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.