It's been all Kasparov all the time here in New York over the past week. From fundraisers for the Kasparov Chess Foundation charity to teaching sessions for the US women's training squad to appearances and interviews about chess, Russia and...
May 2004 Archives
When the Kramnik-Leko world championship match was announced for Brissago, Switzerland, I hope I wasn't the only one whose first reaction was "Where?" I consider myself geographically informed for an American. I can name the leaders of Canada AND Mexico,...
FIDE has released the "final" list of players for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Tripoli, Libya starting on June 18. No Israelis are on the list. Smirin was the top reserve and had sent in his agreement so I...
Does that remind anyone else of an old Groucho Marx song? (MP3 here) And it's something like a Marx Brothers movie, too. "A Day at the Camel Races" maybe. GM Joel Lautier of the ACP took a break from promoting...
Over at ChessBase.com we've basically given up trying to keep up with all the plans to save the chess world and are forced to post them in packs of three or more. As well-meaning as Seirawan, Ponomariov, Levy, Kasparov, and...
A while back I wrote about a big Petrosian Memorial event to be held in June this year. (Not the controversially located one held in March in Stepanakert. Nor the one scheduled for Armenia in November.) Amazingly, nothing more has...
mack posted an interesting clip in the message boards. A 1972 book "Mathematics" has this amusingly antiquated photo of a chess-playing computer. This was just a passing puff-piece reference, if a revealing one. The earliest literature on chess machines is...
FIDE has hastily slapped together this site for the hastily slapped together women's world championship in Elista, the Kalmykian capital and hometown of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. There's a nice photo report that doesn't explain who anyone is and none...
The clever capitalists at the Wall Street Journal rarely give away any content for free, but the May 19 editorial by Garry Kasparov was made their feature article and can be viewed by lowly non-subscribers (likely Communists) here. Those eager...
We've successfully moved to a newer, bigger, and faster web server. No need to change your bookmarks/favorites, the numbers will disappear in a day or two and the link will continue to be www.chessninja.com/dailydirt....
As mentioned below, Kasparov just finished a lightning-quick trip to Italy to promote his Great Predecessors book series. He set his new record for books signed in one day, 570! "They were organized like the Ferrari racing team," was how...
A good reporter is always willing to make personal sacrifices to get the story. With this in mind I forced myself to hang out with Almira Skripchenko, Anna Hahn, and Irina Krush last Friday night. The occasion was the...
Continue reading Ears to the Ground.
This press release has been, well, released about the Helsinki Commission Hearing where Garry Kasparov will be giving testimony on human rights in Russia next Thursday. Note it calls him "World Chess Champion," which he seems content to use among...
Actually it's Aladdin, not the Mouse. This Disney press release talks about new chess software for kids. There is an "Aladdin-themed Adventure mode" and you can play against another person or the computer. No mention of online play. This might...
Garry Kasparov is on his way to Italy for a book signing event. His "My Great Predecessors" series is coming out in a remarkable number of languages. With the third book headed to the printers now and two more on...
If someone was going to break the omerta around FIDE's decision to hold the world championship in Libya, Boris Gulko was a logical candidate. (GM Sutovsky and the USCF have also spoken out.) The US GM and answer to...
Continue reading Libya, Oy.
Vishy Anand just won his third Chess Oscar for his near-total domination of the rapid chess circuit in 2003. He also won Corus Wijk aan Zee at the start of the the year. Peter Svidler also had an incredible year...
FIDE is trying to tap-dance around the recent denunciations by Libyan Olympic Committee President Mohammad Khaddafi that "We didn’t invite nor will we invite the Zionist enemy to the competition." In today's press release FIDE insists that the "LOC invitation...
I just had a long talk with Kasparov at his home in Moscow where he's doing prosaic things like playing Warcraft with his son and trying to get over a cold. We talked about the progress, or lack thereof, of...
The BBC reports here that Aslan Abashidze, leader of the Georgian region of Ajaria and thug-of-all-trades, has fled. This just days after the FIDE women's world championship was moved out of his capital for safety reasons. Nice of him to...
In stunning, if not surprising, news, Libya is denying they ever invited the Israelis to Tripoli for the FIDE WCh and insists they are not welcome. An alert reader sent in this link to an Israeli news page (in Hebrew)...
I've now added ALL of the old entries to the archives from the old DD pages. It now goes back to December 22, 2002 with 221 entries including this one. Many of the links to newspapers and such are no...
We mentioned this new book by Edmonds and Eidinow in the March 7 entry. Harper-Collins was kind enough to send a review copy so I could confirm most of my suspicions. The book tells the story of Fischer-Spassky 72, its...
I've spent a few days trying to get a straight answer about FIDE's latest excursion into the twilight zone, but so far without success. One of my favorite admonishments in the White Belt training newsletter is "DO THE MATH!" Many...
Thirteen players who qualified for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Libya have failed, according to FIDE, to sign and submit their player agreement contracts and so have been replaced by reserves. We knew Kramnik, Leko, and Ponomariov weren't showing...
