Rethinking the One-Day Chess Tournament

[Note: I am bumping this post to the top of the page for a couple of days. New content will appear periodically below. Item originally published at 12:31 am EDT, 10/24/2015.  - Todd Durham]

Over the last year or two, I have been privileged to be involved in several interesting discussions with Wayne Strickland, a board member with the Central Florida Chess Club. The CFCC is the premier chess organizing entity in the Orlando area, and they do great work.

Click here to learn about the CFCC!

Our discussions have centered around ways to increase the player turnout at the CFCC Tornadoes, where attendance is generally poor, and consistent only in its inconsistency.  Even worse, some of the games lack competitive value- in the last one I played in, I (with my 1700 something rating) played John Ludwig at 2350+ for one game, a pair against a 1900 player and a 1400 player and one against a new player with a 499 rating.

Learning value of a game against John aside,  I went home with a 2.0 score, thinking I had wasted half the day.  To add insult to injury, I won the U1800 prize, and received a check for $37 in the mail days later.  I opened the envelop, looked at the check, and marveled at the absurdity of it all.

Wayne has had some great ideas, including drawings for free entries in the larger weekend tournaments, and also the implementation of a Club Grand Prix (an idea that exactly patterns what I proposed to the Florida Chess Association when I was on the board, but could not prevent it from being modified in a way that lost players.  Wayne succeeded in keeping the original proposal intact).

These ideas have had some flashes of success, but I believe there are three ideas that current organizers do not fully appreciate.  They are:

1)  For the vast majority of players, rating improvement is the number one motivator, and cash prizes are only a secondary consideration.

2)  Other things equal, a player would prefer to play a competitive game against an opponent of similar strength, where the outcome of the game is in doubt prior to the start of the game.

3)  A balance to the time control and the format, so that games are not too fast (my informal survey indicates that G/60 or slower is preferred), and a timely schedule that does not run well into the night. 

Of these goals, #3 is the most nebulous, so there will never be a consensus, but #'s 1 and 2 are, I believe, opinions shared by a great many players.

OK, that's enough whining.  What we need are some new ideas, and I would like to start with a pair of ideas that come straight from the US Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess, 6th Edition, edited by Tim Just (Random House is the publisher).

The first idea is about pairings, and I will quote the rule book, specifically Rule Variation 29L1, 1 vs 2 Pairings:

"This pairing system is exactly the same as the Swiss pairing system except that the players in the upper half do not play the players in the lower half in the first or any other round.  Instead in round 1 after the players have been ranked, each odd ranked player is paired with the even ranked player following them on the ordered ranking list : i.e., 1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, 5 vs 6, etc.

In all other rounds the players are ranked in the rating order within their respective score groups and paired in groups of two starting with the two top-rated players in the top score group.  Odd players should be paired to the player in the next lower score group who closest matches with them in rating, using normal color priorities.  Color allocation, transposition, avoiding players meeting twice, byes, late entries, and withdrawals are applied exactly the same way as in a Swiss event.

TD TIP: Because it handles withdrawals and late entries as easily as the Swiss system, this 1 vs. 2 pairing system is easier, for some directors, to administer than 29 L, Using round robin table in small Swiss, in events with the number of players almost equal to the number of rounds; however, the 1 vs. 2 pairing system can accommodate many players in any size tournament.  This system has seen some popularity at the club and local level.  It is a hybrid of the traditional club "ladder" system (where one player challenges another player for his spot on the ladder) and the Swiss system."

I believe that the above rule would go a great way towards meeting player expectation #2 above.  It combines the competitive nature of round robins (mostly quads for us) where players will play other players close to them in rating, but it adds the "rise and descent" effect of Swiss pairings, where players will move up or down based on tournament performance.  Essentially, we still get a bit of "Swiss movement", but without the radical "multi-hundred" rating point swings of the normal Swiss.

With pairings like this, my two games against a 2350+ and a <500-rated player would have been replaced with two nominally competitive games- and every other player would experience the same effect.

Of course, I hear you asking "But Paul, with this kind of pairing setup, how do we allocate prize money?  With consecutive pairings, anyone could rattle off a perfect score!" 

This leads to my second idea- allow me to refer you to Rule 33E. Prizes based on points 

"Some organizers base prizes on points scored rather than place.  Such events often award prizes to all plus scores, a popular feature for players who doubt their ability to win the top-place prizes.

For example, in a five-round Swiss with an entry fee of $30, it could be announced that 5 points will win $100, 4.5 points will win $50, 4 points will win $30, 3.5 points will win $20, and 3 points will win $10.  With a fee of $60, prizes might be 5 points will win $300, 4.5 points will win $150, 4 points will win $90, 3.5 points will win $60, 3 points will win $30. These levels provide relative safety for the organizer, since even with a poor turnout prizes will often be less than entry fees.

Prizes based on points have proven more popular with Experts and below than Masters, so organizers should consider not using them in top sections.  It is desirable to have such events in sections of no more than 200-point classes each or to offer supplementary prizes for lower classes unlikely to make plus scores.  A separate section for each class is ideal if the expected turnout is sufficient (blogger's note: I consider this paragraph to be inapplicable if rule 29L1 is used, since anyone could have a plus score with consecutive pairings, but I included it anyway because I did not want to edit the citation in any way in my presentation).

The based-on-points method has a unique advantage over prizes that are guaranteed based on entries.  The announced prizes are never reduced, but their total varies according to the turnout.  This protects the organizer against financial loss without the player disappointment sometimes caused by prize reductions."

With this kind of prize distribution,  each player controls his own destiny.

So where does this leave us?  If we applied the two ideas, this is what we get:

1)  Each player will play an opponent close to his or her playing strength every round, gradually working up or down the rating list based on performance, with no wild pairing swings or "wasted rounds".

2)  Each player will be rewarded based on his or her performance in the tournament beyond a certain score, so any prize money they win will be earned, without waiting to see if a blunder or pre-arranged draw in another game takes them out of the running. (Side note: TD's could also pay out $$ this way much easier, simplifying the last round process for them!)

Will these ideas work?  Are they worth trying?  Please comment below, and let the discussion begin!

Chess Personality Test?

Chess.com has put up one of those (usually moronic) online 'tests' so that one can determine one's 'chess personality'.

Not a proper problem

The situation below is simple enough: White to play and win. White has nine possible moves, several of which win. The rest do not.Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the winning plan.

White to play: Find the winning plan

8/pp1k2b1/8/3PPK2/6P1/PP6/8/8 w - - 0 1

This isn't a proper problem, but it is a good exercise. I reached this position playing out a position from my game against Jim from last Saturday. My opponent, as usual these days, was Stockfish.

Now for a subtle, confounding hint: It appears that if Black's bishop were on h8 instead of g7, then the game is probably a draw. I'm still trying to work that out, as well as the whys and wherefores. I plan to post the answer next week sometime. Hopefully I'll understand the position a bit better then, else wise it'll be more of a variation dump. Also, I hope I'll be done with this game by then!

Dennis Monokroussos reviews Informant's "Paramount" database so we don't have to!

Here's the link.

From his review:

The price is $199; a fair chunk of change, but very reasonable for what you're getting. (Think of how many books you'd need to buy to get your paws on 114,000 [annotated games & fragments].) To my mind it's a very good deal for serious players, fans of chess history and for correspondence players, so if you're in those categories you have my recommendation.

Read the whole thing to see how he arrives at his recommendation.

Monokroussos writes excellent product reviews, so if you're looking for stuff to buy his blog provides an excellent guide for quality material.

A promotional link to the product can be found here.

Fighting to the bitter end pays off!

Part Whatever-it-is in my Bitter Ender Chronicles

The second Millionaire Chess event took place in Las Vegas recently. Chess.com was there and held a Best Game Contest, the winner of which would be awarded free entry into next year's edition of the tournament: a prize worth a cool $1,000! Players submitted their games and eventually a winner was chosen. The winning game came from the Under 2000 section.

Now the game can't really be considered "best" in terms of accuracy. Here's how judge IM Daniel Rensch described it:

Full of errors? Yes! Both sides played terribly to allow the other the huge advantage that each maintained at one point in the game? Of course! But isn't that what beauty is all about? :P OK, maybe not! But the fact that I went through this game at first thinking "well, this isn't so special...White blundered with 7.Nd2 and Black found an obvious, typical idea" only to realize that White fought like an angry pit bull for 40+ moves to work his/her way BACK into the game and eventually win! Wow! That's awesome. And a sexy finish to go with it! :D

Dogged determination won this game! 

Moves 7-9 were a comedy of errors for White, dumping him in a dead lost position. But having a dead won position before move ten apparently left Black feeling a bit too relaxed, and at move 20 he starts giving the advantage away, a little at a time, until he blunders into an "even" position around move 27. Further inaccuracies are exchanged until Black commits the biggest blunder of the game on move 33. Death follows. Note that all these errors were committed by players rated 1943 and 1839!

Always fight to the bitter end!

Training Exercise

A couple of posts back I went over part of a game Jim McTigue and I played at the club last Saturday. Analysis from both carbon- and silicon-based life forms went into that post. Along the way we determined that Black should have emerged with a much better position in several lines.

But those advantages are only theoretical unless a player can convert them into wins. So as a training exercise I have been trying something I've been meaning to do for years: play the position out against a strong program.

I had had the idea many years ago while reading books & magazines. Invariably some GM would reel off a long string of analysis and end it with "White is winning" and leave it at that. Many times it was clear enough. But many times it wasn't at all clear, especially not to a mere B-class player such as myself. Later, after playing programs became strong enough, I thought, "If that's a winning position, I should be able to beat Crafty/Fritz/[flavor-of-the-month] most of the time from that point." Now that's a tall order, because even back then Crafty itself was much, much stronger than I. It would certainly punish all my tactical mistakes at the very least.

But that's the whole point of training, isn't it? I've started doing this off and on in recent months, but now I'm going to try an make this a regular feature of my work.

Anyhow, below is a position from the analysis of the game from Saturday. (I believe there's probably at least two other such positions one could use for training from that analysis.) Stockfish 6.64 evaluates this as a -2.71, meaning Black is winning.

White to play, Black to win

5k2/1p1n2p1/p3p3/3pP3/8/3B4/PP3rPP/R2K4 w - - 0 9

So far I'm not doing well. I keep giving up easy draws, except for the one time I conspired to lose! (That can be done by leaving White with both his g- and h-pawns, and then moving the Black king too far into White's queen-side position.)

Give it a try. I'm probably going to try playing the White side when I have the time, to see how the machine handles this winning position. But I'm only going to do that after a couple more tries as Black tonight, after everyone else goes to bed. I'm not finished yet!

IM Emory Andrew Tate (1958-2015)

Yesterday I read the sad news that Emory Tate had died on Saturday while playing in a tournament in the San Jose area of California. FM Mike Klein wrote a nice obit for Chess.com that you can read here.

Tate was a chess lifer, and seems to have spent most of the last 30 years or so drifting from tournament to tournament. Prior to that he had won the US Armed Forces Championship five times, I believe. His devotion to the game, and to attacking chess in particular, coupled with his outsize personality made him something of a legend.

Back in the late 1990s I'd see people write "TATE!" on a chess message board or other online fora, and I had no idea what they were talking about, though it always seemed to get a rise out of everyone else. And then I actually got to play against him in a small tournament in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore. The Fells Point Chess Club had (and has) regular tournaments every Saturday down on Aliceanna Street, and that particular day (then FM) Emory Tate showed up, presumably to pick up a little extra cash. (He duly won that cash.)

In our game, played in the first round, Tate played the opening in his usual aggressive style and ... I came out of the opening with a solid plus! Tate started going a little more wrong, and then the drumming started. No, not my heart at the thought of successfully competing with someone almost 700 points stronger than me, but actual drums. Fells Point is kind of a party district in Baltimore, and a drum festival kicked off a few doors down that morning. I lost my composure and blundered a piece a couple of moves later. I resigned immediately. After the game Tate went over it with me. He didn't think much of the advantage I had created (I thought less of it than the mechanical beasties do), but his reply to my blunder was to practically shout, "That's just garbage!" He wasn't rubbing it in, or trying to make me feel bad, he was just that offended that this move had appeared on the board!

After that, I understood the cries of "TATE!" I've got another story about Tate from that day, but I'll keep that one for another time. Requiescat in pace, Emory Tate, and condolences to your family and loved ones.

Here's our game, with my very brief original notes. (A note to the notes: I actually played well up until my last move, though I didn't think so at the time.)

One more note: the date I have recorded for the game won't match the date in USCF. My date is correct.

Games from the Clubhouse: Frustration Edition (Updated)

Today Jim McTigue and I got into another French Defense. It was a Classical line, I believe, and at some point Jim got in Nd6, but a bit prematurely. Things were going my way when we reached the starting position below. I goofed up, as I'll explain, and then lost my cool and missed a clear win.

Afterwards we got into a prolonged analysis session with Connor and Norm, and perhaps Paul briefly. Ideas were kicked around, holes were found in this idea and that idea, but I was convinced that after ...Rf2 I had a stone cold won position. Then El Supremo plugged the position into his cellphone, and Stockfish began busting one idea after another.* Now came the claim that WHITE was winning.* GRRR.

Anyway, I've run it at home now, and it looks like claims of White's advantage are overblown - Black had an advantage through most of the critical parts, though not always a huge advantage. Still, quite frustrating. I'm putting the analysis in the window below. One thing I didn't add: if White plays 4 Qb4 to cover the d2 square, then Black gets in the cute shot 4...Rcxc2!!

If someone with a faster computer & better analysis comes up with anything, post it in the comments below and I'll add it to the body of the post if it changes anything. Man, what a miss!

* These sentences have been edited.

UPDATE: Paul Leggett has commented; he writes:

I think the challenge with this position is that one is tempted to evaluated statically, based on structure and types of pieces, when the reality is that it is about tactics and development. Statics can be assessed quickly, whereas dynamics often take time to full appreciate.

The idea of ...Rxc2 in response to white's Rf1 move is simple if one looks at what the Bd3 was doing, but we have to train ourselves to think that way (I don't do it naturally, but I am working on it). IM Martin Weteschnik has a method he calls "Status Examination" where recommends looking at what each piece is doing individually. In this case, after Rf1 the Bd3 is overloaded- it is protecting the Rf1 and c2 pawn at the same time. At that point the tactic becomes easy.

That said, I doubt I would have noticed it, either.

I am starting to see a pattern of overloaded defenders in my tournament games and at the club, and I think it may be a neglected tactical motif. We all tend to focus on forks, pins, skewers, etc, but the essence of all tactics is the double attack, and an overloaded defender is highly susceptible to it.

I decided to run the game through the Fritz "full analysis" mode, using Komodo 8 and allocating 5 minutes per move. All of the comments are from Fritz/Komodo, including the comments in English- I added nothing.

It seems that black was clearly better, and that white's only salvation was in the repetition available after black left an escape hatch for white. Here is the link to the game.

The extent of my evaluation was that I was threatening mate in one and was certain I could find a way out of the checks! What I missed, ultimately, was the Qb4+ idea. Pure blindness on my part, and another manifestation of my biggest weakness as a player: I keep overlooking ideas for my opponent. (For the record, Komodo largely confirms prior analysis, so that should be the bottom of this particular position. The resulting endgames, though....)

The First Rule of Chess Club is: Do NOT f***, a-HEM, mess with Chess Club!

A 75-year-old man saved children from knife attack during chess club 

The 75 year-old was unarmed. 

 Any questions?

The Bitter End

We've got some players at the club who are either fairly new to the game, or returning to the game after a long absence. That's why I'm obsessed at the moment with the idea of playing hard until the end of every game, whether winning or losing. It's like football: play hard until the end of every play, every game, and good things will eventually happen. Not all the time, of course, but often enough.

Here's an example* from this week of a player losing a won game because of carelessness at the end.

Dominguez Perez, Leinier (2732) - Perunovic, Milos (2622)

2015 World Blitz Championship, Berlin

Position after 64 Qe3+

Black has had a won game for some time (accepting a couple of errors), but has been struggling to escape from the checks of the white queen. 64 ... Qe4 should pretty much decide things, as White is facing mate of Black gets in ... Qh1 and the black king should get in front of the c-pawn now. (I played it out against Stockfish and had no trouble. That's an easy win!)

Instead, Black played 64 ... Kd5?? and lost immediately to 65 Qe5#. Oops.

Okay, but this is only a blitz game, you say. Doesn't matter. Here's a game from 61 years earlier played at a much more sedate time control.

Batuev, Andrey - Simagin, Vladimir

Soviet Team Championships, Riga, 1954

Position after 84 Qg7

Grandmaster Vladimir Simagin has been winning for dozens of moves at this point, and has carefully advanced his pawn up the board. He now has several moves that make progress, such as ... Kd2, ... Kf2, ... Qf4, ... Qb4, and probably lots of moves that hold the bulk of his advantage in reserve. Instead, he played 84 ... e2?? and got chased into the graveyard after 85 Qg1+ Kd2 86 Qc1+ Kd3 87 Qc3#. Oops. And this with a slow time control. (Probably 40 moves in 2.5 hours, followed by an adjournment and 16 moves an hour thereafter.)

This is why I play games out to the bitter end, and don't get upset when opponents do the same. Respect the bitter enders: working hard at the board got them a whole extra point in both the examples above!

* Both examples pointed out by commenter Andrey over at The Chess Mind.

Full games below the fold.

Getting in shape

Or at least thinking about it. I'm being coaxed back into tournament chess after a six and a half year (and counting) absence. Not sure if I'll jump back into the deep end soon or not, but anticipating that I might I've decided I should perhaps work on my game a little. ('A little' is about all I ever really work on my game.) This means it's time to start working on my tactics, so out come the puzzle books! Additionally, I've been looking through copies of recent Chess Life magazines and studying the problems therein.

The early results have not been encouraging: even when I'm getting the correct answers I'm often missing something in the solution.  Nuance matters! (See my earlier post, for example, though in that one I did find the nuance. Well, I found the problem with the solution - my favorite silicon monster found the solution. Still, half-credit is better than none!)

So it's been a slog. The work, if I stick with it, will pay off, but what discouraging early returns! One of the problems that made me shake my head in annoyance was this one, from GM Andy Soltis's Chess to Enjoy column in the February 2015 Chess Life.

IM Basheer Al Qudaimi (2396) - GM Bassem Amin (2635)

2014 World Rapid Championship, Dubai

27 ... ?

Black to play and win

I looked at this one off and on for a couple of days, before finally glancing at it and realizing the obvious winning idea. I felt like a chump not seeing it right away.

Worse still, while writing this post I discovered that my solution was wrong! AAUGH! The only solace I can take is that GM Amin actually goofed up the combination himself at the end, although he won anyway. (If I think of it later I'll try to look up old coverage to see if his opponent lost on time or simply didn't see that he had an out.) Ah well, it's a process, right?

(Solution below the fold. Don't worry, it's short this time!)

World Rapid & World Blitz Championship Coverage

I commend this article from GM Ian Rogers, writing for the USCF, covering the awful experience for the fans on-site in Berlin. (The online experience had a couple of glitches, but was mostly excellent. Chess24.com knows their stuff, and GM Jan Gustafsson is fantastic with his live commentary.)

Also, check out this video of Magnus Carlsen loosing his cool. We've all been there! The video, and much more, can be found in Peter Doggers' report for Chess.com.

The Joy of Cooking!

I've been looking at the problems from GM Andy Soltis's Chess to Enjoy column recently. (More on that in another post.) This morning I kinda sorta cooked one of the solutions. The problem was taken from the game Alexander Sellman - Preston Ware, Fifth American Chess Congress, 1880, and appeared in the April 2015 Chess Life. Here's the position:

Sellman - Ware, 1880

30 ... ?

Black to play and win

(Solution below the fold for those that want to work it out themselves.)

How to play old man positional chess in 2015

During his game with Sergey Karjakin at the World Blitz Championships today, Vladimir Kramnik showed how to play old man positional chess in 2015. It really is the best way to beat these callow youths. Enjoy!

From the Archives: Tal - Tolush, 1956 USSR Championship

This is a very long post. I've set it to publish in a few hours when several players will be involved in this weekend's tourney. I don't want them getting distracted by any of this before their rounds! - TD

In ancient times (i.e., pre-2000), an average chess player had the hope of going one-on-one with the best in the world and winning. Not at the board, but in the pages of a book or magazine. A game would be published, often with analysis appended, and any player could look for holes in the game or, especially, in the analysis. Finding holes in analysis, or cooks in problems, was a great joy.

These days that joy is largely gone. One still sees letters to the editor in magazines pointing out occasional mistakes, but the advent of extremely powerful computer engines has largely killed the fun, especially in quality books.

But I remember some of the old joys, having found a couple of problems here and there myself. Tonight I'll share one of them. It concerns the game Tal-Tolush from the 1956 Soviet Championship,  and the story features Tal himself, the Hungarian chess writer Jozsef Hajtun, me (naturally), Garry Kasparov, and the programs Fritz 7 and Stockfish 6.64.