Sonja's Chess Journey

World Chess Championship Match!

2006-09-23T18:11:13Z

A sport divided

When chess über-grandmaster Garry Kasparov decided to separate from the World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Échecs or FIDE, pronounced "feeday") in 1993 in a protest because he wanted players to have more of a say in FIDE's activities, what resulted was a great schism in the chess world. Imagine if the top team(s) of NHL or FIFA decided to split off and play in a separate league or association.

So for 13 years, we've always had 2 separate world champions. As it currently stands, Bulgarian Veselin Topalov has been the FIDE World Chess Champion since 2005, and Russian Vladimir Kramnik is the "Classical" World Chess Champion by virtue of defeating previous champion Garry Kasparov in a title match in 2000 and then defended his title in 2004.

Kasparov himself retired from competitive chess last year after winning the prestigious Linares tournament for the 9th time. He cited as the reason a lack of personal goals in the chess world and expressed frustration at the failure to reunify the world championship.

Reunification match

This is a huge event in the chess world! Game one is today.

For the first time since the 1993 split, this FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 will bring the two titleholders together in a match to unify the World Chess Championship and determine the undisputed World Chess Champion.

The two juggernauts Topalov and Kramnik will play 12 games between Septemeber 23 and October 10 in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia, alternating between black and white. A win counts as 1 point, a loss as 0, and a draw as ½. If after the 12 games it's a tie, then they will play an additional game, somewhat like overtime in other sports.

I should add that a lot of the great reunification work was done by Syrian-born American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, for which I gratefully applaud him. By the way, he writes excellent chess books for beginners and intermediate players.

Topalov: creative and goes for the kill

Veselin Topalov is a 31-year-old Bulgarian. He currently has an Elo rating of 2813, the highest in the world right now.

(In chess, an Elo rating is a number that measures a player's overall level and strength, calculated from the stats of games won and lost, and taking into account the relative Elo ratings of those opponents. To give you an idea, a really good casual non-tournament player might be 1000, an average regular tournament player might be 1600, and best player in Canada Kevin Spraggett is 2577. Kasparov at his peak was 2851, the highest rating ever recorded. Yours truly is about 1200 or 1300.)

Topalov is a highly creative player who likes to execute complex combinations. Topalov's games are usually rich in well-prepared novelties (new uncharted moves in the opening to throw off the opponent, who may have not studied or prepared for them). Like Babby Fischer, he always fights for a win, even when a draw might suffice. Kasparov has described him as having "energy and confidence on his side".

Kramnik: the computer brain in a painful shell

Vladimir Kramnik, on the other hand, is a 31-year-old Russian, currently ranked 4th in the world in FIDE's latest Elo rating list. He suffers from a rare form of arthritis, called ankylosing spondylitis (a condition that over time causes fusion of the spine or bamboo spine), which causes him great physical discomfort while playing.

If both Topalov and Kramnik were to play against a computer, Kramnik would probably win more often, because as Kasparov describes, he has "a more profound undertanding of chess".

Who will win?

Despite Topalov's higher Elo rating, Kasparov himself commented that Topalov isn't the favorite many assume him to be and that he expects a quite even match. In chess, both sheer intellect and brainpower (Kramnik's specialty) on one side and psychology, energy and confidence (Topalov's specialty) on the other side are crucial parts of the sport.

Personally I'll cheer for the Bulgarian, since I'm a bit of a Balkanophile, and I find Topalov's psychological type of play very exciting. (There was once a great Jewish Latvian chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal who excelled at this. Like Dracula, he could outstare an opponent and completely crush them with his willpower. He was nicknamed "the Magician from Riga", and many critized his style as "nothing more than tricks". But hey, it's an unignorable human factor of the sport, and unless you're playing against a machine, these things matter!)

Like David Letterman said, It's a real pity that chess isn't televised the way the Olympics or FIFA or other sports are, because this really a huge event. Live broadcast and coverage of the games will be on ChessBase and FIDE websites.

Click here to leave a commment on the cosspost of this in my main blog, as I have disabled commenting on this entry.

Funny comics!

2005-03-26T01:54:25Z

A few comic strips with a chess theme:
http://www.edcollins.com/chess/chess-comics.htm

Fischer leaves for Iceland

2005-03-24T06:13:09Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4374811.stm

Mipu victory

2005-03-23T18:39:25Z

I won the Battle of the Mipu against my friend paranerd (Paul). Since it was our own tournament, we named the match "Mipu" because it's a silly, cute and meaningless word I made up a few years ago.

Missed tournament

2005-03-19T09:07:25Z

I wanted to attend a chess tournament in Bathurst today, but it turns out the two and a half hour train ride is about $87 CAD. This is about double what I expected, so it's gonna be a no.

I'm moving to Toronto this summer, so maybe there will be more opportunities to be active there.

Kasparov retires!

2005-03-11T01:04:31Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4338719.stm

Difficulty "jumping" into a position that's not mine

2005-03-09T17:31:13Z

Something that I find difficult when studying chess books is I have a lot of difficulty "jumping" into a position that's not mine. By that I mean that if I arrive to a complex middlegame position myself through my own thought processes and move by move, then I'm fully into it and understand what is going on.

However, if you just give me a sudden position from a diagram or on a chess board, I have a lot more difficulty "getting into" it, getting interested in it, understanding or analyzing it. I guess I have to start from scratch, assess what pieces are missing, what is going on, etc. etc. and this feels unnatural. I didn't arrive to this position organically, and it's not mine.

I guess it feels like entering a novel in the middle, as opposed to reading my way there myself. I would need a significant update to understand what is going on. Instead of the gradual layered and flowing updates that occured since the beginning in which I noticed each change as it happened, I have to learn the skill of calculating my own assessment of the cold position.

Is this a common feeling? Any tips?

New book, and made the list!

2005-03-03T05:12:19Z

My girlfriend celine_ got me the book The Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Scottish grandmaster Jonathan Rowson. I instantly loved it! It's about the philosophy, psychology and spiritual aspects of chess, even with quotes and references to from favourites of mine like Laozi, Taoism, Samuel Beckett, etc. I suspect there will be many insights for me in reading this book.

And in other news, I'm currently the 47th best female player in my country:

Strongest chess program

2005-03-01T14:47:41Z

I now own Shredder 9 UCI, the strongest computer chess program. Feel the power!!!

Why more blitz online?

2005-02-22T07:04:12Z

Something I don't understand about the online chess playing world is the huge focus on blitz and bullet speed games. I enjoy playing games with each side having 25 to 75 minutes, yet 95% of online games seem to be set at blitz speeds. I wonder why? I mean most face-to-face tournaments are not at such time controls. Is it something about the Internet that makes people want to play faster games?

Funny list

2005-02-17T11:30:43Z

100 and 64 things you must do in chess before its too late!

Video of Jen Shahade!

2005-02-14T16:49:45Z

A cool news story about Jennifer Shahade, who won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship in 2004.

Resist temptation to perfection

2005-02-14T15:57:16Z

Whenever I play chess and my computer is around, I must always resist the temptation to simply open Shredder (currently strongest chess program available) to ask its analysis of the "best move" for the specific board position. This is a psychological aspect of chess, the concept of perfectionism, I can't wrap my head around. It's in the same realm of memorizing opening lines, looking for some sort of perfect "best" path. Yet in reality, everybody makes mistakes, even chess computers (who may be near flawless in tactics but can be weak in other strategic aspects).

Yet receiving answers from strong computer programs or memorizing openings is not chess. Maybe it's comparable to the calculator syndrome, how most kids these days need a calculator to figure out 47 + 29. Overuse or abuse of tools leads to internal self-weakening. Maybe what I'm asking is how does one use chess computers to teach our own minds instead of replacing them to find out the theoretically strongest move? The more I think about it, the less I am able to play chess on my own and the more I doubt my own moves and chess plans within a game, even if they are strong. It's a trap.

Maybe I should spend more time following the Josh Waitzkin's Academy feature of Chessmaster 10 as my training, instead of analyzing my chess games for better moves that I may have missed during the game.

Kasparov vs David Letterman

2005-02-11T03:17:24Z

David Letterman is a fan of chess! He played this game against Kasparov. Nice queen sacrifice.

"There just isn't enough televised chess." - David Letterman

My CFC rating and new chess set

2005-02-10T23:51:25Z

The Chess Federation of Canada looked up its old records from 1991-93 when I was an active chess kid, and they pulled up my old rating from those tournaments. Strangely, I am rated 1323, somewhat stronger than I thought I was. Maybe my memory is bad and I was really a wiz as a kid. Anyway my rating will fluctuate as I continue to play in more local tournament nights. The 11 next to my rating shows the number of rated games I had played (as a kid). When it reaches 25, my rating is no longer considered as provisional and a different formula is used. For just the last 4 games I've played, my performance rating was about 1050. We'll see what happens when the ratings are updated on February 16.

Also last week, my new chess set arrived. The pieces are "triple-weighted", which gives a really nice feel when you're playing. Because they are designed extra heavy at the bottom, they are sturdy and hard to topple over. They have a solid and confident feel, which I feel transfers into my mental state when I'm playing. If I may draw an analogy, it's like drinking beer out of a glass mug instead of a plastic cup. I also got a green and white mat.

Play chess online!

2005-02-10T23:34:01Z

solar_angel showed me this cool, new online chess server. It's completely web-based, so no memory-hogging Java like Yahoo Games, and you can either play live or play correspondence-style with a few days between each move. It's not good for blitz fans, but it's perfect for somebody like me who just wants to play a game online with a friend. The system still needs to be smoothed out a bit, but it's still usable and good.

Top 10 ways to tell you are winning your chess game

2005-02-10T19:26:37Z

#10. Your opponent stands on the table yelling at the top of his lungs "Why must I lose to this IDIOT!"
(Aaron Nimzowitsch, 1886-1935)

#9. Your opponent leaves the tournament hall without resignation or stopping the chess clock and doesn't return.
(Curt von Bardeleben, 1861-1924)

#8. Your opponent begins to complain about interference by spectators, the noise of traffic, toothache, headache, backache, the foulness of your breath, bad lighting, blinding lighting, defective chessman, a board too large, a board too small, hypnotism, an atomic explosion in Siberia, the Government, the IRS, or simply a blue bottle blundering across the roadway.
(Amos Burn, 1848-1925, who commented towards the end of his long life that he "never had the satisfaction of beating a perfectly healthy opponent")

#7. In an adjourned position, your opponent seals the move "Resign".
(Hans Mueller, 1896-1971)

#6. Your opponent picks up his king and throws it across the room.
(Alexander Alekhine, 1892-1946)

#5. Your opponent starts mumbling "Nobody has ever won a game by resigning."
(Xavier Tartakower, 1887-1956)

#4. Your opponent shows his overwhelming disgust by grimacing distastefully, closing his eyes, shaking his head violently, then turning aside, pushes the chessman away from him as if they were poisoned.
(Rudolph Spielmann, 1883-1942)

#3. Your opponent grabs you and throws you out the window.
(Joseph Henry Blackburne, 1841-1924)

#2. Your opponent suddenly stands up and grabbing the wooden chess board, breaks it over your head!
(William the Conqueror, 1066-1087)

And the Number One way to tell if you are winning your chess game is:

#1. Your opponent begins to describe you as the greatest patzer in chess history and then denounces the tournament committee for inviting people whose chess is so wretched that it sickens a real master!
(David Janowski, 1868-1927)