Meanwhile, at the REAL world championship...

Today Jonathan Tisdall tweeted:

Suggest marking Game 17 of Stockfish-Houdini superfinal today for when you have a few years to study a game. Kudos to our robot overlords.

— Jonathan Tisdall (@GMjtis) November 15, 2016

The game, from the TCEC Superfinal, which is essentially the world championship of chess programs, can be found in the archives at the TCEC site. It's completely insane. And there was some controversy, apparently, with the ending. Q vs BB is a win, but not within the fifty move rule. Or at least, I read that somewhere today. Take THAT with a grain of salt. But the game is nearly incomprehensible for long stretches. Maybe if I say down and looked at it more closely with a computer running it would make sense. But I'm not going to do that. For all effective purposes, the top programs running of good hardware are playing a different game than we do. You can watch the games of the Superfinal at this link.

The Gifts Keep on Coming....

The greatest thing about this era of chess is that so much information is given away freely. For example, a week ago IM Johan Salomon tweeted a link to some analysis he had done of a game from 1981 involving Jonathan Tisdall.

My analysis of @GMjtis-G. Lee A beautiful and instructive game! Click to open on phone or in browser! https://t.co/i7GIC5T8kq

— Johan Salomon (@JohanSalomon) January 12, 2016

Older players will remember him for his coverage of various Karpov-Kasparov matches for Chess Life, but he also has the distinction of having not one but two moves included in Tim Krabbé's list of The 110 Greatest Moves Ever Played. The move in question came in at Number 15 on the list. (It should be noted that Krabbé stopped updating his list in, I believe, 1998, so you won't find Kasparov's Rxd4 against Topalov, for example.)

Here's the position in question:

Tisdall - Lee, London 1981

White to move after 14...Qg6

Tisdall remembered this game being played at a weekend tournament. Here's a link to IM Salomon's analysis, displayed using the ViewChess website. And just in case you'd prefer the KnightVision layout I've been using here, I've included that below as well. All analysis is by Salomon, though I have added a text note at the start of the game and made one minor correction in the notes.