Thoughts on the old FIDE World Championship format

A while back I was reading one of IM John Watson's book review columns at The Week in Chess. This time Watson was reviewing Andre Schulz's work The Big Book of World Chess Championships; 46 Title Fights – from Steinitz to Carlsen ( 352 pages; New in Chess 2015). It's a typically lengthy review, and worth reading. (The tl;dr version of the review is that Watson found the book very enjoyable, and recommends it highly.)

Among the other bits Watson culls from the book is this "oddity", as he calls it:

“At the FIDE congress of 1955 in Gothenburg, Botvinnik had submitted several suggestions. Thus the World Champion made efforts to be allowed to play in the candidates’ tournament because he was of the opinion that the qualification cycle conferred an advantage on the challenger for the WCh match, since unlike the inactive title defender he (the challenger) was getting tournament practice."

The Patriarch had a point, but not exactly the one he claimed. In Botvinnik's case he wasn't getting much practice because he largely refused to play in anything other than World Championship matches through most of his title reign. That was entirely on him.

But when I was a young player, even before playing in my first rated tournament I noticed an interesting fact: between the time when Botvinnik won the title in 1948 and Anatoly Karpov's first title defense against Korchnoi in 1978, the reigning World Champion had only won a single match for the world title, when Petrosian defeated Spassky in 1966. (In act, when I first learned of all this history, it was Christmas of 1980, and I didn't actually know that Karpov had defended his title successfully in 1978. I learned all of this from Golombeck's Chess: A History.)

The titles & matches went as follows (defending champion listed first):

Botvinnik drew with Bronstein, 1951
Botvinnik drew with Smyslov, 1954
Botvinnik lost to Smyslov, 1957
Smyslov lost to Botvinnik, 1958
Botvinnik lost to Tal, 1960
Tal lost to Botvinnik, 1961
Botvinnik lost to Petrosian, 1963
Petrosian DEFEATED Spassky, 1966
Petrosian lost to Spassky, 1969
Spassky lost to Fischer, 1972
Fischer forfeited the title to Karpov, 1975

So the defending Champion's record in World Championship matches throughout this period was a woeful 1+, 6-, 2=, 1 forfeit. Over ten matches the Champion was as likely to forfeit the title in a fit of pique as he was to actually win a title defense. Of the six champions of this period, four couldn't win more than one match, and a fifth (Botvinnik) could only win rematches.

That led me to the conclusion in my youth, which I still mostly believe to this day, that unless the Champion is an extremely dominant player, he just can't count on winning a match as Champion. So Karpov and Kasparov were both able to win multiple World Championship matches as Champion, but Kramnik couldn't until he met Topalov, when one Champion had to lose. Anand did, which makes him unique in that he wasn't dominant as Champion, and Carlsen has now done so once, which fits the pattern.

Note too that if one looks at all of the "Classical" list of Champions (plus Topalov), almost half of them have not been able to win a match as Champion: Capablanca, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Spassky, Fischer & Topalov all failed in that quest, while Steinitz, Lasker, Alekhine, Petrosian, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand and Carlsen have succeeded.

Or to quote Ric Flair, "To be The Man, you gotta STAY The Man!" And only about half of Champions have had staying power.

Some additional points to make: Steinitz, Lasker and Alekhine all had the benefit of choosing their own opponents, which helped considerably, though Steinitz was willing to play anyone and everyone. (Capablanca and Euwe also had that option, but they failed to choose wisely!) Kramnik sorta kinda had that option, as did Kasparov for a while, but both did win against duly selected challengers at some point in their careers as Champion.

Since FIDE assumed control of the title following Alekhine's death in 1946, six have failed to defend their titles while only five have succeeded. (I'm excluding Kramnik from this list.) What this has told me is that regular practice against the toughest opponents when one NEEDS to win is the best preparation for a World Championship match. Anything less leaves everything to chance.

Tournament Players PROTIP: Mikhail Tal edition

Given that the Tal Memorial Tournament is currently going on in Moscow, it seems fitting to dedicate an edition of Tournament Players PROTIPS to The Great One hisownself. With no further ado, here's a collection of Tal's best PROTIPS:

1. You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.
2. In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively, simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language.
3. If you wait for luck to turn up, life becomes very boring.
4. Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without any errors, or as they say a 'flawless game', is colorless.
5. Quiet moves often make a stronger impression than a wild combination with heavy sacrifices.
6. Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!*
7. If (Black) is going for victory, he is practically forced to allow his opponent to get some kind of well-known positional advantage.
8. I go over many games collections and pick up something from the style of each player.
9. For pleasure you can read the games collections of Andersson and Chigorin, but for benefit you should study Tarrasch, Keres and Bronstein.
10. I like to grasp the initiative and not give my opponent peace of mind.
11. Drink your coffee only when it is your opponent's move!

And finally, this gem:

Journalist:   It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?

Tal:   Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.

And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

 * Decades later Peter Svidler would add to this, "A pawn is a pawn." Later still, either Svidler or Jan Gustaffson extended this to, "Two pawns are two pawns." Chess wisdom is extended a little further each year!

Alibis II

I saw the following on Twitter yesterday.

Chop it up 😝 pic.twitter.com/ped835K3cF

— Jennifer Shahade (@JenShahade) September 26, 2016

Forty-five seconds to solve it - seems sufficient, but it took me between two to three full minutes, maybe even a little longer.

But I have an alibi! Just as I started to solve it, my daughter (age six) walked up and wanted to discuss the care and ownership of a cat which not only hasn't been born, it hasn't even been conceived yet. Such are the vagaries of life with a young child!

2017 USATS Information

The information for the 2017 USATS, to be held in Kissimmee Florida, can be found to the right in the section for Chess References. The article contains all the appropriate links, as well as hotel reservation information.

Alibis

I picked up a book by Tony Santasiere, My Love Affair with Tchigorin. At the end of Game 19, a loss Tchigorin suffered to Blackburne at the Berlin 1881 tournament, Santasiere writes the following:

The game was a hard one, with Tchigorin obviously not in the best of form alibis are perfectly justifiable and should be mentioned and kept for reference: A Russian among Germans and playing a Scotsman, the popular time pressure, an ache in the head or stomach or bowels*, temporary stupidity, fatigue, the lights too strong or too weak, the noise (even a whisper has been known to induce a nervous breakdown), the smell of garlic or onions from across the table (more likely whiskey from Blackburne) - and we won't even consider the feminine sex or crying children! No doubt you could make a valuable contribution to this list. Ah - to be a Bobby Fischer, and make demands!

Others to add to this list might include an opponent with a vibrating eyeball, an opponent's intestinal distress, contagious projectile vomiting, and collapsing tables.

* I have had cause to make use of this one, as have other players I know.

Mark Dvoretsky, 1947 December 9 - 2016 September 24

It was reported today that Mark Dvoretsky has died. Rather than try to add anything about the man and his work, I will simply point the interested reader to Peter Dogger's obituary on Chess.com. A sad day for the chess world.

The article is worth reading on its human merits, but it also contains a problem worth considering on its own. (How could it be an article about Mark Dvoretsky without an instructive bit about the game of chess?) I've added a screen capture of the problem below. Look for that problem in the text of Dogger's column for the full solution. Pay particular attention to the alternate line 3...Kg6 and its solution.

1996 March 1

That is all.

"They are trying to convince me to play the French. With Black... "

"... There are some really weird people out there" - Peter Svidler, a.k.a. @polborta

pic.twitter.com/k98LTNo2kJ

— Dan (@AntonSquaredMe) September 17, 2016

An anticpated book...

Jan Timman is publishing a new book through New In Chess, Timman's Titans: My World Chess Champions. Here's a part of the advertising blurb from the publisher:

In this fascinating book, Jan Timman portrays ten World Chess Champions that played an important role in his life and career. Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946) he never met, but the story of how in Lisbon he bought one of the last chess sets belonging to the fourth World Champion is one of many highlights in this book.

Timman has a keen eye for detail and a fabulous memory, and he visibly enjoys sharing his insider views, including many revelations about the great champions. Timman’s Titans not only presents a personal view of these chess giants, but is also an evocation of countless fascinating episodes in chess history.

Each portrait is completed by a rich selection of illustrative games, annotated in the author’s trademark lucid style. Always to the point, sharp and with crystal-clear explanations, Timman shows the highs and lows from the games of the champions, including the most memorable games he himself played against them.

I'm pretty sure the connection to Botvinnik will be the one he covers in the introduction to The Art of Chess Analysis. I presume the connection to Fischer has a lot to do with his joint book with Euwe on the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match, though he may well have covered the 1992 match in person.

In any event, I have been very impressed with both of the books of his that I own, and look forward to owning this one. There's always another shelf to be cleared....

The mark of the true chess player.

The mark of distinction that separates the true chess player from a person that merely plays chess is that the true player will do very stupid things like stay up to play speed chess on-line when he otherwise can't even keep his eyes open or his head up.

It doesn't have to be that specifically, just something of similarly stupid nature - perhaps you stayed too long at the club (by four or five hours) when you knew your wife was making your favorite dinner, or you stayed up all night at the tournament reviewing games when you should have gone to sleep. What it proves is that you have an addiction, as certain as anyone who frequents an opium den. (Do such still exist?)

True players will know from whence I write. My own preferred variety of stupid is that not only will I START playing on-line speed when I'm dead tired, but that after inevitably losing a few games I will insist on not stopping until I have won not one game, but two games in a row. As sure as day follows otis, that's what I'll do. And then I'll blog about.

Additional Olympiad Note

The US actually tied with Ukraine on match points, but won on the Sonneborn-Berger tie breaks. (Final match results: Team USA 9+ 0- 2=, Team Ukraine 10+ 1- 0=. Note that the US beat Ukraine in their individual contest.) Apparently, the final result was determined by Germany beating Estonia in the final round. Yikes!

Matthias Bluebaum with the win of the tournament! Thanks for the help, Germany! :)

— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) September 13, 2016

Olympiad Final Round Update

In Round Ten, Jim won by forfeit against Congo, as I expected, and the Virgin Island team won their second match.

That left them playing a surprisingly strong team from Haiti in the final round, Round Eleven. Unfortunately, our guys lost all their games. So the final result for Jim is three wins, one draw, and five loses in games played, as well as the forfeit win and the team bye in Round Five. Overall, the Virgin Island team won two, lost ten, and the bye. Overall the Virgin Islands finished 167th out of 170 teams that played, with another ten teams that appear to have never shown up. Their seeding number was 158 (or 156 after adjusting for the absent teams), so that isn't too far off expectations.

Jim finished with a performance rating of 1974, and according to the website his new rating would be 2116. I don't know if that last bit is correct or not, though, as Jim's earlier rating was provisional, I believe. I'll try to remember to check the FIDE site next month for an update.

We'll have to wait to talk to Jim to see how he and they feel about it, but from here this looks like a decent result, and a good result if they had a good time. (Jim looked like he was enjoying himself in his photos posted to his Facebook page.)

I've looked for more photos of Jim on the official site, but I didn't see any. If anyone else wants to look the link can be found here.

In other Olympiad news, the US Team won the Gold Medals in the Open Section, with Wesley So winning individual Gold on the Third Board. Ukraine took Silver, and Russia a disappointing (for them) Bronze. The Open Board Prizes can be found here. Note that Board Prizes are decided on Tournament Performance Rating (TPR) and require a minimum number of games to qualify.

Some more Board Prize results: Caruana was third on the First Board while the Georgian Baadur Jobava (whose games I highly recommend) took Gold, Nakamura was fifth on Second Board while Kramnik took the Gold, So took Gold on Third Board, Sam Shankland finished a disappoint ninth on Fourth Board after taking Gold on that Board in the last Olympiad while Laurent Fressinet of France took Gold. Finally, on Board Five Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine took Gold.

The performance of Eugenio Torre (2447 FIDE) of the Philippines deserves special note. Playing in his 22nd Olympiad, he scored 9+ 0- 2=, was the only Filipino to play all eleven rounds, and won the individual Bronze Medal on Board Three with a TPR of 2836! Not bad for a man that turns 65 in a few weeks.

Caruana was First Board but Nakamura anchored the team, playing all eleven rounds. Caruana only skipped the first round, and So only missed the second. Shankland skipped the third, fifth and eighth rounds. The team only suffered three individual loses and had no team loses. They were the most consistent team of the event. On board points we would have only finished second, behind Russia (32) by a half-point, but that's only the second tie-break these days (after SB), not the primary scoring method, which is by match points.

In the Women's Olympiad, China took Gold (as expected), Russia Silver, and Poland Bronze. The US Women's Team finished sixth, which was their seeding number. The US Women played the 1, 2, 3, and 5 seeds in this tournament, so they had rough pairings. The Women's Board Prizes can be found at this link. None of the US women really came close to winning a Board Prize, from what I can see.

And thus concludes the best event on the Chess calendar. I'll see what stories or game notes I can get out of Jim when he gets back to the club.

The latest Olympiad news on our man in Baku

Jim won his round eight game against the Djibouti team, and drew his round nine game against a player from San Marino. Tomorrow the Virgin Islands (which won against Djibouti and lost to San Marino) will face the team from Congo. Congo seems to have four players registered but only three onsite. If I'm understanding what I'm seeing, Congo has been posting that fourth, non-present player as their FIRST board, allowing the other three to play down. If that's the case tomorrow, Jim will get a win by forfeit, which I always find disappointing. But it will help the team.

So good luck in the last two rounds to the Virgin Islands and James McTigue!

Never surrender!

If You ever lose all hope,just remember this Knight on h8
You can die there,Or maybe Fight n become a hero! #FightOn pic.twitter.com/3yRnr3JJGd

— Rakesh Kulkarni (@itherocky) September 11, 2016

Jim wins again, and inspiration for a bitter ender.

Jim McTigue won again today. It was a very smooth victory. As an interested observer I was also much happier with his time management today. That's steadily been getting better, and I think he's now finally settled in. Unfortunately, the team lost 1.5-2.5 again, and again at one point they were poised to do a little better. C'est la vie.

Tomorrow the Virgin Island team is paired against Djibouti, and I expect them to win. Djibouti had problems with their travel arrangements (many of the African countries did), and wasn't able to play until Round Six. (Hopefully they didn't miss the Bermuda Party, too.) Djibouti only has three players on their team, so they will be starting down one point to start the match. Of their three players, only one is rated - the second board sports a 1502 FIDE. Hopefully "our" guys will crash through to a good match victory tomorrow.

...

In other news, Russia smashed Czechia (don't blame me, it's what they call themselves now for marketing purposes) 3.5 to 0.5, and the US team beat the now former tournament leader India by the same score, setting up a Russia-USA match tomorrow. (That match-up will also occur in the Women's Olympiad.) The US now has sole lead of the tournament in match points, but it didn't come as easy as the score would suggest.

Shankland was flat out dead busted, stone cold lost, buried, finished, had bought the farm, and "everything that goes with it", against S. P. Sethuraman, but he played on. To lift a Shankland quote from Chess.com's report (which I recommend be read in full), "I wanted to resign, but I didn't." Perseverance paid off, even though his opponent was rated 2640, and Shankland went on to win a game in which his evals were at least as bad as -9.5. (Shankland had White.) That game is embedded in Chess.com's report, and is yet another example of why I play on until there is no possibility of my opponent letting me back in the game, and no one I play is rated anywhere close to 2640 FIDE.

...

A couple of other bits. First, Nepomniachtchi is now on 7/7, and has a performance rating over 3300. (I though they couldn't calculate those for players on perfect scores, as that's what I remember people saying from Caruana's streak in St. Louis a couple years back.) He's a very bad man in Baku, and I wouldn't want to meet him anywhere - unless I was on his team, of course.

Second, you'll need to read the bit on Nigel Short. He had "fun" with the organizers again today when they tried to inspect him for cheating in the middle of the game, in time pressure. Just read about it at Chess.com. Unbelievable, and one can't help but wonder if he didn't get singled out for this because of his well-known and long-running stance against FIDE.

Olympiad pics

I've been looking through the official pictures from the Olympiad. I've found a couple of interest.

First, here's one of Jim in action versus Oman from Round 4.

The second one is a picture of a couple of members of the Estonian team.

That dude on the right is trying very hard to get his Phelps face on!

(Both of the pics from the Olympiad were taken by Maria Emelianova.)

Books.

I rearranged my chess book shelves today. I consolidated everything down to six shelves in two bookcases in the front room. I plan on clearing a seventh shelf to keep my main tournament kit. Clocks and most of my extra boards, pieces and bags are also on those shelves. (I've got four tournament sets, and two analysis sets. I've got nothing like Garry's collection, and my newest set was a gift from him.)

I've got 164 or 165 books (not counting duplicates), depending on whether or not I decide to keep my copy of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. Of those, 18 are opening manuals, including my 1932 edition (!!) of the MCO. I have eleven books on the endgame. Games collections of one type or another form the bulk of my collection.

These numbers do not, of course, include a couple of digital books, my databases, my magazines, or my notes.

For the record, my wife and I have over 2,000 books, not counting all of our daughter's books for children.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Jim wins! Jim wins! Jim wins!

Looks like a disappointing day for the team, though. It looked like they were going to win 3-1 at one point, but board three blundered a whole rook in a winning position, and boards two and four are getting ground down. 1-3 looks the likely result now.

But Jim Mctigue is on the scoreboard!

Here's the game. 

Update: The US Virgin Island team lost 1.5 to 2.5. The Liechtenstein Board Four took a draw to win the match. Not sure if he saw that he could play for a win or not. It was probably trickier sitting at the board to see the right moves than it was sitting at home with an analysis engine running! Still, "our" team is finally getting board points. Hopefully match points will follow!

At a guess ...

... here's someone who really hates the new bathroom rules!

Evelyn Romero Moncayo of Ecuador. She is due soon, Olympiad baby? :) @bakuchessol2016 @WOMChess #bakuchess pic.twitter.com/3zAMun114u

— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) September 8, 2016

Time for a little experiment.

How well can a 48 year-old man play online speed chess while blasting Deep Purple?

UPDATE: Probably not the best thing I could have done, but not awful! Up 13 points on the night. The problem stretch came with the Mark II line up. It left me flat until we got to the Machine Head era. (Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about!) Closed it out with Perfect Strangers, and now it's time to stop, because I think I've finally got that Cardigans song out of my head.

UPDATE 2: Only an idiot would analyze a game of speed chess, and I am that idiot! The last game of the night featured an interesting piece battle. Follow the link, if you dare!

Tricks with Knights & Rooks

In an earlier post, I had a messy position from the Eickelman-Slade game in the club championship. Working my way through it I came to a position wherein White has to win with a Rook, g- & h-pawns versus a Knight & h-pawn. It turned out that winning the position wasn't too hard, but it put me in mind of the famous Em. Lasker-Ed. Lasker game from the New York, 1924 tournament. Looking up that position in my trusty copy of Fundamental Chess Endings, I came across the following study.

J. Moravec, La Strategie, 1913

White to move and win

This will eventually resolve itself into a R vs N endgame. If the knight is close to the king, the defending side can often draw the game, as in the Lasker-Lasker game above. However, sometimes the knight can be separated from the king, even when they're close together at the start. To see some endgame magic, check below the fold for the solution.

Olympiad Update

The Olympiad has been tough for the Virgin Island team. They've mostly been heavily out-rated and it shows in the results, as they've been blanked in all four rounds in which they played. They received a bye today. (An odd number of teams means someone has to out each round, and that usually falls to the lowest scoring team that hasn't had a bye previously.) Tomorrow they will face Liechtenstein, and once again they will be out-rated on most boards. Jim will likely face Marcel Mannhart (2128 FIDE).

Jim HAS had some good games, though, despite the results. Paull Leggett has been posting the games to Facebook. As Paul wrote about Jim's fourth round game:

He equalized easily, and the game stayed even for a very long time. After a protracted defense (just playing through it is draining), it ends with a painful and undeserved loss, much in the way Karpov started losing to Kasparov. It is a very valuable study piece, even if the story has an unhappy ending.

Clock management issues (especially in Game Three, according to a note by Jim) seem to be the biggest problem at this point. Hopefully, during the next round it will got better!

Game Two link

Game Three link

Game Four link

It should be noted that Jim appears to be having a good time regardless. He posted a bunch of pictures he's taken around Baku on his Facebook feed. He may even be at the Bermuda Party as we speak!

What he said.

The depravity of morals in modern #Chess may be traced to those who essay the London System and other ignoble débûts.

— Howard Staunton (@HowardStaunton) September 5, 2016

There ain't no justice, Part "I Stopped Counting After the First Million Examples I Encountered"

There ain't no justice, and don't let anyone ever convince you that there is. Win games are often lost, lost games are often won.

But this isn't just an advice post, this is a practical post on how to win lost games, or even win dead even positions, using the mental attribute of perseverance and a little next level strategy. In the game presented below, I used both. To win the game, I had to unbalance the position by giving away material (not sacrificing, mind you, but by just losing material), obtaining an objectively lost position after ten moves. But I persevered and and applied next level strategy to win the game. Let me show you how it's done.

Tournament Players PROTIP #7: NFL Player Edition

Watching the UMass-UF football game tonight (a dreary affair if one is a Gator), I heard an inspirational story. The announcers were discussing Florida player Brian Cox, Jr., who is the son of Brian Cox, Sr. (What a coincidence!)

Senior was an NFL player of note back in the 1990s & early 2000s. He played linebacker, a particularly violent position. Mr. Cox had a unique motivational tool. Before games he would have someone leave a ransom note in his locker, written on the opposing team's stationary, stating that the other team was holding his children hostage.

"Well," I thought, "chess is a very violent game, mentally and emotionally. Is this something I can apply to my tournament practice?" I don't have an opportunity to test this out any time soon, so if any of our reader(s) gets a chance to put this into practice, drop us a note!

Round One Results

Unfortunately the US Virgin Island Team got blanked today. Tomorrow, Angola, which is another tough match-up. If Jim plays, he'll face one of two international masters on the Angolan team. (I'm not sure what the substitution pattern will be for Jim's team.)

I should note that the individual pairings are determined right before the round. So the US Virgin Islands (and both their opponents thus far) have five players, of whom four play. The exact line-up is determined shortly before the round starts.

ADDED: Paul added the game (with a few notes) to the Club's Facebook feed.

Editorial Note: I'm seeing some hand-wringing on Twitter concerning the event's use as propaganda by the Azeri dictatorship. (And the FIDE leadership, of course.) Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see similar hand-wringing when Qatar hosted several events late last year. It certainly seems like a case of selective outrage.

A violation of the rules.

-or-

 Don't eat the sushi in Baku!

Weird anti-cheating rule at @bakuchessol2016 - players must warn arbiter each time they intend to go to toilet and arbiter must note request

— Ian Rogers (@GMIanRogers) September 1, 2016

It has been dubbed a 'shit rule' by the players https://t.co/7trjXqEnYh

— Jon Ludvig Hammer (@gmjlh) September 2, 2016

It could happen to you.

#BakuChess #Bakuchessol2016 #PartyWithCaution #Beer #JustChessPlayerThings #ThingsNoOneBelievesUntilItHappensToThem pic.twitter.com/zJ7CILvw3h

— NakaFacts (@NakaFacts) September 2, 2016

PS Jim is slightly worse as White against IM Muhammed Lutfi Ali after 20 moves. The worrying part is that he's already used an hour on the clock, leaving him down by thirty minutes.

First round pairings are up!

The US Virgin Isles (ISV) are paired against Indonesia (INA) in Round 1. It looks like Jim (2205 FIDE) will have White against either GM Utut Adianto (2556) or IM Muhammed Lutfi Ali (2411). Adianto is a name familiar to us older players. Lutfi Ali is only 18 or 19, so I'm not familiar with him even by name.

2017 United States Amateur Team Championship South Hotel Reservation Information

[Bumped to the top. Originally published 2016 AUG 29, 12:34 AM.]

Ten days back, I mentioned that Jon Haskel had placed the winning bid for the 2017 USATS. I now have a bit more information to pass along.

The event will be held over the weekend of February 17-19, 2017, at the the Holiday Inn Orlando SW - Celebration Area, in Kissimmee, Florida. (Click the link for the hotel's website.)

If anyone would prefer to call into the hotel's Central Reservations department, call 800-465-4359.  Booking code is CHE.

As per Jon Haskel's original email announcing the event:

The special Hotel rate is $75 per night. The Hotel has waived its normal $15 resort fee, so guests will have free high speed internet, unlimited use of the fitness facility, outdoor pool with fresh towels, free parking, and free daily newspaper. A full breakfast buffet will be available for only $6 per person.

In an email I received a few hours ago with the additional information, Jon states that anyone who wants the $6 special breakfast buffet needs to email him (jon@bocachess.com), and that we should all feel free to spread the word.

So spread the word!

Can you feel that?

No, we're not down with the sickness. (Not all of us - I can't speak for everyone.) No, we're feeling the excitement of the Chess Olympiad in Baku! Clermont actually has two players (one current, one former) playing in the Olympiad this year: doughty club stalwart Jim McTigue*, and Ray Robson, who made his way through the club many years ago on his way up the ladder. (Clermont - where Champions are made! Several Olympic medalists from the recently concluded Summer Games train in Clermont, too.)

And it's not just us. I think there's more excitement for this event on my Twitter feed than any other since I got on Twitter several years ago. Not even world championships have had this much interest. It really is a unique event in the chess world, and I'm looking forward to it.

The opening ceremony is today. The games start tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern Time. One should be able to follow the games at the Baku Olympiad Official Website, ICC, Chess.com, Chess24.com, or any of the usual suspects.

So far many of the people that have gone have commented on the hospitality of the organizers, but a few glitches have been reported. Nigel Short has reported some problems with the accreditation process, and he also reported that Uganda and Kenya have had problems.

Two countries - Uganda & Kenya - left high and dry by promises of tickets from Presidential Board friends. #nosympathy #bakuchess

— Nigel Short (@nigelshortchess) September 1, 2016

We'll see. It'll probably be the usual large event, where some people have a great time and some have nothing but problems - and some create nothing but problems for themselves. (Note to the players and other people associated with the Baku Olympiad: Don't be Ryan Lochte**!) Hopefully the average will tend towards the former.

One other thing I'm wondering about: Will the French team adjust their board order so that MVL plays White in every game?

No word from Jim, and I don't expect to hear anything from him during the event. He'll be too busy having a good time, we hope! Good luck, Jim, and here's hoping for a great event!

* I'm probably reading too much @HowardStaunton at the moment.

** Who does NOT train in Clermont!

Wow.

From Rashit Ziatdinov's Facebook page: White to play and win. The first move is obvious. After that it gets hard! This one requires a little technique, as well. Unfortunately I don't know the origin of the study, but it's a beauty!