American Irina Krush will face former FIDE women's champion Zhu Chen of China in two rapid games tomorrow afternoon. The event takes place in the ABC Studios building in Times Square at 5pm. It's open to the public and there are free tickets. I'll be there relaying the moves to Playchess.com and doing some impromptu commentary and contests.
Warning, tortured analogies ahead. Usually wouldn't post such hackery, but this article on boxing comes on the heels of the "Nakamura vs Leko" item that spawned similar comparisons between one-on-one physical and mental combat.
What part of the word "unification" doesn't FIDE understand? In an statement released after the FIDE Presidential Council meeting in Georgia, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said FIDE would organize a unification tournament. No date was mentioned, other than a March 15 deadline to hear from the players. With FIDE, deadlines are always for other people.
My latest ChessBase Cafe column is mostly Q&A, and I thought I'd open up this forum as well for feature suggestions and comments. Not just about ChessBase stuff, anything you like. The good, the bad, what you'd like to see.
The United States Chess Federation a belated southward migration. It's been in a temporary (undisclosed?) location in Crossville, Tennesee for a week or two now. The US chess community is baffled, but the folks of Crossville seem happy, calling it a boon.
Good news on the Fischer front. Iceland has granted Fischer a special passport, which might allow him to leave detention in Japan. At the very least this should force the Japanese and American governments to show their cards. Do they really want him or not? Japan is starting to run out of excuses based on obscure protocol. Kudos to the Icelandic group for doing some real work.
In an effort of carefully camouflaged hackery, I've repackaged a Corus review that never ran and combined it with a Linares preview. These events tend to be so tight that picking a favorite is a bit silly. When one point separates the top three players, a bit of luck in one game means more than all the carefully considered factors.
It's Leko against Nakamura in a Fists of Fire event! Really. [Thanks to J Good.] Update: Nakamura won on a TKO in just 54 seconds!...
[Diagram] This is Vasquez-Ni Hua from Aeroflot. Black just played 41...Ra3. I annotated this endgame for the latest Black Belt and this position just has to be shared. Here White missed a chance for a brilliant swindle and went on to lose.
The awesome spectacle that is the Aeroflot Open is halfway over. There has been some trouble with the gamescores here and there, but there has been a splendid amount of fighting chess. If you are into rooting for Daily Dirt posters, Emil Sutovsky just took a share of first place with 4.5/5. Alex Yermolinsky on an even score.
I've received several items from people complaining about the USCF, especially troubles with ratings. The problems at the USCF could easily warrant their own blog, which is sort of what they have in the chess politics newsgroup. There you can catch up on the latest financial scandals as well as enough bombast, slander, and partisanship to make the US Congress look like a quilting circle.
Like zombies, vampires, and the career of Keanu Reeves, you just can't kill FIDE unification match rumors. FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is back on the spin machine with more promises. Having previously guaranteed a million dollars in money he didn't produce he's now upped the prize fund. Heck, why not triple it since there isn't any money anyway? From no sponsors and no money he's now saying there's more money and three sponsors.
Feeling romantic? Get any candy for Valentine's Day (R)? Sure it's a Hallmark holiday, but if it provides an excuse for some fine dining, I won't complain. Romance and chess aren't exactly used in the same sentence very often, but despite popular conception, they can show up in the same lifetime.
This is really Tim Krabbé's territory, but since it gives me an excuse to link to him, I'll put it up here. It's always possible that there was an error in the score, but this seems like a plausible version of what Krabbé calls "the ultimate blunder" (his examples), resigning in a winning position.
No, not a chess game. It could be a while before we see another one of those. My latest Mig on Chess column at ChessBase includes a board game that lets you play along on the road to the championship.
With some minor assistance from my sister and her husband, I became an uncle yesterday! (No, I'm not posting any pics. You're welcome.) Now to the most important question: When does the chess training program begin?
Stealing someone's comment for content, GM Yermolinsky posted this in the "Youth Is Served" thread.
"The absence of World Championship qualification system hurts the young talent the most. Only with the worthy goal in mind could Tal, Karpov and Kasparov become what they became.
Today's young stars allow themselves to be manipulated by the chess media into believing that garbage events like Leon is what chess is all about. Nothing good will come out of this. In 10 years we'll still be sitting there debating a Kramnik-Kasparov match."
The Mainichi Daily News has put up an index page for its stories on the Bobby Fischer affair. Their latest was based on recent radio interviews with Fischer and of course they highlighted his complaint that he couldn't get any alcohol in detention.
A few days ago I got the press release for the 18th Ciudad de Leon tournament that isn't until June. Event press chief GM Zenon Franco, a top-notch sort whom I hired to cover Spain for KasparovChess.com back in the day, is certainly on top of things. The players are Viswanathan Anand, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Alexei Shirov and Magnus Carlsen.
Watch out or you'll be crushed by all the clanking chess metaphors around this year's Super Bowl. American football is indeed a very cerebral game, if not for most of the players, many of whom can read.
The lighter side of blogging, a tradition that has caught on around the web. Yes, it's Friday Cat Blogging. This is Morrigan, Morri for short. One good eye. Black and white, of course....
Two of the scarier items from the recently released minutes of the FIDE General Assembly meeting held last October. Recommended only for insomniacs.
Eek. As for our recent topic of title proliferation, according to the fascinating 2003 Treasurer's Report, FIDE got $126,224 for title applications. Making titles harder to get would be a financial hardship. That being the case, perhaps the creation of a new title is more likely.
Several Vietnamese sources have recent stories on newly entitled 14-year-old GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. This one includes this terrifying and tragic line:
"At the age of only four, Truong Son became a professional chess player."
Makes you wonder what the lazy brat was doing during his first three years. The teen has been feted and now rewarded for his successes according to this story:
Even in today's software-centric chess world, players are obsessed with books. Publishers must have some reason for cranking out tome after mediocre tome, right? To do my part to separate the wheat from the chaff, this week I'm creating a chess product category here.
