"Tempus fugit..."

That was Nigel Short's twitter reaction to this tweet by Lars Grahn:

Thessaloniki Olympiad 1988. England Silver. Speelman, Nunn, Chandler, Mestel, Watson, and Short. Photo: Lars Grahn pic.twitter.com/NGdjuC2WRy

— Lars Grahn (@larsgrahn) August 17, 2016

He's not wrong!

Articles by Theo Slade

I recently asked Theo Slade if he'd like to write for our blog. But it turns out he has been a regular contributor to British Chess Magazine for a few years now! I knew about one article he had written, but didn't know about the others. So he's already writing a fair amount.

Fortunately for us, his articles are available even if you don't subscribe to British chess periodicals. In recent months he has allowed the Central Florida Chess Club to post his articles on their website. Here's the first one, Culture Shock, which many of is at the club have already seen. This covers some of the differences between English and Florida chess cultures. (Yes, it's really US chess culture, but each of the bigger states will have their own particular culture.)

One of the big points is that in the USA we use delay time controls instead of incremental time controls. This is something I wonder about myself. Increments were first proposed to a wider audience by Bobby Fischer. (Off the top of my head I can't remember if anyone else suggested the idea earlier.) As far as I know, we're the only major chess country who prefers delay to increments, and I just don't understand it. Increments have been popular online since the days of ICS, and that got its start at Carnegie-Mellon University. So why USCF tournaments prefer delay really baffles me.

Regardless, you can read Theo's article there, as well as play through the game he annotates. I recommend it, and I will link to the other articles in coming days, or readers can find them on the CFCC website. Enjoy!

Ben Franklin on Chess

A long time ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay on the morals of chess, creatively titled "The Morals of Chess". The link provides some context and commentary. One thing in particular I'd like to point out:

4. If your adversary is long in playing, you ought not to hurry him, or express any uneasiness at his delay. You should not sing, nor whistle, nor look at your watch, nor take up a book to read, nor make a tapping with your feet on the floor, or with your fingers on the table, nor do anything that may disturb his attention. For all these things displease. And they do not show your skill in playing, but your craftiness or your rudeness.

We are fortunate to live in a time when this piece of advice is largely irrelevant. I'm thinking Franklin would have been much pleased with the advent of chess clocks, though I have no idea what he'd think of speed chess.

Clermont's Olympians

Clermont has at lest three Olympians this year, two Americans and one Trinidadian.

Machel Cedenio is a sprinter from Trinidad and Tobago, who specializes in the 400M sprint. I just saw him qualify for the Semi-Finals in that event by winning his preliminary heat. (I'm watching on tape delay.) He trains in Clermont with Tori Bowie, an American woman who will be competing in the 200M sprint and perhaps other track & field events. I had no idea Clermont had any track & field Olympians who train in Clermont!

But I did know about the third. James McTigue, of our club, will be competing in the Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan in September. This will mark at least his second appearance as a member of the US Virgin Islands team. He previously competed in the 1990 Novi Sad Chess Olympiad in what was then Yugoslavia, and is now Serbia.

Best of luck to all three of you!

Weebles wobble, but can they play chess?

Yes they can! Via David Llada's & Nerd 360 Graus New's Facebook pages, I give you Wobble Chess.

Here's the video from the Facebook post.


And here's another short video with a little more about the design.


And just in case you're wondering, you can buy this set for a mere $249.95 from Amazon. It looks like it has two inch squares. Personally I like the design quite a bit, though I think the metal bottoms of the pieces would ding up the board. Should Garry or Paul buy a set, I'd love to give it a go!

23rd Space Coast Open Second Place Brilliancy Prize [Corrected]

[Notes have been corrected somewhat for spelling and grammar, and a few additional notes have been made. Plus, it's now published with the fancy ChessBase viewer.]

In the new edition of Florida CHESS, the FCA's quarterly magazine, the three 'brilliancy prize'* games from the 23rd Space Coast Open are reproduced. The first and third place games are provided with notes, but not the second place game. That seems wrong to me, so I've made an attempt at providing an analysis of the game. With all due apologies to Mr. Andretta and Mr. Dawley, here is my effort. 

(The game can be replayed either at the link above, or below the fold within the webpage. Does anyone have an opinion on which they prefer?)

* I agree with Paul Leggett that these would be more properly called 'best game' prizes. 'Brilliancy' is a lot to live up to!

You had one job.

So Agon/FIDE announced the site of the next World Championship Match, and naturally they released a bunch of promotional material. Chess.com has a nice write up. They also posted the following picture and caption.

Makes me all like

Krogius on Spassky's preparations for the 1972 match with Fischer

One of the blogs over on Chess.com has a lengthy collection of excerpts from Nikolai Krogius about Boris Spassky's preparations for the match with Fischer. Krogius was one of Spassky's coaches at the time, and was also later his biographer. The quotes actually come from the biography, if I understand correctly. In any event, if you haven't read them before, they might prove interesting. Here's the link.

Hat tip: Brian Karen, via Dennis Monokroussus of The Chess Mind

One particular bit I'd like to point out. From Krogius:

As was agreed beforehand, I brought the data about the reasons of Fischer's and Spassky's losses and about peculiarities of their playing in important games I studied in Saratov. Interestingly enough, several years later I read an interesting book by grandmaster E. Mednis, How to Beat Bobby Fischer, published in the United States in 1974. Fischer's lost games were analyzed in the book. When reading Mednis' work, I would often encounter evaluations and reasonings similar to my own. So, in essence, Mednis and I did the same work independently. Sadly, my work didn't attract Spassky's attention and is now gathering dust in archives.

It would be interesting to compare Krogius's work to that of Mednis - and then to re-evaluate all of it with appropriate programs!

Published!

Here! (See page 20.)

The best place to read the rest of the story is here.

We've all been there.

Caruana: "I’m getting bad positions in the Queen’s Gambit Declined, so how much worse can the Benoni be?!" #SinquefieldCup #c24live

— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 8, 2016

Publishing Oddities

Through the years I've seen some oddities in the publishing world in general, and in chess publishing in particular. The best general example I know is Frank Herbert's Dune, which was initially published by Chilton Company, best know for their auto repair manuals and trade magazines. Venturing into science fiction to publish the most famous novel of the genre was unexpected!

Recently I discovered that Garry Day has a hard back 1st edition of my all time favorite chess book, Robert E. Burger's The Chess of Bobby Fischer - also published by Chilton!

But reading the U. S. Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess, 6th edition, edited by Tim Just, I discovered something far more peculiar than an auto repair manual publisher putting out the most famous sci-fi novel and my favorite chess book. Page xxix mentions that Kenneth Harkness edited the Official Chess Rulebook for the USCF, published in 1972. This was presumably published McKay, per earlier references in the text. But this volume did not include the most recent revisions to FIDE & USCF rules. Thus the need for a pamphlet containing corrections. From the 6th edition:

These 1970-72 modifications to the FIDE laws plus USCF changes through early 1973 were distributed in a pamphlet edited by Martin Morrison, chair of the USCF Rules Committee, and published privately by Paul Masson Vineyards.

That's got to be the weirdest publisher for a volume I can recall seeing. Can anyone add any other examples?

This needs a poster

Topalov: "I have lost many games with stupid mistakes, so it's nice to receive sometimes" #SinquefieldCup

— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) August 5, 2016

Really, that ought to be on a poster hung in every chess club everywhere.

"Nothing good ever happens at 4 o'clock in the morning."

So sayeth the sports writers. Insomniac chess players know better.

A helpful bit of advice

Soon I'm going to take the plunge and apply for the Club Level Tournament Director title to start running quads and such at the club. To that end I'm starting to dig into USCF fora for tournament direction issues. I just saw some helpful advice for any tournament director. From one tmagchesspgh comes the following:

When I became a tournament director at age 18, the old gentlemen who showed me the ropes informed me that half of the job of a TD was public relations. You had to know your clientele and how to bring them back for future tournaments and maybe as members of the club. You never knew who might walk in to play. [emphasis added]

I will try to keep that in mind!

A pattern worth remembering

@HowardStaunton does it again, this time highlighting a position from the current British Championships. (Link to Chess24.com.)

Mr. Staunton writes:

White has played with great skill, but here he by no means makes the most of his advantage.

White took a draw here. Can you see what he missed? Answer below the fold, in white font.