Problem Time: 3/31/2016 edition

First a mate in two.

Lev Sokolov 

Shakhmaty v SSSR, 1937 

I believe you should be able to move the pieces in the board above. (Correction: You can move the pieces, but only if you make the correct move.)

Next an endgame study. White to play and win.

E. Pogosiants, 1981

Unfortunately that's all the information I've got on the Pogosiants study. I came across both of these playing against ICC's ProblemBot, though I've seen the Pogosiants study on Chess.com as well.

Finally, an oddity.

Ten Kings, Ten Mates

White mates all ten kings in one move

Gustav Reichhelm, Bretanos Chess Monthly, 1882

Answer in the comments.

Chessmetrics

At the club last Thursday we started talking about historical ratings, and Chessmetrics came up. The site hasn't been updated since early 2005, but it's still there and still has a lot of interesting historical information. The proprietor is Jeff Sonas, who states the following on the front page:

Hello, I'm Jeff Sonas and I'd like to welcome you to my new and improved Chessmetrics site. This website is devoted to statistics about chess. Since the summer of 1999, I have spent countless hours analyzing chess statistics, inventing formulas and other analysis techniques, and calculating historical ratings. This website allows you to explore chess history "by the numbers" in an interactive way. You won't find any analysis of chess moves here, but you will find historical ratings and many other statistics that can't be found anywhere else in the world. In addition to estimating the chess-playing strength of individual players throughout chess history, I have also invented new ways to rate the strongest tournaments and matches of all time, as well as the best single-event individual performances. You can find lots of colorful graphs showing the rating progression of top players throughout time, and also age-aligned graphs, so you can see who were the most successful players at various ages.

It's a nice approach, though there were some criticisms of it. However, no system can be perfect, and his approach hasn't been surpassed as far as I know.

...

This also indirectly points out the difficulties in creating an alternative to FIDE. FIDE does a lot more than just organize a few tournaments and matches. They do lots of work on ratings, titles (including titles such as International Arbiter, which most of us never think about), rules, and who knows what else. If anyone really wants to create an alternative to FIDE, they're going to have to start doing this other work as well, which Kasparov's various entities never strived to do, to the best of my knowledge. We're stuck with FIDE until someone else is willing to at least attempt some of these other functions. And so far none of the FIDE wannabes have even tackled ratings, even though there have been at least three websites that I know of in which people have done their own work. So it CAN be done, but no one wants to do it.

Dumpster Diving: Part Troisième

This is from a somewhat entertaining (for me) game, but what I really like is the final position.

It's Sergey

Sergey Karjakin won the Moscow Candidates Tournament today, and will face Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship, allegedly in November, allegedly in NYC.

Today Karjakin faced co-leader Fabiano Caruana. Due to the tie-break rules, Caruana needed to either draw (with the black pieces) and hope that Anand won with the black pieces against Svidler, or he needed to beat Karjakin outright. Caruana played a Sicilian and tried hard to create something, but ultimately had to resign not long after the time control was reached. Karjakin played brilliantly in time pressure to secure the win.

So congratulations to Sergey Karjakin for his excellent result, and consolations for Fabiano Caruana, who faced a daunting task today thanks to the tie-break rules.These events should really be settled with a mini-match, but FIDE either can't or won't find the sponsors to do it. C'est la vie.

USATS Round 4

In the fourth round I again played up, against Miguel Ararat, 1869. This is currently my second favorite tournament game I've ever played. I thought it might have been my second best, but Stockfish has disabused me of that notion. Still, it was a fairly attractive game.

I spent a good twelve minutes or so on my first eight moves. Figuring out what I wanted to do against this ...d6 ...f5 setup took a little bit of time. Then my opponent, who had been moving quickly, slowed down considerably over the next few moves. I hadn't slept well the night before, so I was starting to nod off while waiting for my opponents moves. So I went out into the hall and did some jumping jacks to wake up! I also spent a good deal of time walking around during my Miguel's moves. I had forgotten just how much stress I put on myself during a tournament.

What's the best premium game service?

I've been thinking about joining one of the online premium game services, such as ICC or Chess24.com. But I only have the budget for one of them. Does anyone have an opinion on which one is best?

USATS Round 3

My round three game included a long grinding slog, followed by a brief tactical sequence that left me on top ... and culminated in ignominious defeat when I tried to exploit my advantage too quickly. There's not much to point out other than the point I went wrong.

Todd Durham, 1733

Bill Langford, 1650

Here I played 28...g5. I had just won White's h-pawn and I wanted to crack open the king-side before he had a chance to regroup for defensive operations. The problem is that I was the one that needed to regroup - winning the pawn had ruined the coordination of my rooks in particular. Furthermore, his pieces are ideally placed to attack if the position opens up. Dumbdumbdumb. Or as Connor likes to say, "Derp." My move isn't bad in and of itself, but it was the wrong plan, and once I realized things were going wrong I lost my resolve and did not find better defensive options.

I was very upset with myself after the game, and went for a short walk outside. It was a short walk as I wasn't dressed for it and didn't know the area. I could have walked five miles that night just to start calming down. C'est la vie.

The whole game below the fold.

Moscow Candidates 2016

Tomorrow and Monday the last two rounds of the Moscow Candidates Tournament will be played. Caruana and Karjakin are the co-leaders at the moment, with Anand a half-point back. Karjakin currently holds the tie-break edge, and he'll have White against Caruana in the last round.

Find your favorite site to view live games and tune in! (Mine is Chess24.com, but any of the big sites should provide good coverage.) Based on the last three rounds and the last few rounds in the 2013 Candidates Tournament, this should be fun!

USATS Round 2

Below is my second round game from the USATS. My first round game had been an utter disaster. I can't even say I played chess badly, as I just moved pieces around aimlessly and without thought. The only saving grace was that my opponent out-rated me by over 400 points, so the loss was easily the expected result.

But in round two I actually showed up and played with thought. Not always adequate thought, but thought nonetheless. I made two really bad moves in the game, and missed one good one, but otherwise I had a nice smooth win against a 1900+ player (who was only rated 1776 on the wall chart). My opponent had a good tournament result otherwise, including a win and a draw against a pair of 2100+ players.

Queen plus pawns versus Rook plus Bishop plus pawns, Part 2 [UPDATED]

Update is below the fold.

In the previous post I presented an endgame study. The solution is below the fold. First a digression on this type endgame. The original position was

It was White to play, though that's probably not critical for assessing the position. We thought this was probably a draw, as it looks like Black should be able to construct a fortress easily enough. But we decided to consult Garry's 2003 revised edition of Reuben Fine's Basic Chess Endings. The section "Queen vs. Rook and One Minor Piece" said the following:

Without Pawns the ending is a draw, though it is to be expected that there will be problem positions where one side or the other may win.

With Pawns, the Queen is equivalent to R+B+P. If the Pawns are even, the Queen will win (though not without difficulty); but R, B and two pawns are required to conquer the Q.

Where the pawns are even, the win is easier for the Q if they are not balanced. For then the superior side will be able to set up a passed Pawn and capture one of the opponent's pieces or tie him up so badly that some other part of the board will be defenseless.

He then follows it up with three examples, all of which have pawns on both sides of the board, or asymmetric pawns. Thus they were all useless for properly assessing our situation.

When I got home, I checked Muller & Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings, but that book was silent on the issue, as were Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual and Paul Keres's Practical Chess Endings. Fine states that this is a win, and in 2003 Benko agreed with him. No one else says anything about it. (If anyone can consult Averbakh's endgame encyclopedia, or something from Informant, let me know.) So how to go about winning a position like the one above? I have no idea if the R+B side plays correctly. Feel free to give it a try, and add any research in the comment section below. Alternately, present it at the club. But this one is a bear.

I will also look in my database for similar positions, but not tonight as it's already passing 2am. Maybe Paul or Connor will do it for me!

Now for the solution to the study I gave in the previous post.

Queen plus pawns versus Rook plus Bishop plus pawns, Part 1

Garry and I played a few games tonight and the ending with Queen & three pawns versus Rook, Bishop & two pawns came up in a game. The Queen & pawns won easily enough. So we started looking at the ending withjust two pawns for the side with the Queen. We arrived at this position:

White to play

I thought I had a winning plan with 1 Qg8+ Ka7 2 Qc8. Was I correct that this was a winning line? If not, can White's play be improved?

I will give the answers in the following post.

Just another chess widow?

Amruta Mokal, among other things a chess photographer, is working at the Moscow Candidates tournament. On Monday Anish Giri battled Fabiano Caruana for over seven hours. So what did Giri's wife, Sopiko Guramishvili aka Chess24.com's Ms. Tactics, do?

@Sopiko20 What to do when your husband plays for seven hours! :) #dedicatedwife #MoscowCandidates pic.twitter.com/EOjww7Yt7h

— Amruta Mokal (@amrutamokal) March 22, 2016

Annotations for Giri-Caruana

Not by me! No sir, that game gives me a headache.

The Frenchman with two names, who is also known by three letters, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, has been annotating a Game of the Day for Chess.com's coverage of the Moscow Candidates Tournament. Yesterday he rightly chose to annotate Giri-Caruana. Apparently it took him several hours, and he admits parts that it still isn't all clear. Anyway, those notes can be found in this article, about halfway down the page. (I recommend downloading the .pgn file and looking at it in the program of your choice.) If you're a Grunfeld player, or expect to play against the Grunfeld, you might want to take a look at this in the currently trendy 3. f3 line.

Clermont Chess Club Blog, winning you prizes since about an hour ago!

Simon Williams, the Ginger GM, has started a new venture on Twitch TV. It's a live show with Simon and Fiona Steil-Antoni in which they banter, play against each other, play as a team against other players (a bit called Hand & Brain: one is the brain and calls out which piece to move, the other has to move it), talk about chess, post problems, and generally goof off. I believe it is a new thing that just started this week.

Around five this afternoon I looked in on it and they had posted a problem. The first person to give the answer would win one of Simon's DVDs. I don't have an account with Twitch TV so I couldn't give the answer, but the problem was familiar:

Storosenko

Zaitsev

USSR, 1970

White to play and win. 

It looked very familiar, and the reason for that was simple: I had blogged this problem back when I started the blog! It was the fifth real post I put up here. 

So ... IF you have been reading the blog back then, AND had remembered that problem, AND watched GingerGM on Twitch TV today, AND had a Twitch TV account, AND had been the fastest typist, you might have won something for your trouble! 

I don't think I can possibly come up with a better reason than that to read this blog.

Update

I've updated the Karjakin "simple problem" solution with some added explanation of the problem. That part is in the section marked "ADDED". I've also made a couple of small corrections to the text.