I may have missed this coming out during the last Kasparov hurricane to hit New York. Info on the players' teams. Anand: Peter Heine Nielsen, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Radoslaw Wojtaszek. Kramnik: Peter Leko, Sergei Rublevsky, Laurent Fressinet. An interesting cast, especially the choice of fellow top-tenner Leko. This continues Kramnik's habit of working with super-elite players as well as the usual young and creative hard-workers. Leko, an e4 player like Anand, drew a WCh match with Kramnik in 2004. And of course there is the off-stage cast as well. No doubt both players have contracted theoretical work from any number of GM contributors. [New interview with Kramnik just posted on ChessBase. He lists the same three players.]

This may seem like overkill for just 12 games, and that's no doubt true. Over 24 games you could expect a great deal of ebb and flow in the opening phase. With just six whites each there's not much time to experiment. You can either keep butting heads or switch to plan B, then C, trying to catch your opponent with your prep. Topalov and Kramnik battled frequently in the Slav in 2006, though not deeply. Only two of their 16 games (including the four rapid playoff games) matched beyond move 10. Unless Anand strays from his preferred 1.e4 we're guaranteed more variety than that in Bonn. Although we may regret it if it means a half-dozen Petroffs.

Both players are veterans and largely consistent with their repertoires. I'm not expecting any sensational surprises -- e.g. 1.e4 or the Sicilian from Kramnik or the KID or Grunfeld from Anand. I could see Vishy playing 1.d4 if he's not getting anywhere against the Petroff. And it's worth noting Kramnik's Berlin is still alive and well. With the two best-prepared players in the world going at it with big teams and months to prepare it's a shame we only get 12 games. They'll have leftover prep for a year after this.

The program Rybka has been the strongest in the world for years now, according both to the comp-comp rating lists and the opinion of just about any GM you ask. The latest confirmation of this came, sort of, at the computer world championship in Beijing, where chess was part of the Computer Games Championship. (Apparently Beijing is hosting the world championship of everything this year. This was surely the first comp tournament held at a golf club.)

I say sort of because, as usual, the programs playing in the event were running on wildly disparate hardware. According to this ChessBase report, Rybka was on an incredible 40-core machine. It's hard to talk about a program's superiority when it could be on a machine that is twice as fast as those of most of its competitors. But there are good arguments for playing these comp-comp events with the best hardware the operators can get their hands on. Some are more valid than others. The fundamental one is that not all programs can run on the same hardware. Others, like Hydra, are inseparable from their custom hardware. So you'll never have exact, or even approximate, platform equivalency anyway. Then you have the "best chess possible" argument, which says these events are about assembling the strongest possible chess creature and not about settling a practical argument about which program is stronger on a commercial platform.

Which of course is what interests most casual users and even the afritzionados who live and die with their thousands of comp vs comp games. Most people want to know what program is strongest on their home PC, which isn't going to be 40 cores any time soon. Any program is strong enough to easily brutalize any human not in the top 100 these days though, so quibbling about which program is 3050 and which is 3100 is a little comical. This makes inroads into style and positional understanding by programs the real focus today, which is what makes Rybka much more than just a high elo pretty face. It has a relatively slow search and is not the fastest tactical engine, but it more than compensates with superior knowledge. This has the potential to make it a much more effective teaching tool for amateurs, which was exactly the stated goal of Rybka's programmer, IM Vasik Rajlich.

Speaking of Hydra, what ever happened to it? Google puts a "this site may harm your computer" warning on the links to its official site in the UAE, oddly enough. I suppose its team sort of ran out of challenges, although it has lost to human-machine combo players in advanced chess events.

ChessBase, the Rybka guys, and other comp chess luminaries like David Levy have been casting around for some way to sustain interest in human-machine chess, which has been a meal ticket for 20 years. Now that the Rubicon has been crossed into computer dominance, the goal is to find a way to make these matches competitively interesting without distorting the game entirely and/or giving humiliating odds advantages to the humans. Ideas? Or is comp-machine a thing of the past?

Well, before I bust my hump coding a native MT poll (no, no handy plugins like WP-Polls for Wordpress, thanks so much) let's try out a few of these freebie systems. If we find one that doesn't suck, it will be worth shelling out a few bucks. Of course you can also create your own polls here in the message boards and probably get more discussion and participation than here. But I wanted to fiddle around a bit. I'll be updating the boards next, so watch out in there...

So, whaddya think? Big Vlad or the Tiger of Madras? Cold vodka or hot curry? Twelve games with rapid tiebreaks. How do you see it?

Go on, give it a try. (Clicking the "see stats" button after you vote will take you away to the community site that provides the poll tracking.)

No time right now, but wanted to put up some actual content after hacking templates all night. More changes to come before I bother to rebuild the entire site, so there are inconsistencies on the individual entry pages.

Peter Svidler is off to a torrid start on the second leg of his chess marathon. He has won his first three games at the Russian Championship superfinal and is looking good for collecting his fifth Russian title. In the second round he beat last year's champ and this year's top seed, Alexander Morozevich. Perhaps Svidler is taking his drop on the new rating list personally. Lastin is in second with 2.5 in this strong 11-round event. Grischuk apparently dropped out with an illness.

That's Latin for "where's Garry?" Veselin Topalov is back on top of the FIDE rating list. Vishy Anand has been #1 since April of last year, but his terrible showing at the Bilbao Grand Slam Final put the top spot up for grabs. A remarkable stat: five different players held the unofficial #1 position between the July and October lists. It was like the crazy scramble for the diamond at the start of the second Indiana Jones movie. Anand was the incumbent. Morozevich held the torch for all of one day during the Tal Memorial before losing to Ivanchuk. Then it was Carlsen's turn with a fast start (and equally quick fall by Anand) in Bilbao. Again it was Ivanchuk to play the spoiler, and this time he also took the #1 spot for himself. At least until losing the key game of the tournament to Topalov a few days later. That put the Bulgarian into first place in the tournament and the rating list and, at last, he would hang on to both.

Only 19 points separate the top six players on the list, from Topalov's 2791 then Morozevich 2787, Ivanchuk 2786, Carlsen 2786, Anand 2783, then Kramnik at 2772. Aronian, Radjabov, Leko, and the resurgent Jakovenko round out the top ten. Wang Yue is knocking on the door of becoming the first Chinese player in the top ten. Perhaps most indicative of the overall level of strength in the top 20, Svidler, Shirov, and Gelfand are 17, 18, and 20 on the October 2008 list while Ponomariov and Grischuk have dropped out of the top 20. Gata Kamsky is at #17 and is joined in the 2700 club by Hikaru Nakamura, who cracked that ceiling for the first time. Born in 1992, Brooklyn boy Fabiano Caruana -- now representing Italy -- is the youngest player on the top 100 list. There are three other players born in the 90's: Carlsen, Karjakin (#15), and Vachier-Lagrave of France (#24!), all born in 1990. Karpov is the oldest player in the list (1951), although he barely plays anymore.

Loek van Wely's staggering fall over the past year culminated in his disappearance from the top 100 this month. Incredible. It must the the first time since the inception of the rating list that there hasn't been a native-born Dutchman on the list. (Tiviakov and Sokolov are still there representing the NED.) van Wely shed 63 points this year, but there's no doubt he'll be back after he gets some rest.

But of course all eyes are on the crowd in the top ten. The chess world hasn't seen such parity since the Botvinnik era. Until Fischer's run to glory began in 1970 there were several decades in which any of a dozen players could win any given event and there were another half-dozen who could threaten on a good day. Murderer's Row: Botvinnik, Keres, Bronstein, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Tal, Geller, Larsen, Petrosian, Stein, Spassky, Fischer. Honorable mentions to Taimanov, Gligoric, Averbach, and then take your pick from another dozen strong second-tier players.

After Fischer disappeared, Karpov and Kasparov spoiled us into believing the world champion was always the dominant player. Now, and I consider this a blessing if the cycle stays solidly in place, when you win will become more important than how often you win. Turning in your best chess in the clutch, in the heat of the fight for the world championship, is what produces all the drama. You won a lot of tournaments and got the #1 rating but choked in the qualifier? Too bad. You don't have what it takes. Of course underdogs and upsets can also lead to blowouts, but that's okay. The rating list grew in importance during the decades of chaos after Kasparov and Short split the chess world in 1993. This has come at the expense of the importance of the world championship cycle and title.

For a year now, since the Mexico City world championship tournament, all but a die-hard minority have acknowledged the unified world championship title held by Anand. This month's Anand-Kramnik match will clear out even the match-only dead-enders. (Plus, Fischer's dead, so about the only desperate alternative claim still out there might be for Kasparov still having the highest rating! Won't he have to come back for a challenge match when Carlsen finally cracks 2851 in 2010?) Combined with the parity on the rating list, this is the moment the world championship should regain much of its lost luster. Yay. Now let's see if they can keep it going for an entire cycle. I've already heard doom and gloom around Global Chess and the Grand Prix. But if Anand-Kramnik goes over big, real corporate sponsorship for the cycle might be back on the menu.

[Thanks for your patience with all the changes. Still many tweaks to come, but the basic functions are in place and all data intact. You may have to refresh the page to see your newly posted comment, depending on your browser and settings. Working to fix that.]

Upgrading the system and the templates, should be done by Thursday Friday morning. Things may look funny but comments posted tonight should survive the changes. Should.

Meanwhile, open thread and a few pics from Kasparov's trip to NY and DC this week. First two from his simul at the Harlem Children's Zone and then behind the scenes at the Glenn Beck taping yesterday. (Where, for the first time, people incorrectly thinking I'm his bodyguard worked to my advantage. I need a t-shirt that says, "I'm a writer, shoot him first!") Last is from his signing at Borders, where a girl came in with her parents and her dad's 20-year-old Kasparov chess computer for him to sign. Vintage!

Arrange like a Grandmaster. Getting ready for board one against US girls' champion Medina Parrilla.

With Glenn Beck at the CNN studios in Manhattan. When asked about the US financial crisis and the proposed bailout, Garry replied, "you should make sure you've fixed the hole in the bucket before you put more water into it, especially 700 billion dollars worth of water." Garry's passport was at the consulate for visa renewal so when asked for photo ID at the security check at CNN he had to flash the copy of "How Life Imitates Chess" he'd brought to sign for Beck.

Ah the good old days of computer chess. 16K! Garry guessed that "Kasparov" model was from 1988 or so, certainly long before this fan was born.

Yes, that's pretty much today already. Sorry about the short notice. I believe Garry will be signing copies of the new paperback edition of "How Life Imitates Chess" at the Penn Station Barnes & Noble Borders bookstore on Friday, September 26 at 5pm. Main entrance on 7th Ave between 32nd and 33rd, right next to Madison Square Garden. He'll definitely be signing the new Modern Chess series book "Kasparov Vs Karpov 1975-1985" on his first two matches with Karpov (some call it the sixth or even seventh of the "My Great Predecessors" books, but it's actually the second of the new series) and other chess books you pick up there, I'm sure. Depending on line length the store might not allow you to bring up your ratty old copy of "The Test of Time" or your roll board for him to sign, but it's worth a shot so bring it along. (If you poke me and say you're a Dirt reader I'll help out in that regard.) I've never been to this B&N before [with good reason, because there isn't one. Again, it's at Borders, at 2 Penn Plaza.].

Oh, Garry's also going to appear at the Harlem Children's Zone Chess Festival on Sunday, September 28, representing The Kasparov Chess Foundation. He'll be giving a 20-board simul against local players. With all that PR, so much for my hope of having him put on a baggy sweatshirt and a dirty Mets cap to hustle blitz games for lunch money. It's at the Harlem Children's Zone Community Center, 35 East 125th Street.The festival runs from 10am - 5pm, but I'm not sure exactly when Garry's simul is scheduled start yet. I'll update with that info Friday if it exists. [Kasparov simul starts at 2pm.] There will also be a free five-round blitz tournament for children in three sections. Full press release here.

If you haven't already, it's time to bow to our new Chinese overlords. After they're done beating the Russians at chess I hope they'll come over and buy whatever is left of the United States. Yow, and not the one playing on board 3. Are they the Olympiad gold medal favorites for men and women? Or will old-time tradition and voodoo prevail?

Unfortunately too busy to cover it much, but we have that rarest of things, a GM invitational in the US, currently underway in Texas, of all places. The SPICE Cup includes several of the top US players -- Onischuk, Akobian, Becerra, Kaidanov, and Perelshteyn. After four rounds two of the foreign guests are leading, Mikhalevski of Israel and Kritz of Germany with 3/4. Last year Eugene Perelshteyn won a significantly weaker event. The site at Texas Tech doesn't seem to be doing any coverage, but Susan Polgar's blog has daily updates. (SPICE = Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) Nice zugzwang with four rooks on the board in Akobian's win over Perelshteyn.

Speaking of spicing things up, I noticed on Polgar's site (which isn't really a blog from what I can tell, but why quibble if it's useful) a reprint of a news item touting the web traffic at the EU Championship that was just won by Jan Werle in Liverpool.

"More than 7m people a day watched Liverpool over the internet during the 4th European Open Championships held in the city. The tournament at the city’s World Museum attracted record internet viewing figures, with 65m web visits for the whole tournament. Website hits smashed the old record of 5m a day, recording a 250% increase on last year. Professor David Robertson, principal organiser, said: “It’s difficult to imagine a better or more cost-effective way of reaching such a colossal worldwide audience."

Maybe it really was a big audience, but the idea that seven million unique individuals visited that site per day is preposterous. I only wish it were true! Chess webmasters everywhere would be having parties that would embarrass Jay-Z if we had numbers like that. It's hard to believe that in this day and age people still don't know (or assume others don't know) the difference between visitors, visits, and the worthless measure of hits.

To put how comical the seven million visitors claim is, the enormous official site of the Beijing Olympic Games received a TOTAL of 16.5 million over the first ten days of the Games. (4.2 million of those were from China.) In multiple languages. And those are good numbers, mind you. Wikipedia averages around 9m per day. You can count on two hands and maybe one foot the number of sites that receive more than a million visitors in a day on the entire internet. If the Liverpool tournament site got even 20,000 uniques per day it would be considered a success for a chess event of this stature. Of course visits from the same group of people is a different thing (though some use the term "visits" to refer to uniques, which is wrong), and not an irrelevant one. But the 65m visits number is just as insane as the uniques number.

No ill will toward the EU Championship event, its organizers and its web folks, who put on a good event and a good website as well. But yeesh.

Guess who is meeting with President Bush Tuesday in New York? I'm flying back from Seattle and so can't be there myself, alas. As Garry puts it, an honor to be in the company of such dissidents, but a tragedy that Russia has earned a place on such a list in such a short time. Just a year ago the White House was still hoping for business as usual with Putin and would barely even acknowledge The Other Russia for fear of offending the Kremlin. But the mess after the Georgia-Russia conflict changed that in a hurry. Garry has spent considerable op-ed column space over the years needling the Bush administration for not standing up to Putin's crackdowns on democracy (and for wasting time and resources in Iraq), so it's a little surprising he got the invite. (Which the Kremlin tried to scuttle by devious means.) I guess the Bush administration is happy to do anything to piss of the Kremlin these days, which this will no doubt achieve. The financial meltdown has pushed everything else off the front pages this week though, so I don't know what sort of boost we'll get in the traffic/donations/media request department.

In other non-chess news: I'm now completely deaf in my left ear if you don't count the obnoxiously loud tinnitus. Joy. -- My daughter will be 11 weeks old on Thursday and is still getting more adorable by the hour. Here she is showing off for Grandma, aka Mom.