updated 24 August 2012)

2012-08-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Latest News:
From The Telegraph (24 August 2012):
"Former world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov was cleared on Friday of taking part in an unsanctioned protest over the conviction of punk band Pussy Riot in a rare Moscow court ruling in his favour".

Introduction to a YouTube video "Garry Kasparov statement after acquittal" (full English transcript appears alongside the video):
"Garry Kasparov speaks to the media outside a Moscow courtroom on Aug 24, 2012 after his acquittal on charges of participating in an illegal protest outside the Pussy Riot trial on Aug 17. This is perhaps the first time in Putin's Russia for a court not to accept police statements at face value. Police statements were demonstrated to be false by a huge amount of witness testimony and video evidence."

Original Story:
I have been following the Pussy Riot trial and, as I write this, the judge is summing up the prosecution case. According to his Facebook page, Garry Kasparov has just been arrested and beaten by the police (photo credit: Olaf Koens).

Two early reports from the FB page:

"Garry Kasparov has just been arrested outside the Moscow courthouse where the Pussy Riot trial is taking place. He was not there to protest, simply to attend, and the police cornered him and dragged him into the police van. This photo shows the police assaulting him inside the van. We hope he is all right and we will provide updates when we have them. (Photo by Olaf Koens here: )"

"We just spoke to Garry on the phone. He is at the police station. He was beaten but says he is okay. He isn't sure what will happen next. It seems the police are waiting for orders from above. He says he was standing calmly speaking with journalists when police pushed through and grabbed him. Thanks to everyone for the support."

Stop Press:
The three Pussy Riot ladies (see photo below) have been jailed for two years. Video coverage of the incident is at the BBC site (1) - their sentencing in court is at BBC site (2).

Yekaterina Samutsevich (29), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (22), and Maria Alyokhina (24).

More on the background to the case can be found here

My Big Brother, David

2011-11-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

My Big Brother, David

Regrettably, this entry is written in the past tense as my elder brother, David, died in 2005. For some reason, he seems to be "in the air" quite a bit of late (hence this post about him). For example, I just had an email from an old friend of his who has invited me for a chess game (or three - I'm not not sure yet).

Let me introduce David Bernard to you - by way of a photo and a few words I wrote about him at the time of his passing. If you have been following this blog at all, you will already have seen him in the header, he's the beer drinker on the right (not the coffee drinker on the left!). Here then is the obit and the photo.

"David was my big brother, my only sibling. I could not catch him up in age -
no matter how I tried, he was always six years older than me! We grew up in
the austerity of the immediate post war years, but in the privileged
position of being the sons of the family doctor - at that time an important
figure.

David always had his own unique style. Superficially he epitomised the
classic "Eccentric Englishman" of course. He looked at the world in a
special way, in an intelligent way. As a youngster, his bedroom was an
Aladdin's cave of half completed experiments in all of the sciences.
Mysterious things would be growing in jam jars and electrical devices of
unknown function would be in the process of creation.

He made extensive studies of wild flowers and mushrooms. I could never
understand how anyone could be interested in such things, but I had a great
respect for the way he would gain mastery over the latest subject of his
interest. Cryptic crosswords, for example, were an open book to him. He had
an extensive knowledge of astronomy. Yet he displayed none of the arrogance
of an academic, only the self-deprecating sense of humour of a true
philosopher.

At one time he specialised in making rockets out of washing up liquid
bottles. These were fairly sophisticated machines, powered by igniting a
mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. They rose to considerable heights. I tried
to emulate him by making my own rockets - but mine were just fireworks
inside a metal pipe, sealed at one end. Later on it was even harder to
compete with him as he climbed the academic ladder, eventually studying the
complex processes involved in the evolution of stars and nebulae.

His later career was based on his skill at computing. His approach was
unorthodox, yet indispensable to his colleagues. Essentially he was a "Mr
Fixit" for problems that others found intractable, even impossible. Yet he
seemed to take much more pride in the extra embellishments to his programs,
such as an initial screen containing animated goldfish. One of the best
presents that I bought him was a child's plastic toy - being a plastic pig
which had battery-operated flapping wings - the proverbial "flying pig". It
was advertised as being suitable for a three year old, a description which
pleased us both immensely. Clearly he had no concern about how he was viewed
by others. He was very much "his own man".

I will miss you, my brother and not just for the countless games of chess
that we enjoyed so much!"

Well, here we are in 2011 and I am presently playing against some of his friends. David liked to refer to one of them as the "Hawk" - he has a chess site called 'ChessFriendsWorld'.

New members are always welcome, we play chess in a relaxed and friendly fashion, via email (no time limit) - so I hope you will give us a "look see" and maybe join a tournament at some stage (it's free and there's no registration).

David wrote a useful chess program (now free) for recording moves and variations so please contact "Hawk" at the site if you would like to try it out.

As a chessplayer, you have the attributes of a Wall Street trader

2011-10-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Boaz Weinstein’s opening move on Wall Street came as a result of chess. A bold statement which is worth thinking about!

"Chess helps in trading, Mr. Weinstein said. To become a good chess player, he learned to focus on how he made decisions because he could not calculate the results of all his possible moves. Learning to deal with that uncertainty or risk has been useful. When you make an investment, “you can have an 80 percent chance of being right. And then the 20 percent comes up. But really it is the process that you used to make the decision", he said.”

These extracts are taken from the DealBook section in the New York Times as reported on 29 September 2011.

Let's face it, chessplayers are often viewed as "supergeeks" who have only the most tenuous grip on reality. But let's sift through the article a little more to find out why a chess player (such as yourself, for example) may indeed possess attributes which may lead to success in the business world. Thus:

“So many people in the investment world have bull-market mentalities. They do well when things are going well - Mr. Norwood said. In chess, he said, you are constantly facing setbacks, and the people who become great players learn to overcome them."

Here is the only part of the article's thesis that I take exception to. Why do we have to exclude the majority of the chess-playing fraternity from the argument? You don't have to be a "great player" to have have the attributes as described. It takes a certain amount of courage to even begin a chess game - with all the attendant potential humiliation of losing, the necessity of concentrating in a way that is quite beyond the majority of the population and so on.

So what other analogies are there between chess and investing? Here's what Mr. Hirsch, the founder of Seneca Capital, says:

"memory, pattern recognition and the order in which you play moves are important in chess, and the same is true in investing".

Apparently, Boaz Weinstein, who I mentioned at the beginning, often considers "chess players when hiring" - so maybe you could yet retire "a multimillionaire at the age of 40" as did one David Norwood, a well-known Grandmaster.

"Go for it", say I!

You may be interested in one of the comments made on the article by 'Michael' from Montreal, thus:

"If we deconstruct chess we find that all chess can be defined as a "chain" of moves. From the beginning to end this chain of moves is defined by the present state of the board. Aka past moves have no impact on the next move. Of course one might question the logic of this. "Don't chess players plan their attacks?" the answer is that yes they do. But no matter what your last move was your current move is entirely dependent on the present location of all the pieces.

This is the definition of what is called a Markov chain, a probability model which depends only on the current state of your sample. Markov chains are the one most useful probability models in the world and can be used to model anything from weather systems to financial markets.

Chess by itself cannot give a person the tools to deal with financial markets (as noted in the article) but it does give people a certain intuition and imagination which can help people grasp the complex prediction models that are oftentimes extensions of or based on Markov chains".

The Chess Gods - Part 2

2011-10-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

2011 Grand Slam chess tournament - the São Paulo first leg

I have already given some my own impressions during the tournament here. Now that the first leg is over, I have more things to tell you.

When I was there I managed to get Vasily Ivanchuk's autograph - quite a good choice in view of the fact that he was the tournament leader after the games in São Paulo had finished ie he was ahead of Anand and Carlsen at the half way stage of the 2011 Grand Slam.

1. Vasily Ivanchuk - 10
2. Hikaru Nakamura - 7
3-6. Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen - 6
6. Francisco Vallejo - 3

His game against Aronion in Round 4 was particularly exciting. You can see the moves and a full commentary on the game at ChessVibes which sets the scene nicely as follows:

"When Vassily Ivanchuk is in top shape he can be the world's best player - at least for a while. He already proved this back in 1989 when he won the Linares tournament ahead of Karpov, aged 19, and two years later he repeated this when Kasparov also participated - who famously lost to Ivanchuk in the first round, in a 3.Bb5+ Sicilian. Another good example is the MTel 2008 tournament which Ivanchuk won with the superscore of 8/10.

After becoming 3rd at the World Cup, everything is going Ivanchuk's way so far in Sao Paolo - this time even luck is on his side! On Friday, in terrible timetrouble he missed a winning continuation against Levon Aornian, who then, with enough time on the clock, blundered to lose anyway. After drawing with Nakamura in the first round this was the third consecutive win for Ivanchuk. Especially with the football score in use, victories taste very sweet in this tournament."

I like Ivanchuk's comment about his strategy for the second half of the tourney. He explains that he will avoid any attempt at an overall strategy, in favour of simply focusing on each match as it comes. One interviewer suggested to him that, in view of the fact that "Hikaru was your closest pursuer, it's obviously very important to beat him in your head-to-head match". The reply was "No, because each game ... I'm trying to be very concentrated on each game, it doesn't matter who's playing against me". As we are always told - "play the board, not the man"!

Ivanchuk also impressed by being strong enough to recover from the effects of a robbery as he was leaving, or I should say, trying to leave, São Paulo - he won his first game in Bilbão against Nakamura! Here is ICC's take on the affair (they call him the 'Samba King'!).

"On a sad note, regretfully we have to report that Vassily Ivanchuk and his wife were robbed at gunpoint in the hotel driveway before boarding a taxi to the airport to go on to Bilbao. It is believed that the opportunist thief, on hearing on TV that Ivanchuk had won the Sao Paulo leg, may have thought that he already had received the prize money. Thankfully, neither were hurt in the attack, but Ivanchuk's wife's passport was stolen and she had to return to the Ukraine to receive a new one.

Hopefully the incident will not otherwise mar Ivanchuk's performance in Bilbao; and it was nice to hear that in the spirit of the game, his nearest rival and first opponent in Bilbao, Hikaru Nakamura, immediately offered support for his opponent and the possibility of a postponement of their game (should Ivanchuk need it) by tweeting: "Quite disappointed to hear the news from São Paulo about Ivanchuk being robbed. Hopefully we can postpone the game till the 9th."

'WhyChess' has an interview with Ivanchuk about his reaction to the robbery here.

If you want my take on the dangers of an Englishman living in São Paulo, here goes. I enjoy living here with my lovely Brazilian wife. I don't travel around the city much so I'm not in a position to comment much. I do know that the levels of petty crime have dropped considerably over the last 15 years or so. Apparently the criminals don't find that 'gringoes' like me are carrying as much money as they used to (!) - so there is an increased number of professionally organised crimes who target banks and so on.

As many people have said already, most big cities have their dangers. As a couple of commentators put it (on the ChessVibes site)

"One should not be so quick to blame Sao Paulo. I know of four titled players who were robbed at gunpoint several years ago in one of the nicest sections of Philadelphia."

"In 1990, Artur Yusupov (then a world-top player) surprised burglars in his apartment in Moscow, was shot and barely survived. He then emigrated to Germany which he represents ever since".

There are things that city dwellers anywhere should be aware of, obviously:

1. Certain areas should always be avoided, especially at night.
2. Dress down, not up eg don't have a nice watch on view.
3. Walk confidently, don't dawdle (poring over a city map is a dead giveaway).
4. Stay alert, be aware of suspicious behaviour or people following you.
5. If you're at the point of a knife, you should have a satisfactory amount of cash on you, ready to offer them. Don't hesitate in handing stuff over eg your shoes.
6. Offer no resistance to muggers whatsoever. They'll likely be on drugs and will have no hesitation
whatsoever in shooting you. Pride is a luxury you cannot afford.
7. Don't drive with the window down, particularly near traffic lights. Always lock the car doors. Don't leave any inviting stuff on the car seat when the car is parked.
8. Having an old credit card on you to give to robbers is an old ploy. My wife suggests that offering this up could get you in deep trouble if they notice it's out of date. It's common practice to take you to an ATM too - again, you will be in deep trouble when they realise you are trying to play tricks.

The closest I've come to the criminal element so far is when I found a nice gentleman in a car waiting for me when I came out of a bank. He explained that he had to catch a plane and that the lovely coats on his back seat were samples from a show which he had been given but no longer wanted. Did I want to buy any? Well I'm not part of the high society set so I tried to explain that I did not require a dinner suit just now, thank you very much. Ah, but I would be helping him out a great deal if I would fork out some dosh - velly cheap. He got very fed up with me as I, not realising I was basically being asked to be a fence for some stolen goods, started a long and rambling account in (very) broken Portuguese about my circumstances, about how nice the clothes were, how I was really sorry I could not oblige etc. Spoilt his day completely, prob'ly, LOL.

As for the chess at the Grand Slam, well, I tried my hand at a blitz tourney - another of the side events that the organisers provided. I won a couple is all. Here's a video of the blitz tourney. The camera gradually focuses in on the White player doing a demolition job on his opponent on board 008.

The Chess Gods arrive in town - my home town!

2011-09-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was privileged to attend the 2011 Grand Slam chess tournament, the first leg of which was played in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo - my home town. That's a misnomer of course, São Paulo is actually the largest city in Brazil, with a city population of about 11 million and almost 20 million in its metropolitan region (Wiki)

The world's elite were playing, including all three 2800+ players. So I was able to see World Champion Viswanathan Anand, World Number One Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Vasily Ivanchuk, and Francisco Vallejo Pons (Chessbase)

As well as wanting to see the superstars in person, I was also pretty desperate to play some OTB games as my chess these days is exclusively played online. So I enrolled for a couple of tournaments (21 min games) which were organised alongside the main event. I should have paid my entry fee in advance through official channels but the organisers waived the rules. They asked me to promise to take the entry invoice to a bank and pay later. In broken Portuguese I said "You can trust me - I'm English!". How we all laughed! They were great, even printing off some tourney player lists for me whilst still in the middle of organizing the main tournament.

Anyway, when I entered these tourneys, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. It turns out that they included IM's, even a couple of GMs! Not to worry. Who else did I play (and lose against)? Let's begin with Suzana Chang.

I was pleased with my effort against Suzanah because I somehow won a piece for a pawn. I had no idea who I was playing, still playing without fear. Retribution soon came. I still don't know how she managed to conjure up a double pin which seemed to come from nowhere. Oh well. Wish I had the game scores to show you but I knew that I had enough to cope with in playing OTB for the first time in years, without having to try and record all the moves of a 21 minute game as well. She was very gracious about it all and I very much enjoyed the game.

Later on her husband, Luismar Brito, and I had a hilarious 5 minute knockabout game, accompanied by lots of bantering and general hilarity. Great fun! Luismar is a FIDE Master, currently rated 2278 (click on his image below for more details).

As a consequence of playing in these tourneys, I am now in the same photo gallery as Anand and Carlsen on this website page! Possibly, through some form of osmosis, this will result in me acquiring new and terrifying chess superpowers? Um, maybe not.

Here I am in the black T-shirt, skillfully finding losing moves against Thauane Ferreira de Medeiros (FIDE rating 1805) - though she's out of camera shot in this photo. I had a strong attack against her but she defended brilliantly and, with seconds left on the clock, beat me.

Here is a photo where you can at least see her properly - playing against a gentlemen who you probably recognise! In fact, she was one of the last players to succomb to Kasparov's formidable powers in a simultaneous he gave in the "Teatro do Sesi", São Paulo against 20 youngsters on 1 September 2011.

So this obviously "connects" me to Gary Kasparov according to the theory of "six degrees of separation" ie the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. Well, maybe!

Incidentally, if you are interested in "professional networking", you can link to me on LinkedIn. This "operates on the concept of how many steps you are away from a person you wish to communicate with. The site encourages you to pass messages to people in your network via the people in your 1st-degree connections list, who in turn pass it to their 1st-degree connections". Then you, too, will be connected, through me, to Kasparov :)

Amongst the many other friendly folk at the event who I had the privilege to meet to Paulo Cesar Costa (FIDE 2061) who is an active chess teacher and has captained the Presidente Prudente city teams with excellent results (image below, as well as in one of the above photos). I also met Jorge Roberto Gonçalves (FIDE 2042) - a gentleman and a haiku poet. Yes, before you ask, I lost them both!

My thanks go to Stephen Tavares Neto (chess journalist, trainer and international chess referee) for sending me some photos from his blog - it has many original photographs from the event in the form of a slide show, as well as a report in Portuguese.

YouTube footage is already starting to appear - here and here.

Latest info at Susan Polgar's site here.

Click on the image below for coverage at ChessVibes of the crazy third round in which "both the World Champion and the world's number one player lost. After outplaying his opponent, Magnus Carlsen first missed a win and then blundered a full piece and lost with Black to Francisco Vallejo".

Big Brother is on my side

2011-09-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

I just won a game of Blitz on the ICC site. Well, not exactly 'win' as in checkmate or resign. In fact I was awarded the win by "JudgeBot". It thought that my queen looked pretty strong against a bishop and a knight and that I would have had plenty of time on the clock to eventually deliver a fatal blow - if my opponent hadn't bailed out and disconnected. Here's how "JudgeBot" describes itself:

"JudgeBot is a computer program that monitors every game in which your opponent disconnects. If JudgeBot determines that you are clearly winning, it will award the win to you ... and the game will appear as a win in your (games) history. There is no need to request the win or search for days for your opponent to resume! It's automatic without you doing anything."

"We understand that in most cases when you get disconnected, you try to reconnect and resume the game. We apologize if your game got adjudicated, but keep in mind that JudgeBot only gives you a loss if it decides you are clearly losing the position. If the position has hope, it will not give you a loss and you can resume the game."

It's a great idea, I think and seems to work very well. Of course this is not going to stop me from extrapolating the concept into George Orwell territory ... by asking if you have you heard about the new program that's being developed? It's an extension of the "JudgeBot" program and goes by the name of "ToadBot"

ToadBot - Press Release

Thanks to new advances in Artificial Intelligence programming, a new plugin has been developed which completely removes human error from the Royal game. "ToadBot" analyses all aspects of your games and employs a predicative binary algorithm to determine what should or would have happened under ideal conditions in a perfect world. Obviously we would really like to be working on software to make a 'perfect world' but this is suffering from budgetary issues. Oh, yes, political issues too. Oh, and also ...

Anyway, "ToadBot" is capable of analysing any and all issues surrounding your chess games, including data collected from electrodes attached to you, your opponent and next door's cat. It takes into account such issues as:

How badly you want to win

How badly your opponent wants a beer as opposed to playing another boring game against you

How hungry the cat is

Whether you're playing chess to avoid dealing with other, more important, things in your miserable, and unimportant, life

And so on and so forth.

Typically, "ToadBot" soon passes over your unforgiveable ignorance of any but the most basic of opening lines and understands that your 12 move is not the "brilliancy" that you fondly believe it to be - but was simply the result of a mouse slip. It "knows" you see?

However it is also realises that losing the game will shatter your already dangerously low self-esteem - with dire consequences. At this point it will simulate the various scenarios (euphemism for 'rows') with your wife resulting from you losing the game and makes a judgement based on menstrual cycles, meteorological forecasts for the state of Nevada and, well, everything really - including how much time you have left on the clock.

And the result of it's cogitations? Oh. Um - you lose. Again. Blame the cat.

Everything you need to know about Armenia

2011-06-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Oh, I think I want to emigrate to Armenia!

One of the world's oldest civilizations, Armenia once included Mount Ararat, which biblical tradition identifies as the mountain that Noah's ark rested on after the flood. It was the first country in the world to officially embrace Christianity as its religion around A.D. 300. (www.infoplease.com)

In building their churches, Armenians made a significant contribution to the world's architectural tradition. They developed the concept of laying out the floor plan of a church in the shape of a cross. This early Christian basilica style was later incorporated into the Gothic architecture of European cathedrals. (www.armeniaemb.org/DiscoverArmenia/)

There is, apparently, some evidence (see featured book) that Armenia may have been the site of the biblical 'Garden of Eden'. You still have doubts about emigrating there? Surely not! Well, if you need a little more convincing - here goes!

Armenia is crazy about chess! Here's a recent extract from Chess Talk on ICC, talking about their most prominent player:

"Levon Aronian has led tiny chess mad Armenia to two Olympiad Golds in 2006 and 2008 and his most recent victory was winning the final Amber Tournament in Monte Carlo. A free 10 minute preview of the show is available for non-members above. To listen to the Levon Aronian two-part interview in full, join the Internet Chess Club (ICC) today by clicking here."

And, from the Daily Telegraph (April 2011):

"Armenia is to make chess a compulsory subject in primary schools in an attempt to turn itself into a global force in the game, the education ministry said on Friday. "Teaching chess in schools will create a solid basis for the country to become a chess superpower," an official at the ministry, Arman Aivazian, told AFP ... Children from the age of six will learn chess as a separate subject on the curriculum for two hours a week."

Here is an opinion on the subject from an Armenian national, commenting on the 'SlashDot' website (there are 300 comments altogether!):

"I studied 2 years of chess in Armenia, beginning from grade 4 in a 10 year secondary system. Of course, this was during Soviet times and you were allowed to choose from a range of subjects. It wasn't compulsory. My grades in other subjects improved dramatically as a result. Really glad this is happening."

There is more on the subject of chess in schools from the BBC.

From another Daily Telegraph article, we learn the reason for Armenia's obssession with the game:

"The key to understanding why Armenians both love and excel at chess, they said, is a 1963 world championship match featuring the country's most prominent player, the legendary Tigran Petrosian.

Petrosian faced Russian Mikhail Botvinnik in the match and as each move was made it was relayed by telex from Moscow and displayed on a giant board in Yerevan's central Opera Square, where thousands gathered day after day to analyse the moves.

After 22 games played over nearly two months, Petrosian had scored a decisive victory, prompting massive celebrations and an outpouring of nationalist pride.

"That was what started it all. It was a fantastic example for the development of chess in Armenia," said Armenia's national chess team coach, Arshak Petrosian, no relation to the legendary player.

Chess quickly became a national obsession and enthusiasm for the game has only grown in the decades since."

So here's a game from Petrosian, showcasing a remarkable "King Walk" - and, from his opponent, ten successive knight moves!

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

You can see another fine example of Petrosian's chess (against Unzicker in 1960) - complete with another "King Walk" - at 'Chessgames.com'.

Time line - Chess variants, Higher Mathematics

2011-06-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Games are noise-free, cheap and easily replicable environments where the concepts of tactics, strategy, searching, learning and other relevant features of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be tested in their purest state. Games, due to their conceptual flexibility, allow an open testing field for many different ideas. (João Pedro Neto (c) 2002)
http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/ludae/index.htm

Ah, you didn't let the title put you off?! Your "reward" (!?) is a pot pourri of chess variants to sample at the following sites:
http://www.pathguy.com/chess/ChessVar.htm
http://www.chessvariants.org/Gindex.html
http://tablajatekos.hu/uj2001/isakk1.html

The following TIME LINE was inspired by my reading about a new chess variant, in which the "unpredictable nature of quantum physics has been mimicked by Queen's University computer scientists to invent a new version of chess", thus:

"In the quantum chess computer game created by undergraduate computer science student Alice Wismath, a piece that should be a knight could simultaneously also be a queen, a pawn or something else. The player doesn't know what the second state might be or which of the two states the piece will choose when it is moved. "It was very weird," said Ernesto Posse, a Queen's postdoctoral researcher who took part in a recent "quantum chess" tournament at the university in Kingston, Ont. "You only know what a piece really is once you touch the piece. Basically, planning ahead is impossible."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/09/02/quantum-chess-akl.html

How do people get interested in chess variants, such as Chess960 (Fischer Random)?. Here's how it happened for Stephen Tavener.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/11301/stephen-tavener
"I can't remember when I first learned chess and scrabble; feels like I have always known how to play; at high school, I discovered bridge, Dungeons and Dragons, and Diplomacy; but chess, bridge and role-playing games were about all I played until well after I left university.

My first introduction to the one true faith came about after I attended a play-by-mail convention, and found a flier for a board games convention called FurryCon; this would have been around 1992, I think. With the encouragement of my then girlfriend, I signed up for the convention, and every event they listed... then phoned round all my friends trying to find anyone who knew how to play Magic: the Gathering. The convention itself was great; the folks were friendly, and the games were amazing. The first German games I played were Bausack and Tal der Koenige, and I was completely hooked.
Over the next year or so, my girlfriend and I raided games shops and charity shops for every game in sight with very little discrimination, and by the next FurryCon, my house was bulging at the seams, so I took along 50 or so games for the bring and buy sale. That led to a thriving trade in used boardgames on the internet; though to be honest, it could only be considered profitable if you didn't consider the time I spent counting components and wrapping parcels.
I also started writing reviews for Games, Games, Games magazine, and got something of a reputation since I seem to like abstracts more than most... sign of a misspent youth! You'll find a number of the reviews here: http://www.scat.demon.co.uk/reviews.html though it's a little embarrassing to re-read them after all this time.
I started designing games waaay back at school, and have dabbled ever since. Recently, my friendship with Cameron Browne has spurred me to make some of my games fit for public consumption; and the spate of games design competitions here on BGG has also been a big boost. Nothing like a deadline to stir the creative juices!
When designing games, I'm usually looking for a specific feeling when I play. Hard to describe; but I know I have reached my design goals when the game play experience matches that initial feeling. My game designs are usually strongly themed, in the sense that there is an internal coherence - If I'm doing my job well, then the games won't require you to do anything which would contradict the theme, and the moves you make should advance the narrative. (That goes for the abstracts as well - though the theme may be somewhat subtler!)"

Anyway, on with the show ...

TIME LINE
(Mainly chess variants related to Higher Mathematics)

1904 - Eigenstates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_eigenstates
"In the everyday world, it is natural and intuitive to think of every object being in its own eigenstate. This is another way of saying that every object appears to have a definite position, a definite momentum, a definite measured value, and a definite time of occurrence. However, the uncertainty principle says that it is impossible to measure the exact value for the momentum of a particle like an electron, given that its position has been determined at a given instant. Likewise, it is impossible to determine the exact location of that particle once its momentum has been measured at a particular instant.
The word "eigenstate" is derived from the German/Dutch word "eigen," meaning "inherent" or "characteristic." An eigenstate is the measured state of some object possessing quantifiable characteristics such as position, momentum, etc. The state being measured and described must be observable (i.e. something such as position or momentum that can be experimentally measured either directly or indirectly), and must have a definite value, called an eigenvalue."
A brief refresher in the Mathematics thereof (a PDF for you to keep and treasure):
http://www.ece.umd.edu/class/enee600.F2004/handout/eigen.pdf

1927 - Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_uncertainty_principle
"In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states precise inequalities that constrain certain pairs of physical properties, such as measuring the present position while determining future momentum; both cannot be simultaneously done to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled or determined. On the other hand, it is possible to imagine a hypothetical apparatus that measures the history of a particular particle's successive positions and momentums while also measuring times and energies to arbitrary accuracies.
Published by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the principle implies that it is impossible to simultaneously both measure the present position while "determining" the future momentum of an electron or any other particle with an arbitrary degree of accuracy and certainty. This is not a statement about researchers' ability to measure one quantity while determining the other quantity. Rather, it is a statement about the laws of physics. That is, a system cannot be defined to simultaneously measure one value while determining the future value of these pairs of quantities."

1953 - "Alice Chess" (Invented by V.R. Parton in 1953)
http://www.chessvariants.org/other.dir/alice.html

(you can play the game at the address below)
http://www.pathguy.com/chess/AliceChs.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_chess
"The game is named after the main character "Alice" in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, where travel through the looking-glass is portrayed by the after-move transfer of chess pieces between boards A and B. The simple transfer rule is well known for causing disorientation and confusion in players new to the game, often leading to surprises and amusing mistakes as pieces "disappear" and "re-appear" between boards. This "nothing is as it seems" experience probably accounts for Alice Chess remaining Parton's most popular and successful invention among numerous other variants he created in his lifetime."

1997 - "Eigenstate Chess" (created by Stephen Tavener)
http://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/quantum.html

2000 - "Quantum Chess" (created by Stephen Tavener)
http://www.pathguy.com/chess/QuantumC.htm
(you can play the game at the above address)

2000 - "Heisenberg Chess" (created by João Pedro Neto)
http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/cv/heisenberg.htm
(older website) http://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/quantum.html

2000 - "Alice-Raumschach" (created by Robert Price)
A 3D variant of the original "Alice" variant, thus:
http://www.chessvariants.com/3d.dir/aliceraumschach.html

Shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men

2011-05-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

So - what is a chess player? According to H.G.Wells (in an nice long and interesting article in Times magazine from 1972, relating to the Fischer-Spassky match) a chessplayer can be described in the following way:

"There is a class of men — shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men — who gather in coffee houses, and play with a desire that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched. These gather in clubs and play tournaments...but there are others who have the vice who live in country places, in remote situations — curates, schoolmasters, tax collectors — who must needs find some artificial vent for their mental energy."

So now - let's listen to what these "shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men" have to say for themselves (Wells, not surprisingly at that time, 'forgets' to mention women!).

For this I have to give credit to "ChessVibes" for pointing me in the direction of the Italian chess documentary "Chess me out – talk on board" (created by Davide Fasolo). This is a set of interviews with a number of chess players, including Karpov, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura and David Levy. I must admit, some of them don't look too happy whilst playing their favourite game!

Incidentally (plug alert!) ChessVibes have announced the very first issue of their brand new magazine ChessVibes Training - see below (or visit the page here).

As you might expect, they make some very good points such as the fact that, as well as chess being a sport (which they accept as a given) it also has an aesthetic aspect. I also like Karpov's anecdote about how, as a child, he used to cry when he lost. Apparently his father gave him an ultimatum - "if you cry when you lose just once more, I won't play any more games with you!".

On the subject of women in chess - they are characterised as having the desire to do other things in life, whether it is having children or simply not wishing to devote their lives to one single activity. One theory is that women may actually have better concentration pre-puberty but that with the onset of puberty males aquire the inclination to become single-minded, even obsessive. Thus, a male will take up some interest or other (computer programming, music, chess, tennis etc) and start to acquire those well-known 'nerd' characteristics. This reminds me of the theory (not explicitly referred to in the video) of males as "hunters" (in prehistoric times) and women as "nurturers". Kosteniuk doesn't see why women should be intrinsically weaker than men at chess ... though she appears to then qualify her statement somewhat (you will have to judge for yourself).

Well, there certainly are a lot of women players around the chess scene these days. Let me take the opportunity to simply reproduce a post by one, Yelena Dembo, in a ChessWorld forum a couple of months back - please see below..

Chess as meditation, chess as a creative process - chess as a metaphor for life itself. It touches on the concept which I talk about in another post (Warning - this post could change the way you play chess!") ie people play positions that no-one would play before ... chess was much less materialistic in the early days".

It's a long video, so you can sit down with a beer and the video and enjoy yourself. They also speak of chess as a language - Karpov likens it to Esperanto! You will also hear about playing chess during a bombing raid etc!

Yelena Dembo's post (from one of the ChessWorld forums):

Hi!

My name is Yelena Dembo, 22 years old, I have WGM and men's IM titles, 8 medals in European and world women's and youth championships and elo of 2441. I also play on this site. I would like to recommend a book I have written on middlegame. Its name is "The Very Unusual Book About Chess". It contains my own thoughts, rules and ideas about the middlegame and chess in general. This book teaches (ed.) the joy of chess! I am sure it will be interesting for many players and you as well! GMs like Shirov, Dautov, Avrukh, Svetushkin and others have bought it already! As of course, many IMs and amateurs did! You can find more info about the book on my website.

Best wishes and good luck!

Yelena

ADVERT!

What is ChessVibes Training?
Every issue consists of a PDF Magazine and the accompanying PGN file. The PDF consists of eight pages (A4 size) with the following contents:

    * Giri’s Grab Bag – A weekly column by GM Anish Giri in which he tells about his tournament practice and his excitement and worries during a top level chess game.
    * Guess the move – A weekly game quiz by IM Merijn van Delft that gives you the opportunity to solve problems that GMs couldn’t. What move did they play? Can you calculate as deeply? Give it a try and see how many points you score this week!
    * Improve your play – An interactive section by IM Thomas Willemze that discusses games from our readers. Yes, that’s you! You can send in your game(s) and Thomas will pinpoint mistakes and possible improvements from a number of amateur games every week.
    * Tactics, tactics – 12 tactical exercises carefully selected by IM Robert Ris, arranged in increasing level. Regular tactical training is highly important to maintain your top form, and now it will be easier than ever with new diagrams delivered in your mailbox every week!
    * Practical endings – IM Robert Ris gives a clear explanation of a recent endgame played by strong players, focusing on text rather than variations. Every week a typical endgame theme is discussed, sometimes with the emphasis on the theory, but always providing you with useful guidelines.

Warning - this post could change the way you play chess!

2011-05-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

A bold claim. But consider this position in which Black has just played e5. Come on, be honest, it's not a move you'd ever play, is it? Those who disagree, please comment - SO WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, LOL!

You may well be reluctant to play such a move because it obviously creates a backward pawn - a potential target for White to exploit. Well, that's fine. There is a rule floating around that tells us to avoid backward pawns.

The moves in the above game are 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Be2 e5. It is denominated as B58: Sicilian, Boleslavsky variation. I've known about it but never considered playing it myself because of the aforementioned 'rule'.

In John Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy - Advances since Nimzowitsch" such rules are treated to searching analysis. In fact he tackles the whole subject of chess evolution in a text that has been described by GM Simen Agdestein as one which "may have as much influence on our future understanding of the game as Nimzowitsch's MY SYSTEM had". Another bold claim but, on reading the book myself, I would be hard put to find reasons for disputing it. In the above case, he also provide statistics to show how the above line only began to appear around 1935. The examples which appear in the book are, in my view, especially well chosen - entertaining as well as apposite.

More than this (chess evolution), the book has forced me to re-evaluate my approach to the game - completely. It shows how a lot of reported chess wisdom is simply misleading. The rules that we absorbed as chess novices are called into question. John Watson "frees" us from our prejudices and may allow you to play "your own game". Frankly, I am now looking forward to a chess future where my own creativity can blossom and flourish - without worrying about the consequences of breaking the rules laid down in stone (which were actually millstones round my neck).

What would you play in the following position (another example from the book)?

Most players would instinctively go for 19. Rfd1 to "intensify the pressure on the backward d-pawn". But have we all become robots? Always playing to a recipe of assorted rules and prejudices? Actually Botvinnick played 19. e5!, being another rulebreaker. His intention was, as is explained in the book, to "threaten Ne4 (or Bxc6 and Ne4)". It does of course, sacrifice a pawn. He continues to follow the game (fully interactive here at the chessgames website), thus:

"19...Qc5 20. Qd2 Qxe5 21. Bxc6 dxc6 22.Re1 Qf5 23. g4! The queen has to be driven to a square on which White's Ne4 will come with tempo. 23...Qf3 24.Re3 Qf6 25.Rd7. Here is the point. A rook on the seventh will not only create middle game threats, but will win a number of endgames".

As you see, Watson is not averse to quoting "rules" himself. What he does is to clarify which are of general application and which are ... suspect. As such, this is an important book. For those who do not have it on their bookshelf, I hope you will take the point about the dangers of allowing yourself to become "hidebound". Sometimes you have to play against the rules ie when the position demands it. Be your own person ... or, in this case, chessplayer!

Blitz games - Part 2

2011-03-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

Since writing 'Blitz Games - Part 1' I have changed my attitude to playing blitz games. It is of course possible that I was a little worried about my ability in this type of chess - which may be the reason for the slightly dismissive phrase "I don't take it ... seriously". On the other hand I was obsessing over increasing my rating on ICC so Blitz came second.

Blitz gets a lot of bad press. I think that is unfair. In 'Part 1' I talked about how it was a useful way to test out new openings and improving one's ability to analyse positions at a glance. Now I believe there is even more to the game than that.

I believe it has improved my tactical ability. I used to concentrate on piece development and building up a nice position. All well and good - but that does not win you games. Blitz has taught me how important it is to continually cause problems for my opponent. The learning process involved is when you discover that, even in losing positions, you can find yourself winning by continually pressurising the opponent. You might turn the game around completely or you might win on time.

Because even strong players are more likely to make mistakes under time pressure the feeling is that the opportunities are there, even against strong opposition. You find that you are trying moves which, under normal time limits, you would never dream of doing. You have to relax, of necessity - which is good for your game. You start playing moves like g4 or g5 for example! Playing 'dangerously'. You have shaken off the shackles and your reward is a new insight into the game.

More yet! Because the game is over in such a short time, you can appreciate the game as a coherent whole. In a long game, say in a correspondence game, it is easy to lose sight of your original plans for the game and you can get bogged down in long, exhausting variations. In Blitz, you have a plan which is usually followed through. OK, maybe you have to change tack but you don't lose track (forgive the poetry!).

Basically I believe my game has improved a lot because of blitz play. It's toughened me up as well. The victories and losses come thick and fast - no time to dwell on an the unecessary and irritating losses and become downhearted. By way of illustration I will show the moves of a game I played yesterday, winning on time against a player who is rated far above me.

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Don't Try This At Home!

2011-03-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

I found the video below indirectly - while reading a Chess.com review for a new book called "Play Like a Girl!"- a fragment of which I reproduce here, thus:

'Jennifer Shahade refrains from lecturing men about what they should and should not do. Instead, she offers an interesting and unique mix of glamour, intellect, toughness and sweetness that’s extremely charming and, truth be told, commercial. But for me, it is this sensible and realistic perspective that makes "Play Like a Girl!" such a nice book to peruse.'

Jennifer Shahade is a Philadelphia based writer and gamesplayer. She is a two-time American Women’s Chess Champion (2002, 2004). In the "Hulachess" video below she is playing with the Red pieces against choreographer and dancer Gabrielle Revlock playing with the White pieces. Apparently (!) "Hulachess explores themes of multitasking, the feminine, circular side of chess and the surprising parallels between chess and hooping".

Jennifer goes into the details of how and why the video was made in her post here. Here is a brief summary of what she says about the actual game as played in the video:

"The moves were based on a game that I analyzed for Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess (to be reviewed in the August Chess Life, ~ed.), from the 1924 Olympiad in Paris. Duchamp lost that game against the Romanian master Davidescu, partly because he missed a line leading to perpetual check."

So here are the moves of the game for you to see if you can spot the drawing line - maybe you can see it in the video! If you can't, well - you'll just have to buy the book!

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Jennifer is certainly one of the best representatives of the Royal Game, as can be seen from this brief biography:

"In her coaching career, Jennifer Shahade has made a point of focusing her efforts on girls and inner-city youth. From 1998-2005, she worked with Chess-In-The-Schools, a New York City non-profit organization that provides chess instruction to inner city youth. From 2003-4, she taught a Girls’ Academy through Chess-in-the-Schools, and started her own Girls’ Academy in New York in 2007."

She has co-founded (along with Jean Hoffman) the "9 Queens", a nonprofit educational organization founded in 2007 dedicated to extending the benefits of chess to those most in need of its benefits, especially girls and at-risk youth. So, yes, as well as the game itself, she is also involved in empowering women through the medium of chess.

All things be ready if our minds be so

2011-01-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

Chess is not exactly thought of as a co-operative activity, more likely as a competitive activity. We are not exactly trying to work with our opponent to achieve a common goal. It is competitive, yet hopefully not destructive. We assume that competitiveness brings out the best in us - that competitiveness forces us to try harder to achieve our aims and keeps us on our mettle. It attracts feelings of pride in having given of our best but also the desire to be better (in some vague way) to our peers. Of course we do not really wish to develop that type of arrogance in ourselves (or do we perhaps accept it as the necessary price of progress)?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of competitiveness, our aim when playing chess is at odds with that of our opponent. But is it useful to think of your opponent solely in terms of a hated enemy who must be defeated at all costs? Do such feelings hamper our oft-expressed wish to have chess thought of as an art form - our desire to play "beautiful" moves? We are indeed often grateful to our opponent for having the courage to accept our latest, dodgy (!), sacrifice so that we can find out whether our brainwave fully stands up in the cold light of day.

If you deliberately foster completely negative feelings towards your opponent, using them to psych yourself up in some way, then there are other attendant dangers. Mayhap we begin to ascribe powers to him/her which have no foundation in reality and which might affect our game adversely. For example, the idea that your opponent can 'see everything' at the board, plays faultlessly etc. This could lead to the worst thing that can happen to you when you sit at the chessboard ie that you actually become afraid of your opponent. You know in your heart that, for any enterprise, fear is a negative emotion which will drain your energy and commitment. It is the commonest precursor to failure and, as such, is to be abhorred.

My point is to say that we really need to be clear about what our attitude is towards the game and our opponent. I might tell you to "Get your mind straight!" as the prison guard kept saying to Paul Newman in 'Cool Hand Luke'! Or, maybe a little better, "All things be ready if our minds be so" (Henry V).

If you are playing against a friend then I believe you should consider if you are not already half way inclined towards giving him/her an easy game so as not to hurt their feelings - or some such silliness! Or perhaps your opponent may have arrived with a reputation of being a strong player, much more experienced than yourself. It is perhaps natural to feel, not only intimidated, but also 'unworthy' of playing against such an august personage. You feel you do not even have the right to be seated at the same table and so on and so forth. I don't need to tell you that you should resist such thoughts with all your might! If you need to be reminded of your right to exist (!) please allow me to point you in the direction of the Desiderata prayer which has so often helped me to redirect my thoughts in a more positive direction.

Another pitfall, for me especially, is trying to play perfect moves. It's a distraction, reallly. To believe that you will not gain ascendency over the other guy/guyess unless your play is faultless. Well, you can try this concept out when involved with correspondence chess but I doubt it will get you very far under blitz conditions. The concept of "stick to your plan" is much more important - even when you have just thrown a piece away. Your plan was to take the pawn so as to be able to pin his Q and R ... OK, so you blundered and lost a rook. You can no longer play "perfect" chess but you can go ahead with taking his pawn, getting the pin and seeing if your plan still yields dividends. Who knows?!

Perhaps the best advice is still to "play the board and not the man". However, being made the way we are, it is still very difficult to avoid holding details about your opponent in your head subconsciously. And does this not contradict all we have heard about preparing for particular opponents in terms of careful choice of opening and so on? For example, if your opponent has the reputation of being frustrated in the face of solid, unenterprising, positional play then that might govern our choice of opening etc. Well, that's chess - we all have to find the way that suits us best as individuals. As long as we give it SOME thought beforehand.

It is helpful to retain the knowledge that, whatever your deficiencies at the game, you did at least have the courage to take on the diverse challenges and pitfalls that the game holds. That counts for something, after all. And it may also be comforting to remember that the other guy is also having to deal with the same issues as yourself - he too is being assailed by the same doubts as you are, the same knowledge of their deficiencies that you have. We are all "ships that pass in the night", we all think that other people are happier than we are, that they have a clearer idea of what they are doing than we do and so on.

There is a good side to all this soul-searching of course. It is that your human opponent, as opposed to a computer opponent, satisfies your inner need for a fight! Let's be honest, we all like a good fight. So don't hold back, mix it up and don't be afraid to try out new ideas. Be bold - not cautious! Play with confidence even if you do not feel confident - a good trick to learn! Complexities and sacrifices are what make the game interesting after all. Knowing when to attack and when to retreat is also part of the play - retreating is hardly at the top of our list of priorities but it may be the only way to make progress (or the only way to allow your opponent to jump in and make a fool of himself with a premature attack!).

To put it another way - you simply have to find the strength to fight. My example here is from Game 4 of 'Kasparov v Karpov 1986 - 1987'. This game was Kasparov's first win in the first match against Karpov in which he was playing as World Champion. It remains one of the games against Karpov of which he was most proud (more details of the game to be included here soon). After hours of home analysis, Kasparov had decided to play Ba3 as his 14th move. However, during the match he realised that this simply provided Karpov with a simplifying line. But Kasparov found the strength to look for a way out and came up with a better move, 14. O-O!

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This shows how we can come up with the 'goods' when we are under pressure (or not, of course!). Under the cosh everything comes into focus and we create something we never thought we were capable of . This is, of course, one of the reasons we continue to play the game even though it often brings us to the brink of despair!

It also shows how we are able to 'stretch' ourselves in situations that we consider to be all-important. Whenever you think that a particular game is not actually that important to you then don't expect to play your best and don't expect to win either! You need to trick yourself into an "all or nothing" frame of mind before you start - even if it is just a casual unrated game. We should all endeavour to lead our lives in this way too of course - live for the moment as if it is your last and so on!

So I hope you enjoy your games and play with 'pizzaz'! . If you are not enjoying the game then you are doing something wrong of course - either take a break or take some time to think about WHY you have lost the enjoyment. "Oh, it's because you are losing all the time?". OK, join the club!

Chess Humour and a little Magik

2011-01-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

The magic is supplied by Derren Brown who beats 9 chess players simultaneously in this YouTube video which can be found here.

And the humour ...

Da Vinci, Mathematics and Chess

2010-12-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

This post is based on the premise that Leonardo Da Vinci, along with many other artists, used a particular number ratio (the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean) in his work - even extending to the ratio between the dimensions of the surrounding picture frame. On this occasion we are even confronted with its use in the drawings of some chess pieces. If you wish to skip the math and get to the chess - please just go to the next heading.

The joy of numbers is there for all of us, mathematicians or not. I remember a school trip to a science fair in 1967 when I first saw an electronic calculator. It was a magnificent piece of kit the size of a briefcase, glowing red numerals at least a couple of inches high. It seemed as if the numbers stretched to infinity, maybe 20 or 30 digits. I soon made an excuse to leave the rest of the party and asked the attendant to let me try it out.

The obvious thing to do was find the Holy Grail - otherwise known as the Golden Ratio. Those of you in the know will appreciate the use of the term Holy Grail - in that it can never be found . We begin with the Fibonacci sequence which begins with two numbers, say 1 and 1. The next number in the sequence is found by adding the two previous ones, thus, 1 + 1 = 2. So we have:

1, 1, 2

Did I say the two previous numbers? Well, the last two numbers in the above are 1 and 3. So we add them together to find the next number, thus 1 + 2 = 3 which gives us:

1, 1, 2, 3 (we have added the two previous numbers together, 2 and 1)

Then 2 + 3 and so on, thus:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ...

It is an interesting exercise to divide each pair of numbers in the sequence, starting with 1 and 1, thus:

1 / 1 = 1
2 / 1 = 2
3 / 2 = 1.5
5 / 3 = 1.3333333 ...
8 / 5 = 1.6
13 / 8 = 1.625
21 / 13 = 1,6153846153846153846153846153846 ...

This then was the Holy Grail that I pursued all those years ago. These results would seem to be zoning in on some final value that is in the region of just over 1.6 - or are they?! If you want to know the value to a million decimal places you can go here - in my case the teacher dragged me back to the rest of the student group before I could get that far!

Let me just point you at two videos dealing with Fibonacci Numbers, the Golden Ratio and how these mathematical entities are an intrinsic part of our universe. The first one is visually entrancing while the second one contains a little more detail about the way the sequence is built up.

Perhaps because the Golden Ratio would seem to be bound up with our universe in some fundamental way, it is completely independent of the initial starting numbers - you can start off with any two numbers you wish - and you will still end up with the Ratio. If you want to get moving nice and quickly then it makes sense to start with two numbers which are already close eg 1 and 1.618, thus:

1, 1.618, 2.618, 4.236, 6.854 ...

Dividing these last two digits on a calculator gives us the value 1,6180358829084 ... which is already accurate to 5 significant figures ie 1,6180. The main thing is that you can still get there with any two starting numbers you like - it just takes a little longer is all. And this post took a little longer to get to the chess too - but we are there now.

Leonardo da Vinci and chess

Apparently there is some possibility that our friend Leonardo was the world's first chess-puzzle illustrator! The story is that a long forgotten leather bound book, containing some chess problems, was discovered in 2006 - and was illustrated by Leonardo (shown below). The treatise, "De Ludo Schaccorum" (Latin for "Of the Game of Chess") includes more than 100 chess problems - I quote here from USA TODAY.

Here is a quote from an article in the Guardian from a Milanese researcher, Franco Rocco. - "the proportion of the pieces, and especially the pawns, coincides with the Golden Mean [an arithmetical ratio of approximately 1: 1.618], which fascinated both Leonardo and his friend Pacioli."

In case you are wondering, yes, there is apparently a lot of evidence that Leonardo at least knew the moves of the game, thus to quote from the same article) "Leonardo, who drew a portrait of the marchioness, is known to have understood, if not played, chess. He used a technical term from the game in one of his many manuscripts". This is well accepted even if the above attribution to the leather bound book is not.

If you are interested in the actual position shown on the right hand page in the image below, there is no better place to go than an article by Raymond Keene in which he analyses the position in great detail and theorises about the historical background. However, the actual solution is given by James O'Fee.

In the position shown we see that there is an implausible looking white pawn on d1 - here is what Keene has to say about it:

"It should also be observed that there is an illegal white pawn on d1 in the original. I have replaced this with a white knight, which makes no difference to the solution. It is possible that the original Renaissance copyist put down a pawn instead of a knight — or after the massive rule changes around 1475 there may have been some local disagreement about the laws of the game which might perhaps have permitted a pawn to move backwards. Somehow, though, I doubt this and favour the solution that implies a miscopied piece".

White to move and checkmate in 9.
Can you find it?

The original image is from the Abaco museum site and the modern version is from Susan Polgar's blog. The former site has a video in which you actually see the book itself (look for the link "Guarda il video").

As for the attribution to Leonardo, here is more from Franco Rocco in an article from ABC News:

"It was like a Holy Grail of chess," said Serenella Ferrari Benedetti, cultural coordinator of the foundation that manages the Coronini estate. "We knew it existed but nobody had ever seen it". "It was like a Holy Grail of chess," said Serenella Ferrari Benedetti, cultural coordinator of the foundation that manages the Coronini estate. "We knew it existed but nobody had ever seen it."

The illustrations of the red and black chess pieces were themselves a puzzle. The slender, abstract design was so unusual that Ferrari Benedetti asked Rocco to study the drawings.

After a year of research, Rocco concluded that Pacioli enlisted Leonardo's help to draw the pieces.

Rocco, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, noted that the two men had earlier collaborated in Milan when Leonardo helped illustrate a treatise on proportion while also painting The Last Supper.

Rocco said the futuristic style of the chess pieces is in sharp contrast with the way other pieces were represented at the time.

"Every piece also was proportionally related to each of its parts and to the other pieces, a trademark of Leonardo's art, he said. In addition, some pieces directly recall other works by Leonardo, including a queen similar to a fountain drawn in one of the artist's manuscripts".

More from the Fondazione Palazzo Coronini Cronberg library collections where the book is kept can be found here.

Chess Intelligence

2010-11-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

Amongst the many reasons that I feel chess to be an important illustration of our mental processes is because it combines a whole lot of ideas such as patterns (structural patterns relating to the positions and inter-relations between objects), positions (in two-dimensional space) and sequences (linear progressions of piece movements).

Can we spot 'chess intelligence' in our everyday lives?

Well, you could ask yourself these questions as a starting point in our quest to define that quality of intelligence which chess players exhibit. I am suggesting that chess players will likely answer "yes" to more than one of them. I would be grateful for any comments!

1. Do you enjoy crossword puzzles, and the like?

2. Do you like puzzles eg anagrams?

3. Are you fascinated by sequences such as 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 ... ?

4. Do you compulsively seek patterns eg unconsciously notice pictures and shapes on tile floors?

5. Do you spend a long time organising the folders and files in Windows Explorer?

6. Do you always make sure that when you fit a new toilet roll it place, that it unwinds in the same direction?!

1. I note that crossword puzzles are particularly relevant to this discussion - in that they combine memory and linking words in surprising ways.

2. Incidentally anagrams also seem related to the idea of intelligence which I'm trying to define. I have certainly spent more than a few happy hours doing them! One of the most efficient online anagram finders is here - but before you surf, see if you can find a two word anagram of 'garden in a farm'! Since I have already entered this phrase, the solution will appear as the first of the many possible anagrams when you visit the site.

3. Here is a very (very) nice video about the Fibonacci sequence.

4. I'm heading towards concepts here that are perhaps akin to autism. I have never thought of myself as autistic before but today I realised that it may indeed form part of my personality. I have thought about this subject before but rejected the conclusions because I did not want to think of myself as abnormal. But having found out more about it, I understand that I am merely finding out different facets of my personality. To be autistic or whatever is not a disease or a sign of craziness as some might say.

And I always wondered why the film 'Rainman' struck such a chord with me (see 'All about the real 'Rainman'' below). Also the book "Skallagrigg"by William Horwood which inspired Yvonne Nolan (Observer newspaper) to write that "some of the passages would wring tears from a stone".

5. This one is important to my thesis that something similar to autism is present in the chess player personality.

I have already exhibited this trait a while back in one of my previous posts - all unknowing! There I wax lyrical about the joys of organising chess openings into a logical tree structure.

As well as the satisfaction gained from organising your files/folders in Explorer you can go one better with the free program, 'TreePad'. You can get it here. This software allows you to store notes/images in a heirarchical structure, allowing you to track down information in a logical fashion eg if you are learning Portuguese you might have a path such as:
GRAMMAR / VERBS / SUBJUNCTIVE.

6. 'Nuff said!

It's All About Me!

As a layman, rather than a psychologist, I can only develop my idea that chess is worthy of its place in the pantheon of the different types of intelligence by talking about my own characteristics.

Actually I very much dislike the way that we bandy the word 'intelligence' about. In my view, no-one can define it convincingly because it is simply not a useful label in and of itself. The folk at MENSA (elite club for the so-called intelligent) only allow you in if you pass their own particular IQ test. This is interesting because they do at least subdivide the tests into various categories. It's years since I was a member (how clever I felt when I passed!) so I only have a vague memory of one of these categories - visual or patterns, something like that. I remember because I got a good score in that category which pulled me up after having not done so well in some of the other stuff (comprehension category?). Anyway - 'intelligence' is clearly a multifaceted attribute and probably has the same meaning as is exemplified by "When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean; neither more, nor less" (Humpty Dumpty in 'Alice in Wonderland')

Let's start with memory. I have the opposite of a photographic memory. Random items slip from my grasp - it is only if they have 'sticky' attributes that I remember them. This might be, when programming in HTML, they somehow fit into an existing well known structure. Or it might be their position in a tree structure or their position in an (x, y) mathematical structure. My point here, is that an isolated object (particularly if I have no need for that particular item at that particular time) will not stick in my mind.

How does a true autistic person remember things in such detail? It is usually difficult to gain much insight into their thought processes by interviewing them but one guy, Daniel Tammet (see his story here), tells us that he associates numbers, for example, as images which also contain an emotional element. The number nine is apparently quite overpowering for him! And more- in the video he actually gets to meet the real 'Rainman' mentioned above!

As I say, I don't like labels such as 'intelligence' and 'autism' (which is a whole spectrum of attributes anyway). So I take great relish in telling you that the real 'Rainman' wasn't autistic either! I'm trying to escape these wretched labels (of which we are all so fond) and describe a unique pardigm relating to myself - the individual person, the none-labellable person (as are you and every one else in my belief). Hey - did I just invent a new word? Great!

Which leads me on to point out that I am (perhaps) a practical chap who, if a problem arises, likes to try to solve it immediately (presumably because I cannot rely on remembering to do it if I postpone it) . Consequently I always used to find myself in the middle of half a dozen projects - all half finished. Until I compensated for this behaviour, that is.

Thus I believe that we all have the power to correct a lot of the behaviour traits that we would rather be without. We should never believe that our behaviour traits are cast in stone - contrary to what you may hear others tell you. "You are putty in your hands" (I just invented this aphorism but now I rather wish I hadn't ). In the text about 'Rainman' (below) you will see that he too was able to correct his behaviour - helped in part by his fame as the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's film! Doesn't matter how we effect growth - as long as we grow, I say.

Conclusion

As you may have gathered, today I had something of a revelation. My guilt at forgetting my wife's birthday date, my ability to become completely absorbed in HTML code, my limited chess-playing ability, my desire to organise and categorise everything in sight - all form a composite whole.

No longer will I worry that my obsessive behaviour at the dinner table (where my knife MUST be the correct way round, thus and so). I have some characteristics of autism but, importantly, this does not define who I am or how I behave. We are more complex than that. None of us can be labelled, we are all individuals - as this wonderful video of an autistic (and artistic!) guy shows

Advice to the Reader (probably condescending!)

Know thyself, study yourself - and never be afraid of what you might find from your musings. It's one of the most valuable exercise you can attempt.

"The truth ye shall find" - and you will be much more comfortable with yourself as a result.

All of us can change our behaviours in dramatic fashion (even if the underlying emotions and drives are still there). And even if you are not completely successful, it does no harm whatsoever to try.

All about the real 'Rainman'

Laurence Kim Peek (November 11, 1951 – December 19, 2009) was an American savant. Known as a "megasavant", he had a photographic or eidetic memory, but also social difficulties, possibly resulting from a developmental disability related to congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man. Unlike Babbitt, Peek was not autistic, and likely had FG syndrome.

Peek was born in Salt Lake City, Utah with macrocephaly, damage to the cerebellum, and agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition in which the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is missing; in Peek's case, secondary connectors such as the anterior commissure were also missing. There is speculation that his neurons made unusual connections due to the absence of a corpus callosum, which resulted in an increased memory capacity. According to Peek's father, Fran, Peek was able to memorize things from the age of 16–20 months. He read books, memorized them, and then placed them upside down on the shelf to show that he had finished reading them, a practice he maintained. He read a book in about an hour, and remembered almost everything he had read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography, and numbers to sports, music, and dates. His reading technique consisted of reading two pages at a time—the left with his left eye and the right with his right—at a rate of about 8–10 seconds per page. It is believed he could recall the content of at least 12,000 books from memory.

In 1984, screenwriter Barry Morrow met Peek in Arlington, Texas; the result of the meeting was the 1988 movie Rain Man. The character of Raymond Babbitt, although inspired by Peek, was portrayed as having autism. Dustin Hoffman, who played Babbitt, met Peek and other savants to get an understanding of their nature and to play the role accurately and methodically. The movie caused a number of requests for appearances, which increased Peek's self-confidence. Barry Morrow gave Kim his Oscar statuette to carry with him and show at these appearances; it has since been referred to as the "Most Loved Oscar Statue" as it has been held by more people than any other. Kim also enjoyed approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born and what news items were on the front page of major newspapers. Peek also appeared on television. He travelled with his father, who took care of him and performed many motor tasks that Peek found difficult.

Unlike many savants, Peek had shown increasing social skills, perhaps due to the attention that had come with being perceived as the "real Rain Man". His father says that his sense of humor had been emerging since 2004 or so. Also, he had developed well beyond the stage of being a mere repository of vast amounts of information; his skills at associating information he remembered were at least one of the signs of creativity. He displayed difficulty with abstractions such as interpreting the meanings of proverbs or metaphorical terms of speech.

Although never a musical prodigy, Peek's musical abilities as an adult received more notice when he started to study the piano. He apparently remembered music he had heard decades before, and could play it on the piano to the extent permitted by his limited physical dexterity. He was able to give a running commentary as he played, for example, comparing a piece to other music he had heard. Listening to recordings, he could distinguish which instruments played which part and was adept at guessing the composers of new music by comparing the work to the many thousands of samples in his memory.

In 2004, Peek met Daniel Tammet (see other video, referenced in this post), another savant for the Brainman documentary. He hugged Tammet and said "Some day you'll be as great as I am".

A 2008 study concluded that Peek probably had FG syndrome, a rare genetic syndrome linked to the X chromosome which causes physical anomalies such as hypotonia (low muscle tone) and macrocephaly (abnormally large head). It was then that it was discovered that Peek had no corpus callosum.

Peek died of a heart attack on December 19, 2009.

(Source - Wikipedia)

Bent Larsen - remembered

2010-09-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

We note with regret the passing of one of the greats in chess - Bent Larsen. As reported in ICC (Internet Chess Club):

"The six-time Danish Champion and four-time world championship candidate (in 1965, 1968, 1971, and 1977) won three Interzonal tournaments and many, many other international tournaments. His five consecutive first prizes at Havana 1967, Winnipeg 1967, Palma de Mallorca 1967, Sousse 1967 and Monte Carlo 1968 set a record for anyone who was not actually world champion." ... More

Further to the bare facts as reported above, The Guardian's Leonard Barden adds the following warm appraisal:

"Larsen was articulate, gregarious, outspoken and witty, so his passing stimulated an outpouring of reminiscencies and affection." ... More

You will probably know about his 6-0 loss in his match against Fischer - here described in the above ChessClub article, thus:

"However, in an outstanding career with many highs, his most famous low has to have been his 6-0 loss to Fischer in their 1971 Candidates match - the psychological blow from which many believe signaled the beginning of the end for Larsen's ambitions to become world champion; and indeed, it was often said he was never quite the same player after such a demolition job by Fischer."

However, you may not have seen Larsen's personal reaction to the loss - as reported in an interview in his blog,:

"Yes, it was an insufferable match… The organizers chose the wrong time for this match. I was languid with the heat and Fischer was better prepared for such exceptional circumstances... I saw chess pieces through a mist and, thus, my level of playing was not good. It was a nightmare that I will never forget! Fortune didn’t give me a single chance to win over him…" More

This post considers one of his games, as White against which ICC featured as part of its tribute. If you happen to be a member of the ICC you can find this fascinating game here.

Otherwise there is a comprehensive discussion of the game at ChessGames in which the game is described in reverential tones as "Now this is real chess!".

I would liken my chosen game to Mohammed Ali's famous 'Rope a Dope' trick against 'Smokin' Joe Frazier in which he bravely and deliberately stayed on the ropes ... allowing 'Smokin' to punch him repeatedly. Ali knew he was strong enough to withstand the punches and had the idea that his opponent would find the process very tiring. He was right. He won - but who knows how much it affected his health. Ali was a brave man indeed and knew the price he might have to pay. Revealingly, Benjamin uses the same phrase ("price to pay") in the video. Yes, this chess match is a Battle Royal indeed - having something of the raw brutality of a boxing match.

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Larsen's own favourite game was apparently the following effort against Efim Geller in 1960, thus:

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Another of Larsen's games is fully discussed in this very readable article

Mr_Toad's wonderful and exhilarating games

2010-09-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

It's time for you to to have the opportunity of looking some of the blog owner's games. If you know anything about Mr_Toad's personality from reading 'Wind in the Willows' then you will know that he only wants to brag about the games that he actually won ...

I find that blitz games (5 minute) very difficult and bullet games (3 minute) almost impossible (but then I'm getting on a bit). Thus, although I've won 1057 Blitz games (lost 963) - I've "convincingly managed to lose" 602 bullet games and won 475.

Comments are welcome - assuming that they are bootlicking, deferential, docile, fawning, obeisant, obsequious, servile, slavish, submissive, sycophantic, sympathetic, tender and warm-hearted.

Mr_Toad thanks you in advance.

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2 Fischer - the Opening and the End games

2010-08-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Over 50 years ago now, Bobby Fischer exploded onto the chess world with what was described as the "the Game of the Century". This was the 'Opening game' referred to in the title. Let me begin by quoting from an article by Rene Chun in the Atlantic Monthly (Dec 2002) , thus:

"Contrary to popular belief, Fischer didn't emerge from the womb a full-blown grand master. While he was learning the game, as a child in Brooklyn, he was essentially a hotshot club player—a prodigy, to be sure, but not obviously world-championship material. But at age thirteen, in 1956, Fischer made a colossal leap. That year he became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Championship. He also dominated the U.S. tournament circuit. What was astounding wasn't simply that a gawky thirteen-year-old kid in blue jeans was suddenly winning chess tournaments. It was the way he was winning. He didn't just beat people — he humiliated them. The thing he relished most was watching his opponents squirm. "I like the moment when I break a man's ego," he once said, during a Dick Cavett interview.

Later in the year he played a game so remarkable that it was immediately dubbed "the Game of the Century." Fischer faced Donald Byrne, then one of the top ten U.S. players, at the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament, in New York. The now legendary battle was packed with more chess pyrotechnics than are typically seen during the course of an entire match. There were complex combinations, ingenious sacrifices, danger and apparent danger—enough to make Fischer, who won, a chess god overnight. Asked to explain his sudden emergence on the world stage of chess, Fischer shrugged and said, "I just got good."

The Fischer-Byrne duel was dissected in newspapers and magazines around the world and won Fischer the Brilliancy Prize, an annual chess award that recognizes particularly imaginative play ... Even the Russians, loath to acknowledge so much as the existence of American players, grudgingly tipped their hats. After the Fischer-Byrne game, Mikhail Botvinnik, the reigning world champion, reportedly said, "We will have to start keeping an eye on this boy"."

Here is the game itself.

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One of the more authorative annotations of the game can be found here. There is also an interesting "easy read" commentary here (with a diagram for each move).

To see "every one of his 736 tournament and match games presented with insightful explanations and analysis" then you might consider buying 'Bobby Fischer – Career and Complete Games' by Karsten Müller - reviewed at 'New In Chess'.

You will probably know all about the Fischer-Spassky World Championship match but just in case you missed it - here is one of the most revealing articles about Fischer ever written - on the eve of his historic win. It is entitled "A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma" (by William Lombardy, Fischer's second in Reykjavik).

And so the remarkable (and extremely controversial) 'End game' referred to in the title of the post. This time I will look to ChessBase to set the scene, thus:

"After winning the World Championship match against Boris Spassky in 1972 Bobby Fischer disappeared from public view for 20 years. In 1992 he returned to play a chess match with Boris Spassky in 1992. Fischer was 49 years old, Spassky was 55. The venue was the Yugoslav town of Sveti Stefan, an island resort just off the coast of Montenegro. The prize fund was US $5,000,000, of which the winner – the first player to win ten games – got 3.65 million. Victory went to Fischer. The match sponsor was Jezdimir Vasiljevic, President of Jugoskandic Bank, and a crony of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic."

The game they played in the first round was called "The Return of the King" and attracted much praise eg from Karpov, who said "one game was extremely good, game 1". I like the comment of a certain 'Patzer2' at chessgames.comwho says:

For a while Fischer was indeed back and showing signs of his former brillance in this strange and unlikely rerun of the 1972 championship. The matchup and calling it a "championship" may have been a joke to serious players, but the quality of games such as this are real and historic reminders that Fischer was a world class player even 20 years past his prime.

What's impressive here is how Fischer wins the game first on the Queenside and then focuses on an even more brilliant switch to the Kingside. Then after Spassky sacrifices a Knight for the attack, Fischer quickly returns a piece of his own to counterattack in 39. Bxf4! and tops it off with another piece offering in 42. Nf5!! to continue the attack and secure the win."

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Here's an excerpt from Yasser Seirawan's book 'No Regrets':

"Right after the game Bobby and Boris held a postmortem and considered that the position after 17.Nxh6 was critical. Boris was sure that 17...f6 was a mistake. The players immersed themselves in the forcing sequence 17...Bxa1 (probably the best practical try) 18.Qxa1 Qxd6 19.Qxh8+ Ke7.

The next day Bobby, Eugene Torre, Svetozar Gligoric, Yvette Nagel and I spent a late afternoon analyzing this position. It is an excellent position for practical work. I suggest you take a few minutes and look at the lines following 20.Qxh7 and 20.Qg7.

Initially, Bobby was strongly for 20.Qxh7!, munching a pawn. He got bogged down over the line 20...Rf8 21.h4 (to clear the back rank and pound home h4-h5) 21...Qd2 22.Re3. White seems to be on a joyful attacking crunch, but his pieces are misplaced: 22...Qxc2! 23.Qg7 (since 23.h5 runs into ...Qd1+ and Qxh5+) 23...Qc1+ 24.Kh2 Qc5!, again restraining h4-h5. Now Black has two passers on the queenside and his king can trot to safety.

Fischer spent a lot of time trying to make 25.e5 Bd5! 26.h5 work, but came away dissatisfied. At length he was talked into declining the h7-cutie. "Man, I really want that guy!" he exclaimed. We began looking at 20.e5 Rxh8 (20...Qd2!?) 21.exd6+ Kf6 22.Re7 Bd5 before Fischer's "Nah!" ended things there. Finally, 20.Qg7 Rf8 21.Ng8+ Rxg8 22.Qxg8 a5!? (White's queen is trapped) 23.Qg7 a4, when despite being an Exchange down Black is still kicking. Indeed, the whole line isn't forced, as Black doesn't have to sac the Exchange. Bobby was vexed. "You guys are busted. Give me a sec to find the killer!" Finally Bobby said, "First, give me my pawn!" and produced 20.Qxh7! Rf8 21.Qg7 Qd2.

Bobby now uncorked his killer: 22.Qa1!! What a shot! Suddenly, White has a crushingly coordinated attack. He threatens 23.Nf5+ gxf5 24.exf5+ Kd7 25.Rd1, picking up Black's queen. If 22...Qxh6, then 23.Qxa7 regains the piece with an easy win. A line like 22...Rc8 23.Nf5+ Ke6 (23...gxf5 24.exf5+ Kf8 25.Qh8 mate) 24. Nd4+ Ke7 (White has gotten his knight back into the game, all with tempo!) 25.Rd1 Qc3 26.Qxa7 nets two pawns and the attack. We were forced into the ending 22...Qc3 23.Qxc3 bxc3 24.f3 a5 25.Ra1 Ra8 26.Ng4 a4 27.Kf2 a3 28.Ke3 a2 29.Kd4 Ra3 30.Ne3 - and this is hopeless for Black! (Fischer) We all had to concede that Bobby is as sharp an analyst as ever."

1 Fischer - compared to John Lennon

2010-08-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

Fischer - comparisons with other celebrities

I am not alone in comparing Bobby Fischer's behaviour with that of other celebrities - though John Nash is perhaps more appropriate from a psychological point of view, thus:

"In many ways Fischer's story resembles that of the mentally unstable Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician who inspired the book and Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, but without the happy ending. Both Fischer and Nash were the best at their chosen professions. Both were widely considered to be geniuses. Both were also supremely arrogant, rebellious, eccentric, and - although respected - not necessarily well liked by colleagues. Fischer left the United States to live in exile. So did Nash. Even eerier, while in the grip of schizophrenia Nash was an anti-Semite and was convinced that Communists (the men at MIT wearing red ties) were observing him." (from Rene Chun's excellent summary of Fischer's life)

Fischer can also be usefully compared with another chess genius, Paul Morphy, thus:

"No longer merely a former world chess champion, he has grown to almost mythic size, leaving behind him a trail of rumors and a chess world that is still reaching out for him in the void.

Much the same kind of effect was created in the 1850s when Paul Morphy, a New Orleans chess prodigy then recognized as the world champion, returned in triumph from Europe and soon simply stopped playing. Morphy was regarded as one of the game's true innovators. Fischer revered him. They are the only two Americans ever acclaimed as world chess champions, and there remains that striking parallel in their careers. "Fischer's like Morphy," says international master Igor Ivanov, a Soviet defector. "What's the story with you Americans? You win the title, go home and don't play any more."

Later in his life, after abandoning chess altogether, Morphy suffered from delusions of persecution and withdrew into his own private world. Occasionally he strolled the streets of New Orleans, muttering, in French, "He will plant the banner of Castille upon the walls of Madrid, amidst the cries of the conquered city, and the little king will go away looking very sheepish." He died of apoplexy, at age 47.". (from William Nack's excellent article)

Shall I compare thee to ... John Lennon!

Now we are 40 years on from Bobby Fischer's triumph in Reykjavik it is increasingly hard to find anything new or meaningful about the man himself. One of the problems of writing about any historical figure is that, in most cases, the writer did not grow up in the same world and has no experience of societal norms at that time. For example, those of you who didn't live during the Cold War period cannot understand on a gut level, how it shaped one's mental scenery. I was pretty young when he won the title and, because I had no experience of previous title matches, simply assumed that this was the way chess matches were played. The ignorance of youth. I didn't realise that Fischer was uniquely responsible for changing the chess landscape forever in terms of financial reward and popularity.

But, for some reason, he occupies a similar place in my life to Lennon. On a subconscious level I somehow believe that the way they lived their lives will help me to understand my own motivations. We are all affected by the way our 'idols' live their lives - unfortunately they often feel no responsibility for the huge effect they have on those who follow them (of any age, not just youngsters). We are all looking for answers and so we naturally check out the way others live their lives. Of course Lennon, as usual, had his own take on this, thus "My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.".

To justify my talking about Lennon in a post about Fischer (John and Yoko were/are chess players incidentally), here are a couple of the former's quotes which Fischer might (?) have said himself:

"The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'."

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people."

"When I was about twelve, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody’s noticed. Either I’m a genius or I’m mad, which is it? ‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t be mad because nobody’s put me away; therefore I’m a genius.’ Genius is a form of madness and we’re all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there’s such a thing as genius – I am one. And if there isn’t, I don’t care."

"People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine."

"I was different, I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me?"

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."

"Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty. ".

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."

Fisher and Lennon contrasted

Let's begin with another quote from Lennon, this time it contains an emotional insight that perhaps Fischer did NOT have - to his great cost:

"When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.".

So Lennon screamed out for 'Help' throughout his life - whilst Fischer hid himself away. One of the commentators at 'Crooked Timber talks about what might have happened to Fischer if help had been available, thus:

"It seems pretty likely to me that Fischer had Asperger’s syndrome, and probably suffered manic/depressive and psychotic episodes, as many people so affected do. Learning chess and multiple languages at a young age is a giveaway. His antisemitic rantings are quite likely the product of the associated psychosis, and no doubt seemed to him quite reasonable. Had he been born 30 years later, he quite probably would have been properly diagnosed and treated, and would have lead a reasonably normal life. Would he still have been a chess master? Who knows?"

And another comment in the same vein - from 'EndridCold' (in a YouTube commentary), thus:

"What is more disappointing is that his (Fischer's) family & so called friends allowed him to fall through the cracks. Not much was known about clinical depression & chemical imbalances back then. Who knows, something as simple as 100 mgs of Doxepin per day might well have been a God's send. Had those around him dragged him kicking & screaming to the proper docs, there is no telling where he could have taken chess.".

I think that this comment by 'EndridCold' is quite profound. Fischer arguably had much less support than Lennon, with his Beatle mates to keep him company and provide support. But then Fischer was adept at pushing people away eg if he ever suspected that they talked about him in any way to the media they were immediately 'banished' from his life. In contrast we remember how McCartney, noticing that Lennon was experiencing a bad drug trip, took time to sit with his friend and even 'take a trip' himself - just to keep him company.

The lifestyle of the Beatles, and the wonderful camaraderie they built up over the years, highlights the isolation of a dedicated chess player such as Fischer in a dramatic way. We see that it is not just Fischer's reported reclusiveness and lack of social skills that were to blame for the difficulties he suffered but also his lifestyle. There is something courageous in taking on the role of professional chessplayer and it isn't just the lack of financial reward. Most are not 'geeky' or antisocial by nature - yet they risk being perceived as such or even finding to their horror that, in time, they actually begin to develop such characteristics to some degree. What I am saying is that chess players may not be antisocial - contrary to the popular view. That they make sacrifices in real life as well as in the game itself!

Let Aunt Mimi have the last word

After discussing the experience of having 'difficulties' childhood with one's mother, it seems appropriate to talk about Lennon's mother too. If you are fascinated by such questions as whether Lennon would have achieved what he did without the impetus derived from the his difficult childhood I unreservedly recommend you read 'Imagine This: Growing Up with my Brother John Lennon' by Julia Baird (his half-sister) and also watch the film "Nowhere Boy"- even if Paul McCartney (who did not attend the premiere) was quoted as saying, “it wasn’t like that…this didn’t happen, and that most certainly didn’t happen.”

I'll finish with an obvious song choice from John. Apparently "Lennon wrote this while he was undergoing 'Primal Scream' therapy. He was dealing with a lot of issues that were detailed in the lyrics. He lost his mother at a crucial period in his life to a drunk driving off duty policeman who ran her over in a crosswalk and his aunt Mimi raised him, which explains the line, "Mother you had me, but I never had you." His father, a merchant seaman, left him for the sea and work. "I wanted you, you didn't need me" explains his feelings about his dad. A very painful youth, his primal screaming on this song lets you feel his pain. (thanks, Bob - Boston, MA)

Mother, you had me but I never had you
I wanted you, you didn't want me
So I, I just got to tell you
Goodbye, goodbye

Father, you left me but I never left you
I needed you, you didn't need me
So I, I just got to tell you
Goodbye, goodbye

Children, don't do what I have done
I couldn't walk and I tried to run
So I, I just got to tell you
Goodbye, goodbye

Mama, don't go
Daddy, come home
Mama, don't go
Daddy, come home
(repeat last stanza)

"The Guitar's Alright For A Hobby John.. But You'll Never Make A Living From It"
- Aunt Mimi.

Links (Fischer related)

Fischer quotes

Images (1)

Images (2)

His information

Useful information

His career and complete games (German GM Müller has annotated pretty much every single tournament game Fischer ever played that is available)

Various biographies

Driven to bad behaviour

2010-07-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Brazil is in 'mourning'. First there was Barricello. Now Massa has joined the pantheon of fallen idols. Still - we should not commit the sin of worshipping at the feet of idols of any description should we? Let me clarify why Brazil is up in arms with an extract from the Daily Express, thus:

"‘DIRTY, thieving cheats’ are words echoing around Formula One after Ferrari dragged the sport into disrepute at the German Grand Prix here. Fernando Alonso’s victory appeared to be ordered via a coded radio message, with Felipe Massa slowing down a lap later to let his team-mate pass and go on to win. The Italian team were fined $100,000 immediately, but there will be further sanctions as the matter was referred to the FIA World Motorsport Council.".

The two naughty boys were certainly given a good 'spanking' in the post-race press conference, thus, from the Daily Telegraph:

"The duo attempted to explain away what had unfolded, but failed to convince the sceptical press, and they clearly cut no ice with the stewards later given their fine. Eddie Jordan, the BBC pundit, said that it was "unlawful", before adding: "It is cheating and the two cars should be excluded."

Here are a few of the questions they were bombarded with and their unconvincing replies.

* Via a coded message it appears we've witnessed a clear case of team orders being handed out. To Fernando, do you feel embarrassed about taking such a win, and to Felipe do you feel angry about having to give up such a win?

Massa: "For sure, you always want to win. That's always what we're working for. For sure we don't have team orders, so we just need to do the race that we can and if you see that you cannot do the race that you can, you need to think about the team. I think that's the most important thing."

Alonso: "Yeah, same. What's important is the team result, so I'm happy."

*The reality is, though, you couldn't beat him on the track, so you had to get the team to do it for you.

Alonso: "If that's your opinion."

*He had to give you this win, didn't he, Fernando?

Alonso: "No."

*Fernando, why can't you just be honest with us for once and just admit this win was handed to you on a plate today?

Alonso: "I was competitive on Friday, first position. I finished second in qualifying by 12 centimetres, I heard yesterday. Today I think we scored the fastest lap of the race, so overall I don't think I was very slow this weekend."

*Felipe, Rubens (Barrichello) damaged his image a lot in Brazil when he did what you did today. Until now you had the support of the country. Aren't you worried that now after you did what Rubens did you have deeply damaged your image in Brazil?

Massa: "For sure not. I'm very professional and I've showed in my career how professional I am. You are professional as well, you work for a company. I believe you are doing what you have to do, so I'm professional and today I showed how professional I am. That's it."

And so to the point of my post. Massa refers to professional behaviour in terms of conformity to the terms of his contract. But you then have to ask - If he was not sure what he might be asked to do, why did he take the job? Oh, money again, I see. Not just sufficient money for him and his family to live on - but 'loadsamoney'.

We might also ask about how it is that so many 'professionals kick the football upstairs rather than take responsibility for their actions? This includes the soldiers tainted by the 'events' in the Guantanamo Bay prison who exonerated themselves by saying that they 'only acted under orders'. You could argue that torturing people was not in the contract - so they were placed in a situation that could not have been foreseen. This argument has a certain amount of force. Do we not always invest a certain amount of trust in the organisation that we are about to be employed by? And are we not entitled so to do?

Principled Behaviour and 'A Step Too Far'

I think we are all entitled to have certain expections of professional people, whether they be solicitors (translation - lawyers), bankers, teachers whatever. Unfortunately they are all subject to pressures diverse, likewise the organisations that employ them. So let's put ourselves on the spot, let's see how well we do when we, ourselves, are in a tricky situation.

For the purposes of the exercise let's suppose that you are not Ferrari or the CIA - but a 'higher authority for chess'. Your responsibilty? Teaching the rules of chess to a nine year-old. Here is what 'Tim D' asked on Yahoo Answers:

"I'm a fairly experienced player, and my 9-year-old son is just learning the game. I'm not sure what I should do when I play him. Should I purposely make mistakes and help him to learn how to identify and respond to my mistakes? Or should I just play my game, and teach him why I make each move and what my strategy was?".

'Old Cynic' responded by saying "playing properly is the best way, don't insult someone's intelligence by allowing them to win. But a 9 year old may be different. A child can get annoyed if they don't taste victory at least some of the time, so maybe you could mix it up. Slip an occasional hung piece and see if he takes it.".

In this situation there is a real dilemma of course. Being honest and playing honestly on the one hand - but thereby taking the risk of putting the youngster off the game for good and all. This is all very different from the real life dilemmas experienced by the professionals mentioned above - but I would say that we ALL need to live life with the aim of high-principled behaviour, inasmuch as our own personal limitations allow us. Surely this includes the concept of helping others (as I discuss in a post in my blog at Toad Tryouts).

I rather like Deena's ''answer. She talks about her Daddy teaching her chess, so I assume she's a youngster too (they rightly talk about words of wisdom from the mouth of a child). One of her suggestions is to "make some mistakes and talk through them on how you could've made a better move". Precisely so! If we use our 'smarts' we can often circumnavigate all sorts of problems (such as those experienced by Massa et al?).

Here's my take. First suggestion is to explain the scenario to the child - perhaps a game which is for teaching purposes only. In this case you would carefully explain that you will be allowed to suggest a few candidate moves for the child to think about and to either choose from - or come up with another of their own. We often forget to explain situations clearly to children (and dogs too, incidentally!) in advance. It sometimes seems as if we don't talk to them at all these days but that's another story.

"This is what we are going to do now - is that OK with you? How about we have a game where we are not bothered about winning. Or a game where we try to explain to the other person the moves we are thinking about?". This might well elicit a negative response - which probably means you have neglected to explain WHY you have made the suggestion (you should have said that you want him/her to become a good chessplayer or some such).

Ann Wamack

I think that one of the best answers given to Tim D's question was given by Ann Wamack (a freelance writer for 'Chess Right' which offers traditional and decorative chess sets, as well as chess boards and other chess equipment for sale), thus:

"In my experience, the important factor is going to be whether or not the boy has fun playing chess. If he gets all stressed out every time you two play, he isn't going to remember whether or not he won. The important thing is going to be that he remembered having fun with it. Strategies and moves come with experience. So play often, and keep the emphasis on fun, sportsmanship, and bonding. The strategies and analysis will come in their own time."

You may be interested in one of the reasons she provides for taking up the game in one of her articles, thus:

"The benefits of playing chess are not confined to school age children. In this Information Age, we are all bombarded continuously with incoming information of all types from many sources, some more credible than others. Data that used to take substantial commitments of time and specialized skill to dig out is now available in a fraction of a second from an Internet search on a home computer. The ability to analyze and manage multiple considerations is a skill that can make the difference between responding with agility to new situations and becoming paralyzed with information overload. These torrents of information, whether the subject is managing your business or monitoring family health options, must be met with critical thinking to sort out the useful information from the spurious. Then, the new data needs to be adapted into our current plan, as appropriate. Nowhere are these skills (critical thinking, analysis, managing multiple considerations, adapting to new data, decision making, and planning / thinking ahead) better honed than from engaging in regular games of chess."

Less than saint-like behaviour

Here is Paul Hoffman's confession of an isolated instance of the type of pressure that results in less than saint-like behaviour. His book "King's Gambit" (from which this extract is taken) is one of the best 'chess reads' around and the extract here shows how is prepared, in exemplary manner, to bare his soul for our edification.

I do feel a little ungracious in presenting this particular page when I have his whole book to choose from! As I say, the one thing that shines through in all his writing is Hoffman's honesty and integrity. It can usefully be contrasted with the unseemly comments of certain racing drivers as illustrated above.

More bad behaviour (and an interesting blog to discover) is on display in my post 'A Chess Journey'.

Manage your own Opening Repertoire

2010-07-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

What I have been looking for is an easy way to visualise and to keep track of the opening moves that I tend to use the most. In this context I am not looking for other chessplayer's games in databases, nor am I particularly interested in the facility to use chess engines. Of course the sheer variety of chess software is somewhat overwhelming - but here I present the fruits of my labours. At least two of the freeware listing webpages that I came across in my journey are worth a mention - the Nørresundby Chess Club's En Passant and also James Kearman's site.

I began with CDB - "a powerful positionally categorically based tool for abnormally browsing, annotating, and analyzing chess". CDB was written by Peter Klausler which "does not seem to have a limit on the number of games that can be contained in a database. CDB will also convert any CBF-format Chessbase files you download to PGN format" - but is no longer supported. The above En Passant site also has the Traveller Chess font required for the program.

I was intrigued to find that it was able to show a list of openings in the form of a tree diagram, though I later found what I thought to be a slightly better version at 'Chess Age'. This one has opening titles too - the image here shows the 'Bogolyubov Variation'.

For me, a tree diagram would be a great way to show my own personal openings repertoire - assuming that I could create one for me personally. Chess Age utilises a read-only on-line system - basically just a glossary of openings. I should also point out that I am not after the 'normal' tree diagrams which appear in many programs such as ChessBase (these are in the form of a table and don't look like a tree with branches at all - and the data relates to move ratings as determined by a chess engine).

Nor am I, in this particular context, looking for ways to explore variations on-line such as the excellent 365chess or the Chess ECO Database. These are both very useful and interesting ways to explore opening theory in their own right of course.

I finally came across what I was looking for in the form of Stefan Renzewitz's Chess Position Trainer (CPT) program which can be downloaded from here. The site describes it as being 'both free and priceless at the same time' which seems fair comment to me. The PDF file 'Manual for Chess Position Trainer 3.2' also promises me that I can "learn from every game that I play (eg when playing on ICC), because the key information is no longer more than one click away - defeat your laziness! CPT will show you right away the novelties of your games which are not yet covered by your repertoire and you can even right away train exactly those positions where you missed the right move.".

And, yes, it does have the facility to 'grow' a tree as is shown in this screen shot (fudged a little to show the tree to best effect).

His project is ongoing and he is clearly committed to the whole project. This is clearly indicated by his latest post (about the statistical module) in the (English) forum - it is dated 9. July 2010 08:20 ie pretty recent.

A useful repertoire of basic openings to start with is the 'ECO-Repertoire by Prof. Dr. Dialetis' which can be downloaded here - which you will then be able to customise later to suit your own opening repertoire.

Features (site glossary)

# Very intuitive and customizable user-interface accompanied by a printable 65 page manual.
# Import or enter your chess opening repertoire and manage it with ease.
# Use more than 70 training options just for the chess opening alone - unbeatable capabilities.
# Use the applied flash-card concept making chess training more efficient and fun.
# Train your own repertoire blindfolded - no other chess software let you do that.
# Special functions - running your (internet) chess games against your repertoire, backsolving.

More details for advanced users

More advanced users can explore the idea of "creating a ‘Tactics’ repertoire for training using CPT". In this case you will need a program such as 'Chess Assistant Light' available here or here to manage the necessary files. CAL has a 15,000 games per database limit which is not a problem with CPT. Why? Because CPT only needs to hold specific positions and variations related to your own personal repertoire.

In fact the CAL program is useful in its own right, thus:

"Chess Assistant Light is software used for managing chess games and databases, playing chess on the Internet, viewing electronic texts, studying openings, analyzing games, playing chess against the computer."

Have the engines killed ROTW matches?

2010-07-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

This post was prompted by my reading 'Kasparov Against The World' (KATW). It was described by by Jon Edwards as "A day to day account of his 1999 internet match against the 'The Rest of the World' (ROTW) team, consisting of some 7 million people (according to the organisers Microsoft). One book, one game. Kasparov suggests that it may be the greatest game ever played. It's an exciting game and did much to promote chess world-wide.". The fact that its 202 pages are devoted to a single chess game is, not surprisingly, a record. Jon offers interactive moves for the game and analysis as well as links to all of the games that were referenced in the book.

You don't need to invest in the KATW book itself to find out why Jon is so taken with it - just refer to the links at the end of this post or Jon's links given above (but if you do happen to want to buy the book, you can use the Amazon shopping cart in the right-hand column of this blog). Quite apart from anything else, the game generated a novelty introduced by one of the members of the ROTW (15 year old Irina Krush) on move ten and which was, in itself, a valuable contribution to opening theory.

Here is the position in question - can you find Black's perhaps clumsy-looking, but nevertheless very effective, innovation?

(Solution below)

KATW is like a diary, so you hear about the other things that went on in Kasparov's life during the game - no need for a chess board because a diagram is shown for each move.

Kasparov talks about his appearance in the book, saying that GM Eduard Gufeld told him (in 1978 apparently) "Garry, how can you play the Caro-Kann? You look like one of the Mafiosi - you must play the Sicilian!".

Ah, so that's the reason for him always playing this opening!

Have the engines killed ROTW matches?

All of the players were allowed to use computer programs of their choice. This was in 1999, so perhaps the programs were weaker than they are today - and different computers were capable of coming up with different answers. These days it feels as if computers have all the answers (though I confess to not having much experience of them myself). Having read the book, it occurred to me that this type of ROTW match could not be played in the same way today - it would simply be a match between computers. If a chess engine is left to run overnight it is difficult for me to conceive that a human player would easily be able to discount the analysis it produces. In 1999 it was still worth checking the computer variations to see if it had gone astray.

Once again it seems that we can't discuss chess without also mentioning computers. At this point it is worth mentioning that one of the first computer pioneers, Konrad Zuse, was born exactly one hundred years ago (on June 22nd, 1910). He is commemorated in an article by Frederic Friedel in Chessbase. The article ends with a glimpse into the future - 2030 to be precise - when we will apparently be able to upload the contents of our brains to a computer! We are told that "Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have become involved in this project" ie the "merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence". I'll leave you to dwell on that while I attempt to get back on topic.

One of the ways in which computers have made us chessplayers 'redundant' is the appearance of tablebases. These are "generated by retrograde analysis, working backwards from a checkmated position and have completely solved chess positions with six or fewer pieces (including the two kings)."(Wiki). As I understand it (Page 159 of KATW) you can use a tablebase in the following way. Suppose that towards the end of the middle game you find that your variations all lead to positions with a king, queen and pawn against a king and queen. It is very difficult to see which of these will be draws and which will be wins, but a tablebase can tell you for sure - and then you will know which variations to examine more closely.

Who actually played the moves?

It was fascinating to read Kasparov's KATW book in which he appears to have sufficient nous to know when to reject moves found by a computer (Deep Junior). He even had an expert whose presence on his team depended solely on his ability to know when to accept or reject particular computer moves. It seems strange to then ask the computer to check the proposed move, even though it wasn't even in the computer output list of candidate moves!

In his book, Kasparov had, what I believe to be, a very difficult task. He wanted to show the gory details of how he arrived at his moves (including help from his advisers, chess engines and tablebase) - whilst making it clear that the game was his, that he 'owned' the moves that were actually made. Was he merely a co-ordinator in the same way that Irina Krush (more about her below) co-ordinated the ROTW team? I think he proved the case for saying that he was the 'creator' - but I'm not sure it will be possible for world champions in future ROTW matches to do the same (which is little disconcerting to say the least). It seems to me that their ideas will become completely subservient to massively powerful computers that will become available to everyone and their dog. It just seems to be a question of who can get hold of the better software! Or seconds! One of the attractions of chess is it's 'pure' nature, the idea that you put yourself on the line, that you are testing yourself and you alone.

Now let's move on to the psychology of playing chess by 'committee' - with all the attendant paraphenalia of who, if anyone, is in charge. And why should we let that patzer in the corner have one vote when the GM over there only gets one vote too - is democracy really a valid paradigm in all situations? Kasparov insisted on various operating procedures before agreeing to get involved - but even he could not anticipate all the issues that came crawling out from under the woodwork (for both sides)! Incidentally, because team members will not wish to present anything less than perfect lines to their fellows for fear of losing face - there is a big incentive to use chess engines. Individual correspondence games do not have this 'group dynamic'. As far as I am concerned, I trust my opponents when they promise not to use input from a machine/consultant. Anyway, I simply don't care if my opponent is feeding me computer moves.

IM Irina Krush

The system as described in KATW seemed to be a reasonable compromise, a sort of 'modified democracy'. And here is the chairman of the committee, IM Irina Krush (FIDE 2476). This is Michael Nielsen's version of what she accomplished:

"Fifteen years old (as she was in 1999 but the picture is more recent), Krush had recently become the US Women’s chess champion. Although not as highly rated as two of the other World Team advisors, or as some of the grandmasters offering advice to the World Team, Krush was certainly in the international elite of junior chess players.

Unlike her expert peers, Krush focused considerable time and attention on the World Team’s game forum. Shrugging off flames and personal insults, she worked to extract the best ideas and analysis from the forum, as well as building up a network of strong chess-playing correspondents, including some of the grandmasters now offering advice.

Simultaneously, Krush built a publicly accessible analysis tree, showing possible moves and countermoves, and containing the best arguments and refutations for different lines of play, both from the game forum, and from her correspondence with others, including the GM school. This analysis tree enabled the World Team to focus its attention much more effectively, and served as a reference point for discussion, for further analysis, and for voting.

As the game went on, Krush’s role on the World Team gradually became more and more pivotal, despite the fact that according to their relative rankings, Kasparov would ordinarily have beaten Krush easily, unless he made a major blunder.".

Other sites report that "In addition to discovering a new move, Krush displayed great patience, tact, and generosity while participating in the bulletin board discussion of the game.".

STOP PRESS!
Irina Krush US Women's Champion 2010
Full report at Chessbase

Conclusion

Well, we know that chess is warfare in miniature - so success at chess depends on the same qualities that result in victory on the battlefield. We may list, for example, such things as strong leadership (in this instance, Irina Krush), a well thought out strategy (her analysis tree described above) and, last but not least, the fighting qualities of the whole army (the ROTW team participated with enthusiasm and dedication, incentivised by playing Kasparov).

Finally, I do feel that, for matches where people play chess as a group, it is vitally important to have an easy- to-visualise and efficient system for proposing, recording and locating variations - possibly a tailor-made online system. Please refer to my post "Cemetary walks / Openings Indexes" to give you an idea of what I mean.

My interest in ROTW games was further enhanced by my participation in a similar type of game at ChessWorld. In this case 277 members of the club are playing against one of our stronger members, Michael Dellman. I must say that I have gained a lot from the experience. The dodgy variations I have submitted to the forum have been gently corrected - which has given me a little more confidence in my game ie not all my ideas are completely crazy!

If this post has sparked your own interest in playing such a match, just click on the ChessWorld ad at the bottom left of this post to see what it is all about (initially as a non-paying guest).

Links

The Salon article is a nice place to start - here

Game moves and comments - here

Michael Neilsen's post (excellent blog) - here

Wikipedia's take on the match - here

Time magazine article - here

ROWT analysis and ideas as it occurred during the match - here

Controversy over a missing email (various links too) - here

Hot water for the organiser (MicroSoft) - here

Deep analysis of a critical moment in the game - here

Shirky's article - here

Solution - 10...Qe6

The Ghost in the Machine

2010-06-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

You may have seen photographs purporting to contain a ghost - as in visitors from the 'astral plane'. Maybe this photograph can claim to be the real thing. Certainly it is an expression of the actual thought processes, the "spirit of a thinking machine" as the website concerned describes it. You can 'see' its 'mind' in real time if you play a game of chess against it (just click on the photograph to try!).

So can 'pure thought' exist independently of its 'physical home' (whether corporeal body or man-made machine)? I would say that Descartes thought so - that mental activity carries on in parallel to physical action, but where their means of interaction are unknown or, at best, speculative. This is "mind-body dualism". Then came Gilbert Ryle who rejected Descartes’ theory of the relation between mind and body, on the grounds that it approaches the investigation of mental processes as if they could be isolated from physical processes. He says:

"The rationalist theory that the will is a faculty within the mind and that volitions are mental processes which the human body transforms into physical acts is therefore a misconception. This theory mistakenly assumes that mental acts are distinct from physical acts and that there is a mental world which is distinct from the physical world. This theory of the separability of mind and body is described by Ryle as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine." (Wiki).

Clearly this debate impinges on religious thought as part and parcel of the debate. Here is part of an interesting article where Adam Marczyk (his name according to the Tekton site) asks "Where is the Soul Hiding?"

"Central to many religions, both Eastern and Western, is the doctrine of dualism: that there is a non-material essence called the soul that inhabits and animates our bodies and is the cause and the source of consciousness, personality, free will, thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, memories, the sense of self - in short, everything a person thinks of as "I". Theists typically believe that the soul survives the physical death of the body and goes on to whatever comes after death, be it an afterlife in Heaven or Hell or reincarnation in a new body.

I am an atheist because I have found no evidence that leads me to believe that the supernatural claims of any religion are true, and the notion of the soul is no exception. In fact, as this essay will demonstrate, there is strong evidence against the existence of a soul in humans, pointing instead to the alternative of materialism - that the mind is not separate from the brain, but that it arises from and is produced by neural activity within the brain. Simply stated, the mind is what the brain does.

As a practical matter, it should be easy to judge between dualism and materialism, because unlike most religious doctrines, the notion of the soul is an idea that would seem to have testable consequences. Specifically, if the human mind is the product of a "ghost in the machine" and not the result of electrochemical interactions among neurons, then the mind should not be dependent on the configuration of the brain that houses it. In short, there should be aspects of the mind that owe nothing to the physical functioning of the brain.

Until recently, this prediction was difficult to test, but modern scientific innovations have thrown light on the subject. Medical techniques such as CAT scans (short for computed axial tomography), PET (positron emission topography), and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) allow the structure and function of the living brain to be studied. Scientists can see which areas of the brain "light up" with activity when a healthy person performs a mental task, or they can examine patients who have suffered injury or disease to see which parts of the brain, when damaged, correspond to which deficits of neural function.

And already, a disappointing result for theists has emerged. Some mental functions are localized, while others are more diffuse, but there is no aspect of the mind that does not correspond to any area of the brain. In fact, we know precisely which brain regions control many fundamental aspects of human consciousness.".

Now let us return to the chess 'mind' in the photograph - after all, it symbolises the 'materialism' proposed by Adam in the above text even if it cannot seriously be entered into the debate as serious evidence one way or the other :)

According to the website:

"Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

The artwork is an artificial intelligence program, ready to play chess with the viewer. If the viewer confronts the program, the computer's thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.".

What do the images mean?

When it is your (White's) turn to move, the chess board will gently pulse to show the influence of the various pieces. in the left image below, you can see waves over the squares around the king and (very lightly) over the squares where the pawns might capture. When the machine (Black) is thinking, a network of curves is overlaid on the board; see image at right. The curves show potential moves - often several turns in the future - considered by the computer. Orange curves are moves by black; green curves are ones by white. The brighter curves are thought by the program to be better for white.".

How strong is the program?

"The chess playing engine is designed to be at the same level as the average viewer. If you're a tournament chess player, you would clobber most casual players--and you'll clobber Thinking Machine 4 too. If you barely remember the rules of the game, the artwork may clobber you instead. The chess engine we built is simple and uses only basic algorithms from the 50s (alpha-beta pruning and quiescence search). The program's unconventional initial moves may raise eyebrows among experts: we did not give it an 'opening book' of standard lines since we wanted it to think through every position.". [Edward Tufte, September 9, 2005]

Would you like to play? Click here!

At least one chess player has an open mind about spiritual matters - I refer to Korchnoi. Here is an extract from an article at Sports Illustrated:

"His approach to chess continues to be highly spiritual. He's currently winning a game he has been playing for four years against the Hungarian grandmaster Goza Maroczy, who died 39 years ago. A Swiss mediator had asked Korchnoi, "If you could play anyone in the hereafter, who would it be?"

Korchnoi named Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba (1888-1942), Paul Keres of Estonia (1916-75) and Maroczy. The mediator contacted a psychic who said he would see what he could do. A week later the mediator told Korchnoi the psychic "can't find Capablanca or Keres, but Maroczy is available."

Korchnoi and Maroczy play intermittently through the psychic, who doesn't even know chess. Korchnoi steered the game to a French defense, an opening with two main lines—one of which wasn't analyzed until after Maroczy's death in 1951.".

You may be interested in a serious evaluation of the game as evidence for the "survival of an intelligent component of human existence after bodily death". It essentially asks the question:
'At what level did Maroczy play the chess game?'.

Members of our chess-playing community have their say at 'ChessGames' (including a nice comment by David Moody - who says, tongue in cheek, "I find this very troubling. Here I always thought The Afterlife was a realm of eternal rest and peace. And now you're telling me I'll have to spend it studying opening theory?) :)

And here is the complete game!

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STOP PRESS: Whilst David Moody (see above) is talking about the Afterlife as "a realm of eternal rest and peace" we see that the New York Times is telling us about "Bobby Fischer’s Body Ordered to Be Exhumed"!