Archive for the ‘Chess’ Category
Chess in the Caravansaray – Chessbase News
Posted: May 5, 2020 at 5:46 pm
"So what?" you will probably think, "Chess has nothing to do with ancient trade!" And if you thought that, you would be completely wrong! For more than a thousand years, the 7,000-kilometre route running from Europe, through the Middle East and Central Asia to China was the information super highway of its age, serving as the conduit not only for goods but also for the transmission of knowledge, ideas and culture between East and West both ways. Although the economic significance of the Silk Road was limited due to the long distance, its cultural impact was of great significance.
As merchants, artisans, and missionaries travelled along the trade routes, they brought with them new products, ideas, technologies and culture. And the game of chess was an inseparable part of that cultural exchange. Actually, all theories on the history of chess agree that the game originated in one of the countries of the Road, in either China, India or Persia.
Chess was played everywhere, in royal palaces and merchants' shops, in bazaars and even on the streets. But the most popular places to play chess were "caravansarays", large buildings, generally surrounding a court, where a caravan (a group of travellers journeying together on camels) could rest at night. These relay stations were constructed all along the Silk Road and were found throughout the Muslim lands of the Near and Middle East and North Africa.
The Shah-Abbasi Caravansary in Karaj, Iran | Photo and description Wiki
They were located along main trade routes of the Road at intervals of a day's journey for a camel caravan. Many were in desolate surroundings but others were at the gates of towns or within the towns. These structures offered facilities for the essential needs of the people and the camels of a caravan: a well for water, a place for the animals to rest, a sheltered area for the unloaded baggage, rooms for sleeping, kitchen and of course entertainment facilities, including chess. Chess was mainly a means of entertainment for travelling merchants, but surprisingly, it was also a nice source of income for some local nimble guys.
When and where do you think first chess "professionals" came into this world? I guess the first thing that came to your mind is Caf La Regence or the likes in London or Madrid. But again, to explore that, we will have to go back to Caravansaray era. There is a lot of historical evidence that caravansarays and other public places of that time were also gambling places. There were lots of games played for stakes, chess being one of the most popular. And caravansarays were most favourite places of "chess professionals" because there were always many rich merchants, an easy prey for them. These professionals had developed whole strategic systems, scenarios of luring those rich lamebrains into a game.
Imagine a situation: a caravan arrives at caravansaray, guests are welcomed and taken to their rooms, baggage unloaded from camels and put into warehouses, camels are given hay and water, dinner is ready for guests? Now what? Of course, a merchant who has slept all the way through from the previous caravansaray will now look for some fun. As he walks around, looking at the architecture and the artwork of the building, or listening to the nightingale sing in the cage, he is invited to have a game of chess by a homely, humble person who in no way looks like a chess expert. Let's call him the hunter and the merchant the victim, because this is very much like hunting indeed!
Like every novice who has beaten another novice several times, our victim considers himself the greatest player of all times. He is used to play for small stakes with his friends and mates. So the game starts, and starts the play, too! The hunter lets the victim take pleasure of the game for a while, makes simple mistakes, "blunders", builds simple mating positions for the opponent which the latter "finds" with a great effort.
This goes on until our hero "wins" three or four games in a row. While this is going on, the room is filled with amazed spectators and the victim is drowned in compliments about what a clever guy he is and what a strong player that he finds these combinations.
Now it's time to perform the second act of the play. The hunter wins the next game "by pure accident" and is so glad and happy. The victim believes he is incomparably stronger and just lost the last game by accident. He now loudly announces it's his debt of honour to offer a stake! The hunter pretends to be so afraid to play with this strong player, and only agrees to play for a very small stake, the fee for the dinner for example. Guess who wins this one. Of course the victim. Next game they play for accommodation fee. A portion of cannabis in hookah. Gradually the stakes rise, the hunter loses game after game, and is so "excited" and "heated up".
Finally, after having lost all his possessions, he "takes the last chance" and wagers his golden ring, his "great grandfather's only legacy" which is, by the way, worth about two hundred times all the previous stakes put together. Of course, he is "very lucky" in this game as the victim blunders a rook and a knight. But he still believes he is much stronger and next time he arrives at the same caravansaray, he will be very happy to play a rematch and this will happen over and over again, until he realizes what a silly child he has been!
As we said above, chess, or its variations like shatranj, was played everywhere, even in royal palaces, and even there they played it for stakes. This is mentioned many times in the folklore of the Silk Road nations.
You may have read the famous and fascinating Legend of Dilaram, which dates back to about VII century. The story is about a Padishah, who loses his entire kingdom, including his harem, in shatranj against a foreign prince. He is only left with his favourite wife whom he calls Dilaram (the name is Persian and comes from the words dil = soul, and aram = ease, rest). He makes a final desperate decision and wagers his wife against everything he had lost in the previous games (may ladies forgive me, but women were treated just like their husbands' possessions in the medieval Orient). However, this decisive game, too, goes very badly for him and he eventually finds himself in a position where his rival can checkmate him on the very next move.
If you decide to solve this simple problem, bear in mind that they were playing shatranj, which has the same rules as modern chess with only two differences: the queen can move only one square in any direction and bishops move only two squares along diagonals, they can also jump over pieces.
His wife was watching the game from behind a parda the curtain dividing the room into men's and women's sections. In desperation she started to sing (forgive me for my rough translation from Uzbek): Oh my Lord, don't give up your soul's ease, give up your two Noblemen (Rooks), attack and wound your enemy with your Elephant (Bishop) and soldier (pawn) and let the Knight kill him. The padishah understood what she meant: Dilaram had found a brilliant winning combination, put it into a song and sang it to him. He executed the moves of the song and won the game.
Solution: 1.Rh8+ Kxh8 2.Bf5+ Rh2 3.Rxh2+ Kg8 4.Rh8+ Kxh8 5.g7+ Kg8 6.Nh6 mate.
This story is also a clear proof of two things important from the chess point of view: one is that even in that medieval era, when women's rights were so strongly limited, they played chess. Another is that players of that time, too, observed certain chess etiquette. Dilaram did not directly tell her husband the solution she found but hinted at it through a song.
But at no time should you think that chess was only a game for gambling. Nowadays some people like to call chess an art or a science. But back in the Medieval Orient it was much more an art than it is now! Moreover, chess was an entire philosophy. The greatest oriental poets, almost all without exception, wrote at least some lines about chess, some of them devoted entire poems in which they explained, for example, the course of a battle, or padishah's policy in chess terms. Oriental poetry in general is so specific that it has always been very difficult even for professional native-speakers to translate it into western languages. However, I will try to explain you a very philosophical thought of Alisher Navoi, the greatest Uzbek poet of all times, which he expressed in just two lines:
Shoh yonin farzin kabi aylar maqom etmish netong, Rostravlar arsadin gar tutsalar ruhdek yiroq.
Straight-goers like the Rook are always moved to the brink The sly and artful Queen takes her warm place right next to King. (This is just my rough translation from Old Uzbek)
This is an allusion to moves of Rook and Queen and their place in the initial position. The philosophy here is that straight, honest people don't achieve much in this life and are always given less than they deserve, and sly, unpredictable people who can go any direction, (i.e. betray) are always at the top of society.
The Silk Road no longer exists as a trade route, modern hotels have replaced exotic caravansarays and powerful trucks have replaced camels. Modern sites along the course of the Silk Road have become important tourist destinations. These sites include Uzbekistan's exotic and ancient metropolises of Samarqand, Bukhara, Khiva, Kokand and Tashkent, with their artistic and architectural treasures. However, one important part of that medieval culture the chess culture is still remaining in all those historical centres of Uzbekistan.
If you ever happen to go to Uzbekistan and want to play chess, find a "Chayhana" (chay = tea, hana = room) a traditional teahouse, a public place where people come to talk, drink tea, etc. The picture is of atraditional Uzbek chayhana.
Sometimes they meet to discuss business, to exchange useful information and the news of the day. But mostly they just like to chat and tell stories, and of course, play chess. In any chayhana, there are always several chess sets and players of different levels. As you enter the chayhana, the first thing you see is the chayhanchi a very friendly looking old man who looks after the chayhana and makes tea. He welcomes you in an orientally hospitable fashion, offers you a seat and a piala (traditional cup) of tea.
A pre-warmed china pot is filled with dry green tea, then a quarter of the pot volume is filled with boiling water, after that the teapot is put on a hot oven (avoid open fire!) for about two minutes. Then boiling water is poured into the teapot until it is full by half, afterwards the pot is covered with a thick cover. After 2-3 minutes the pot is bathed with boiling water, then three quarters of the volume are filled with boiling water, the tea is left for another couple of minutes and the pot is filled almost up to the top. Traditionally, tea is poured into piala and back to the teapot three times before serving.
You can join different groups of people sitting on Suri a traditional wooden bed for sitting, usually for 4-6 people. One group will be playing backgammon, another group loudly discussing news of the day, and several groups, of course, will be peacefully playing chess. As soon as you come up to any of the companies, you will be grated in a traditional fashoin "Assalom aleykum". If you decide to join a group playing chess, you can just play it for fun with one of many amateurs, or, if you are a considerably stronger player, you can play for a stake.
It is uncommon and usually considered impolite to openly play for money. The usual stake here is ordering Uzbek pilav (or "plov") for the whole company. This meal is really delicious, and indeed it's the pride of Uzbek cuisine. Each chayhana, and even each family has its own recipe of pilav, slightly different from others. In Uzbek culture it is considered shameful for men not to know how to cook pilav, and believe me, every man has his own little secret of cooking it.
Here is how I cook plov (for a company of eight people):
700 gr. of lamb (preferably fatless), 350 gr. of lamb fat (preferably from the tail of local sheep), 250 gr of onions 1 kg of carrot (chopped into long thin pieces), 1 kg of rice, a pinch of cumin
First the cast-iron pot (which we call kazan) is heated on a moderate fire. Then the lamb fat, chopped into pieces of about two grams, is put into the pot and allowed to melt until it begins to turn brown. Then the pieces of fat are completely removed from kazan and the oil is allowed to heat up until a slight white smoke appears. Now the meat, also cut into pieces, is fried for about 5-7 minutes, until it starts to become darker in colour and softer. Then the roughly chopped onions are added and fried. You should stir the whole contents in order to avoid burning, at 1-1.5 minute intervals. When the onions become slightly brown, the carrot is added and fried until it completely loses its hardness. Then you add 1.5 litres of water and allow to boil for about 20 minutes. Add salt. At the very beginning of the process you should wash the rice and put it in cold water. Now you wash it once more and put into kazan, the water completely covering it. After adding the rice, to avoid burning, you should regularly penetrate it with you ladle to allow water run down as it tends to always go up. By the time the rice is boiled enough, the water will have almost disappeared. It is now time to sprinkle the plov with cumin and cover it with a plate, leaving some space open along the edges to allow extra water evaporate. You should reduce the fire to a minimum. In 20 minutes you may enjoy your cookery masterpiece!
Note that correct choice of rice is crucial for making a successful plov. The genuine Uzbek plov is made of rice called Devzira (literally Genie's earrings), which will unfortunately be unavailable to you unless you are in Uzbekistan.
At the end, I want to tell you a funny story I recently witnessed at one of those chayhanas. Two old men were playing chess, for a serious stake I suppose. One of them accidentally touched his pawn. He suddenly realized that if he moved that pawn he would immediately lose a piece, but he was of course required to follow the touch-move rule. He suddenly cried out "Hey, chayhanchi! Why there's always no teaspoon here!? I need a teaspoon but there isn't one! Why should I have to stir my tea with a chess piece!?" And he stirred his tea with the pawn with clearly artificial indignation. But his opponent did not find a word to object and the game went on! In fact, he had no reason to stir his tea because we don't use sugar for green tea!
Originally hailing from Uzbekistan, in 2013 I turned a brand new chapter in my life: I moved to America. First I lived in Pennsylvania, just outside Philly, for a couple of years. Then the corporate pursuit took me to beautiful New Hampshire, where I still live a life of a (self-proclaimed) decent chess player, wicked carnivore and coffee addict. I absolutely love New Hampshire, its people, its nature, and its accent. I run chess classes at schools my pet project that I love more than anything else I do. So, instead of a prolix autobiography, let me tell you a truly New Hampshire story.
I landed at the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport on a beautiful November day -- autumns in New England are unbelievable. No sooner than I check into the hotel, my new manager called me and, among other things, said, "I left yaw khakis at the reception." I was a little taken aback, to say the least, and asked, "Excuse me, my what?"
His answer didn't change much, "Khakis, I left them for you at the reception." What khakis? What color? What size? Why? But the receptionist handed me an envelope with... Two car keys! That was the local pronunciation: kaah kees that I heard as "khakis". That's how New Hampshirites, or a Granite Staters, speak. They eat lobstah for dinnah, then they paahk theyah caah and go to the baah. I have made numerous cultural adaptations to local life, but I still haven't adopted the accent.
And sorry for my hair: baabah shops are closed for coronavirus quarantine. If you're in or around NH, hit me up through jbegmatov@gmail.com, and meet up for a game or two.
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May Cover Stories with Chess Life: GM Francesco Rambaldi – uschess.org
Posted: at 5:46 pm
The May edition of Cover Stories with Chess Life is now live! This monthly podcast, hosted by Senior Director of Strategic Communication Daniel Lucas, goes in depth and behind the scenes of each months Chess Life cover story. This months guest is GM Francesco Rambaldi, who contributed annotations to our May Chess Life cover story on the Cairns Cup. We talk to him about the Cairns Cup, growing up playing chess in France and Italy, his current status as a member of the Saint Louis University chess team, and his new book, The Caro-Kann Revisited A Dynamic Repertoire for Black.
Image Credit: GFHund via wikimedia
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May Cover Stories with Chess Life: GM Francesco Rambaldi - uschess.org
Poem of the week: The Chess Player by Howard Altmann – The Guardian
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Theyve left. Theyve all left a man wearing protective face mask rests at an empty chess table at Tasmajdan park in Belgrade, Serbia, last week. Photograph: Andrej Cukic/EPA
The Chess Player
Theyve left. Theyve all left. The pigeon feeders have left. The old men on the benches have left. The white-gloved ladies with the Great Danes have left. The lovers who thought about coming have left. The man in the three-piece suit has left. The man who was a three-piece band has left. The man on the milkcrate with the bible has left. Even the birds have left. Now the trees are thinking about leaving too. And the grass is trying to turn itself in. Of course the buses no longer pass. And the children no longer ask. The air wants to go and is in discussions. The clouds are trying to steer clear. The sky is reaching for its hands. Even the moon sees whats going on. But the stars remain in the dark. As does the chess player. Who sits with all his pieces In position.
Howard Altmann published his Selected Poems, Enquanto uma Fina Neve Cai / As a Light Snow Keeps Falling, last year, a bilingual, Portuguese/English edition with translations by the Portuguese poet Eugnia de Vasconcellos. The Chess Player appears in it, and was first published in 2005, in Who Collects the Days, Altmanns debut collection.
Obviously, it predates the Covid-19 pandemic by a number of years. At the same time, the poem may illuminate, and be illuminated by, current events. It also tunes in to an ancient and universal human experience: the daily fading of light into dusk, when the mood may slip into melancholy and uncertainty. The hushed emptiness that descends on the park in the poem is almost naturalistic at first, but the widespread movement of desertion soon gathers foreboding through repetition. Its as if all ages and all species had silently agreed to emigrate.
The Chess Players was a film written and directed by Satyajit Ray in 1977, based on Munshi Premchands short story of the same name. Two chess-mad noblemen, Mir and Mirza, are so obsessed with their game that they refuse to notice the turmoil of the British incursions seething around them, not to mention the disintegration of their marriages. Despite these catastrophes, Rays touch in the film is light, as is Altmanns in the poem. The images his statements evoke are sometimes surreal, and sometimes presented in a whimsical manner. They may be backlit by a pun (The lovers who thought about coming have left) or trip us on a gently comic letdown (The man in the three-piece suit has left. / The man who was a three-piece band has left.) The line, The sky is reaching for its hands, is particularly effective. Perhaps hands suggests a clock, and the desire of the sky to seize hold of time and make it move faster. Or the hands may be potentially the monstrous hands of a killer. Nothing terrible actually happens in the poems foreground, but the threat level rises as the moon becomes unusually sharp-eyed, the stars unusually ignorant and dim.
The rhythm slows right down at the end of the poem, with full stops insisting on a painfully weighty pause for thought at the ends of lines: But the stars remain in the dark. / As does the chess-player. / Who sits with all his pieces / In position.
Only now do we learn that no game is in progress: in fact, the player has no visible opponent. The solitary figure sits at the untouched board in the dark. It raises the question as to whether the poems hidden subject is war. From a war gamers site, I learned that the name chess is derived from the Sanskrit chaturanga which can be translated as four arms, referring to the four divisions of the Indian army elephants, cavalry, chariots and infantry. In this regard, chess is very much a war game that simulates what we would now call the combined arms operations of the ancient world.
Perhaps we should abandon the image of an al-fresco chessboard altogether? The single player may be planning moves of a more desperate kind, moves that might include the assassination of some leader, or the pushing of the nuclear button. He may have gone crazy and got trapped in a ferment of fantastic plans too complex and entangled ever to be accomplished. The pieces, whatever they represent, are in position but, perhaps fortunately, will never move forward.
So reading the poem now, we might also be reminded of a stalemate of statistics, strategies and models. Earlier on, weve been cheerfully told, Of course the buses no longer pass. / And the children no longer ask. The lightness of tone and rhetorical patterning, and the faint stumble in the end-rhyme (pass and ask), seem to show the effects of an effortless severance of intellectual curiosity and lively physical action. Perhaps all the players in the park are obedient pieces being moved around a board or taken and scattered in some master game? Perhaps even the chess player is a pawn.
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Poem of the week: The Chess Player by Howard Altmann - The Guardian
The future of chess books (2) – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
5/3/2020 So I am being pressured to publish a book, a collection of articles that have, in the last twenty years, appeared on our news page especially those describing encounters with famous players. And the ones that showed entertaining puzzles and games. They were very nice on a computer monitor, where you can replay and analyse everything but transfering them onto very thin slices of tree? Nobody fetches a chessboard and pieces to replay moves anymore. Ahh, but there's a solution to this problem. Let me show you. And please help me evaluate this approach.
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As I said in the first part of this article: I believe that chess books and magazines represent a colossal waste. Less than ten percent of all readers play through the games they contain those who do are called grandmaster, or IMs, and they do it in their heads they read chess books like adventure novels. The rest of us try to follow the first few moves, if they are part of our openings repertoire, and then jump to the diagrams, where we replay a few moves that follow in our mind. The rest is usually ignored.
So just a small percentage of non-professional chess players actually read chess books. Hand on your heart: when was the last time you set up the chess board and pieces and replayed a game from a book or a magazine?
The irony is that you probably have the ultimate replay right there in your pocket, or on the living room table: your smart phone or tablet. On it the moves are executed on a graphic chessboard, and you can even have an engine running in the background, ready to answer every what-if and why-not question that might occur to you.
But how do you get the moves of the game, printed on paper, into your electronic device? Scanning the page and using intelligent OCR is not a practical solution. Also downloading a file and then searching in a database for the game you see on the page is cumbersome. You need to get it in one quick and easy action. And that is possible using a QR code. This is a kind of barcode (QR stands for "quick response") in matrix form, which the camera of your smartphone or tablet can pick up quickly and effectively. And an app, one of a dozen you can get for free in the Apple or Google stores, will immediately execute the instructions contained in the QR matrix.
I am not the first person to think about the possibility of using this in chess books. As I told you in the first part of this article: my good friend Prof. Christian Hesse used the system in 2015, in his (German language) book Damenopfer. There, for the first time I believe, you could scan a QR image printed next to each diagram or at the start of a game, and then replay it on your electronic device. This takes a second or two. After that you have the game, moves, and the entire analysis on your mobile phone or tablet, and can replay them right there, in your garden, on a train or plane, anywhere. You read the stories in the book and replay the games on your electronic device. I showed some examples in my previous article.
So how I can I use this tool in my books? I have been experimenting with converting past articles printable text. After trying Microsoft Word and Libre Office I hit upon Google Drive, which has a word processor that appears to exactly fulfill my needs. So the process is copy and paste a text from articles, update and format them nicely, and then export the file, which is stored in the cloud, e.g. to PDF. Works very nicely. Google's word processor does not have all the functions of the dedicated packages, but it has all the essential ones, and they have been optimised for ease of use.
The articles I convert often have positions or games. I always have them in PGN or ChessBase in fact they are usually embedded in the JavaScript replayer on the news page and can be downloaded with a click from there. Take for example my recent article "The game that shook the world." At the bottom is a replayer with the annotated game. Clicking on the diskette icon downloads the PGN and, in my setup, loads it into ChessBase 15.
Now comes the decisive part: I go to the File menu and click "Publish this game". ChessBase 15 offers to produce a One Click Publication, with the replayer. It gives the URL, embed code for the player (so you can add it to a blog article), and social media buttons (to post on Facebook, Twitter or email to a friend). Here is what the page it generates looks like. That is definitely a page you can link to.
If you follow the URL given, on your mobile phone or tablet, this is what you get. You shold try it out: scan the following QR code (use a barcode or QR scanner as described below) and see what it looks like on your device.
As you can see on the photo the tablet produces the full player, where you can start an engine (fan icon) that will help you to analyse. There is even a "!" icon (on the right side of the engine display) that shows you the threat in any position, which is incredibly useful in the case of unclear moves (I use it all the time).
For the technically savvy there is another option: "Create an HTML file" and upload it to your server. In that case you use
So we have generated the replay page as described above. It takes less than one minute. But how do you embed a link to it in your book or magazine? This is where I use QR codes, which are infinitely more practical than typing a long URL into the mobile phone browser. And it is perfectly simple to implement: simply google for one of a dozen (free) QR code generator pages. There you simply paste the URL ChessBase gave you for the replay page, and bing! you have the QR code matrix as a JPG or PNG. This you embed on your book or magazine page.
Naturally you can use this to link not only to replay pages, but also to YouTube videos, audio files, small utilities, etc. Here are some examples from the trial articles for my book (click all images to enlarge):
The above QR code leads to a video interview that is the basis of the article
Check if this external small utility works without problems on your phone or tablet
And here is the book page with a QR link to the full game with all annotations.
I think this is a very feasible method of making chess content available to readers of a book. I thank Christian Hesse for his pioneer work described in the first part of this article. Things have in fact improved: Christian's book was published five years ago, and I am using the latest ChessBase replayer, developed in 2020. It has many exciting functions that were not previously available.
I will give you three trial chapters, which you can download and print out, to get a real feel for how my book would work. Or you can simply click on the links and display the files on the PGN reader. Then tell me how the game replayer runs on your mobile phone and your tablet. Also, I would be interested to find people who can assist in the production and publication of the book(s).
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Who is the chess player on Mars? – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
5/2/2020 A Mars opposition occurs when planet Earth passes in between the Sun and planet Mars. It happens every 2 years and 2 months 779.94 Earth days to be precise. Then Mars becomes a beautiful red jewel in the night sky, full of mystery. On the one hand a Martian invasion may be imminent. On the other we are able to discern human images carved on the Mars surface. In 2003 one was discovered that looked eerily familiar.
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On Wednesday, August 27 2003, at 10:51 GMT, the planet Mars approached the earth closer than at any time during the last 60,000 years. It became the brightest object in the night sky, a beautiful red jewel in the firmament, with an apparent diameter to in the sky of about 25 arc-seconds (on October 13 this year during Mars opposition the planetary disk diameter will be 22.4 arcsec).
In 2003 The two planets, Earth and Mars, were separated by 55,758,006 kilometers (34,646,418 miles). This has not happened since the Neanderthals shared the world with early humans, who as you know were lucky enough to find the Obelisk and learn how to use the thigh bones of animals properly. The next closest approach will be in 2287 we will bring you live coverage at the time.
A Hubble picture of Mars taken eleven hours before it's closest approach. Source: NASA, J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI).
In the parlance of astronomers Mars was in "opposition", a term they have obviously borrowed (without giving due credit) from the chess world. The close approach of the two planets happens regularly when both are on the same side of the Sun. On this occasion Earth was about as far from the Sun as it ever gets, and Mars as close as ever (the orbits of the two planets are not quite circular).
At the time our resident scientist GM John Nunn informed us:
The close approach of Mars suggests that this would be a good time for the Martians to invade Earth. The last time they did so, in June 1902, they caused considerable devastation. I have a personal interest in this because the first Martian cylinder plunged into the sandpits on Horsell Common, just down the road from where I currently live. Apparently they did not use retro-rockets or parachutes, and it has always been a mystery how the relatively fragile Martians survived the deceleration of impact. Moving out from this first landing, they advanced through Ottershaw (where GM Murray Chandler owned a house) and devastated Weybridge and Shepperton. Armed with a heat-ray and a deadly poison gas, it seemed that nothing could stop them. Eventually, as everyone now knows, their invasion was defeated when they caught a nasty cold and died.
The event is commemorated in various ways and has inspired various films and radio broadcasts (see, for example, thisWar of the Worlds movie, in which the invasion was switched to America). Curiously, although the Horsell area has changed greatly in the past century, Horsell Common and its sandpits are still much the same. I am somewhat concerned that the Martians might aim for the same spot again and am keeping a careful watch for any meteorites leaving a strange greenish trail. If one falls, I intend to call Tony Blair or George W. Bush theyll know what to do.
There is another important aspect to this close approach of Mars. Everybody knows that strange rock formations have been photographed on the surface of the planet, the most famous being the "Face on Mars". It was obtained in 1976 by the Viking Orbiter 1. In the Cydonia region of Mars it photographed a region of buttes and mesas along the escarpment that separates heavily cratered highlands to the south from low lying, relatively crater-free, lowland plains to the north.
One of the images showed a face-like hill, which led many people to argue, mostly in the lay literature, that the hill was artificially shaped. The "Face on Mars" web site provides us with the raw Viking images and a brief tutorial (with examples) of image processing techniques applied to create "better looking" images.
Due to the near approach new images have been obtained which should delight amateur conspiracy theorists all over the world. They show the Cydonia region and the "face" in unprecedented clarity.
Above is the latest Hubble image taken on August 27 2003 at 10:34 GMT, seventeen minutes before the true opposition of Mars. The enlargement reveals an incredible geological formation that looks eerily familiar. Perhaps our readers can help us (and NASA): whom does the rocky formation remind you of?
A week after the above report appeared on our news page (on August 27, 2003) we learned that the "Face on Mars" picture was probably flawed. Javier Sanchez de la Barquera of Monterrey, Mexico, informed us that Hubble cannot take pictures with the zoom given, and that pictures were taken from satellites orbiting mars.
On the top left is the original fase as it appears on most conspiracy sites, next to it a JPL/NASA picture, which softens into the "face," and below that an angular view which makes it even less face-like.
We investigated the matter and discovered that some misguided soul in the ChessBase team had faked the picture, photoshopping an image of Garry Kasparov into the surface of Mars. We even found what is probably the original source of the picture.
Above is a picture of Garry Kasparov during a press conference.
We also traced the joker's practice efforts a Mars surface picture with many Kasparov faces copied into it. The prankster simply took the one which looked most plausible.
Our apologies to readers who took the whole business seriously.
Originally posted here:
Isolated Queens II: Top Streamers to Play BotezLive & US Chess Women Event – uschess.org
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Photo courtesy Alexandra Kosteniuk
Jennifer Shahade
Alexandra Botez, Courtesy Botez
US Chess Women and BotezLive present Isolated Queens II on Saturday, May 2nd at 2 PM ET. The online girls and womens blitz tournament on chess.com will be hosted by the most popular female chess streamer in the World, WFM Alexandra Botez and Womens Program Director and two-time US Womens Chess Champion Jen Shahade. Jen and Alexandra will give educational commentary on the ten round Swiss event at twitch.tv/botezlive, which will also be hosted on twitch.tv/uschess and twitch.tv/jenshahade. The event will feature some of the best players in the World, as well as many talented youngsters and enthusiastic amateurs. $2000 in prizes will be awarded to the top streamers in the event, while all women can compete for bragging rights and the chance to play against some of the strongest women in the World. Defending champion Alexandra chessqueen Kosteniuk is back to try to reclaim her title. The former World Champion and sensational blitz player will be streaming the event on twitch.tv/chessqueen.
Songwriter and chess conceptual artist Juga of Jugamusica.com will also join the party on May 2nd. Jugas music video, Isolated Pawn, is a perfect watch to get you in the mood for the event, and we will listen to it during the event commentary.
Juga, who recently appeared on Ladies Knight, is also a new streamer, where she solves puzzles and sings karaoke on twitch.tv/jugamusica.
Other confirmed players include:
Carissa Yip (photo Ootes)
IM Carissa Yip, who is a writer for ChessKid, a popular streamer at https://www.twitch.tv/carissayip and has started a and has started a recent campaign, Chess Against COVID for COVID-19 relief through her channel
Ivette Garcia, Courtesy David Llada
GM Irina Krush and WGM Sabina Foisor, Photo David Llada
Charlotte Clymer, Photo Tim Hanks
To join the event yourself, find tournament rules and instructions on how to join at tinyurl.com/isolatedqueens.
Thanks to the generosity of Ian Maprail Silverstone, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin and Nikola Stojsin of Open Field Media for donating the $2000 prize fund, which will be rewarded to the top streamers in the event. The top three streamers will receive $700, $500 and $300 while top finishing streamers Under 2200, 1800 and 1400 will receive $165 each.
60% of onstream donations during this match will support online education and educational content geared toward girls and youth. The other 40% will go toward supporting future events and matches. Dont miss the official broadcast on twitch.tv/botezlive where we will shout out many of the top streams. And look for the full post-event recap right here on CLO!
See the rest here:
Isolated Queens II: Top Streamers to Play BotezLive & US Chess Women Event - uschess.org
The future of chess books (1) – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Let me say in advance: I have grown up with books. From the start I was a bibliophile, fanatically so, and in the course of a lifetime have collected many thousands of books including chess books, which for decades have been sent to me by friendly publishers. To these (the chess books, not the publishers) I have always had an ambivalent relationship. On the one hand they brought me a great deal of pleasure. On the other I was distressed by the colossal waste they represented.
Take for instance the famous and for a long time ubiquitous Chess Informant. I bought it regularly. The picture shows what the contents looked like. It also tells you how much of the approximately thirty volumes I collected I actually read. Close to zero percent. I did look at a lot of diagrams and try to follow the next three to five moves in my mind, but that was it.
I did notice that a certain percentage of the visitors in my house, the ones who had GM titles, and especially the super-GMs, read my Informants like Agatha Christie novels. Anand, for instance, would grab the latest Informant, curl up in a corner, and spend hours giggling and laughing at games he was replaying in his head. Nobody, really nobody, ever pulled out a chessboard to replay games. Either they could replay everything in their minds, or they used my method of diagram scanning.
So just a small percentage of chess players actually read chess books or magazines. When's the last time you set up the chess board (I'm not sure exactly where mine is) and pieces (those I can find I have two very nice sets in the shelf behind me) and replayed a game from a book? The situation has been exacerbated by the advent of replayable games in software and on web pages. That is so easy and so convenient that it is hard to find a proper place for books in the chess landscape.
So are chess books and magazines on the way out? Because you cannot replay moves, like you can do on any good web site? No, you actually can, if the publishers spend a miniscule amount of effort on it! Let me explain.
Everyone who buys a chess book has the ultimate replay device in their pocket, or on the coffee table. It is a smart phone or a tablet. What if you could use these, instead of setting up the chess board and pieces, to replay the game in the books? No mistakes, no tedious attempts to find your way back to the main line when you have been looking at analysis. Everything is automatic, just like on a replay board on your computer screen.
I am not the first person to think about this. Take a look at the paper "A Framework for Recognition and Animation of Chess Moves Printed on a Chess Book" by Sleyman Eken et al. It was published (in 2015) by the International Arab Journal of Information Technology and proposes "a set of techniques to animate chess moves which are printed on a chess book. These include (1) extraction of chess moves from an image of a printed page, (2) recognition of chess moves from the extracted image, and (3) displaying digitally encoded successive moves as an animation on a chessboard." It's all pattern recognition, and with AI today the process could be made very efficient.
But is that what I am looking for? You use your phone or tablet to scan a page, with an AI app to find the chess game and make it replayable? No, there must be an easier, non-technical way. And there is. The chess book author needs to provide the games and moves in replayable form to the reader, and the reader must have instant access to them. The solution: QR codes.
Once again I am not the first person to come up with this solution. When thinking about using QR codes in the chess books I might end up writing, I remembered that it had already been done, very nicely, by my friend Prof. Christian Hesse (who writes very entertaining books on mathematics and on chess). And I get them all from him. Searching through the twenty or so I own I found Damenopfer, written in 2015. "Damenopfer" is "Queen Sacrifice" and the subtitle translates to "Astonishing Stories from the World of Chess." It is a thoroughly charming collection of examples where surprising sacs play a decisive role if you understand German it is well worth buying ($12.40).
The thing about Damenopfer is that, for the first time, every single game in the book contains a QR code for you to scan. Within a second or two you have the game, moves, and the entire analysis, on your mobile phone, in a bus, in the garden, anywhere. So you read the stories in the book and then replay the games on your electronic device. Let me give you an example:
Here are two pages I scanned from the book (click to enlarge). In case you don't know the German piece letters: KDTLS = KQRBN. Now try reading the two examples:
Chances are you can manage the first pretty well, but the second is more difficult playing through in your mind.
Now whip out your mobile phone or tablet. Check if you have a barcode or QR code scanner installed. Chances are it is already there, but if it isn't get one of the dozen or two available for free in the Apple Store or Google Playstore. Takes a couple of minutes to download and install and of course you only need to do this once. After that you can use the scanner for all kinds of thing, e.g. read reviews of products in stores, scan grocery packages for recipies, etc. But you can also point your phone or tablet at the pages above. The scanner will automatically read the QR code and ask you whether you want to proceed to a page. That will take you to a special replayer for the game in question.You can play through the moves, tapping on the replay keys or on the notation below the chessboard. Very nice, don't you agree?
The two examples above may be just about manageable, following the moves in your mind and enjoying the beautiful tactics. But what about the following:
I just give you the diagrams and the QR codes. In the first case (White to play and win) Christian writes: "It looks like a perfectly hopeless situation for White. The chances for the white king to survive are the same as for a snowman in a blast furnace." And he goes on to show us the truly incredible moves White must make to acrtually win: 1.b6+ Ka8! 2.g7 h1=Q 3.g8=Q+ Bb8 4.a7 Nc6+ 5.dxc6 Qxh5+. "This is the critical point in the study," he writes, "White wins with a queen move that comes from a different world and a different reality." 7.Qg5!!! "The queen, dressed in a kamikaze outfit throws herself in between." Hesse give a three alternate lines explaining why the queen moving to g5 is the only way to win:
6.Ka4 Qd1+ 7.Qb3 Qa1+ 8.Kb5 Qe5+ 9.Ka6 Qa1+= 6.Kb4 Nd3+ (6...Qh4+ 7.Ka5 Qh5+ 8.Qg5 +) 7.Kc3 Qa5+ 8.Kxd3 Qa3+ 9.Kc2 Qa4+= 6.Ka6 Qe2+ 7.Ka5 Qe5+ 8.Ka4 Qd4+ 9. Kb5 Qe5+=
6...Qxg5+ 7.Ka6! Qa5+! 8.Kxa5 Bxa7 9. c7!! Kb7 10.bxa7 "and Black raises the white flag, 1-0."
Beautiful, isn't it? What, you did not follow everything? Then use your phone or tablet to see all the moves and variations on a nice graphic chessboard. Incidentally, this is one of my all-time favourite studies.
The second example, on the right in the above scan, is a 27-move game with seven additional moves to show why Black resigned after a firework of sacrifices. Can be easily followed on the printed pages by a GM, but not by me. But I can scan the QR code image next to the diagram and immediately replay everything on my phone. Try it, it is dazzling how White played 14.Kf1!!! to initiate the sacrifice tornado. In the book Hesse explains why 14.Kf1 (which he gave three exclams) was necessary in order to avoid a bishop check nine moves later. This is explained in the book, while the moves can be replayed on your phone or tablet. After a five-second scan.
After getting re-hooked on Christian Hesse's book and playing through a dozen examples I realized I had the solution to my dilemma: how to produce a book in which people will not ignore most of the chess content where they can actually play through all the games given.
So this is how I can produce my book in fact in greater quality than in Hesse's book. That was published five years ago and a lot of progress has made since then. I also discovered how easy it is to implement: adding replay code takes me a average of a minute and a half per game. And readers get instant access to tools no chess author dreamed of, until a few years ago.
How I plan to use these tools and how you can do the same for books and magazines that will be the subject of my next article. I will also give you a couple of trial chapters which you can print out and use. And in return you can tell me what you think of the project.
Here is the original post:
#GameOfTwoHalves Podcast: Can Singapore be the best in chess? – The Straits Times
Posted: at 5:46 pm
#GameOfTwoHalves Ep 83: Can Singapore be the best in chess; solving incomplete football leagues
12:42 mins
Synopsis: #GameofTwoHalves is The Straits Times' weekly sports podcast that is out every Tuesday.
Money FM's Rachel Kelly calls up ST sports correspondents Sazali Abdul Aziz and David Lee.
They discuss the following topics:
1. That unassuming young kid in your neighbourhood could be a chess whiz, as some pre-teens here already have international acclaim. But what separatesthem from that elusive Grandmaster status?
2. Several European football leagues have ended their campaigns with various debatable approaches, including the point-per-game method in the French Ligue. When will Asean leagues resume, if at all, and what are the repercussions on the respective national teams?
Produced by: ST Sports Desk
Edited by: Aw Yao Feng, Nadiah Koh & Penelope Lee
Follow #GameOfTwoHalves podcasts and rate us on:
Spotify: https://str.sg/ovjR
Apple Podcasts:http://str.sg/o8MK
Google Podcasts:http://str.sg/oXeS
Playlist:https://str.sg/Ji3k
Website:http://str.sg/stpodcasts
Feedback to:podcast@sph.com.sg
Thank you for your support! ST and BT Podcasts picked up a silver medal for Best Digital Project to engage younger and/or millennial audiences at 2019 Asian Digital Media Awards by Wan-Ifra:https://str.sg/Jw5T
Continued here:
#GameOfTwoHalves Podcast: Can Singapore be the best in chess? - The Straits Times
Game of chess with no pawns – The Star Online
Posted: March 23, 2020 at 2:48 pm
THE Covid-19 pandemic is World War III in a different sense. Instead of soldiers, doctors and other medical personnel are all fighting against a common enemy now with personal protective equipment (PPE) as our armour and medical treatment as our weapons.
Over the past few weeks, Covid-19 cases have steadily increased in Malaysia. When the existing manpower could not continue to cope with the workload, major hospitals had to seek floating medical officers as back-up support teams in the front line of this battle.
Floating medical officers refer to those who have completed housemanship but are currently in limbo, waiting for their next posting and confirmation on whether they will continue as contract or permanent medical officers.
Many of us readily accepted the call of duty to play the crucial role as pawns on the front line of this pandemic. With our leave frozen until further notice and our next posting put on hold, we are still doing our best to serve the public despite the creeping fatigue and dangers of being infected with the coronavirus.
We obeyed orders as a pawn, hoping that when we advanced to the other side of the board, we would be promoted to higher ranks, be it knight, rook, or bishop not necessarily a queen yet. We just want to be on the same rank as other permanent medical officers.
But no, life isnt like a game of chess. It was revealed last week that no one from the latest batch of housemen (May 2017) have been offered a permanent post and all would remain on contract basis. In fact, this will be the last two years contract offered.
This means that the employment of a whole generation of medical officers will be terminated after the end of another two years.
Our performance during the two years of housemanship did not matter anymore, contrary to what we were told previously. All will be sacrificed come May 2022.
The worst news is that despite being required to work with the same responsibilities as permanent medical officers (UD44), we are not even given the contract medical officer grade (UD43) that was already agreed upon by the previous Cabinet last year.
All contract medical officers are stagnant on the same house officer grade (UD41).
Even though we feel cheated and demotivated now, we continue working every day to fight the Covid-19 war.
We are not turning our back despite being treated like we are dispensable, non-critical and sacrificial pawns.
This is because we know that we are better than the circumstances surrounding us and we do not want the worst to befall our nation.
We will fight till we win this war against Covid-19 together, but the demotivation we feel now is akin to putting a lighted candle in a vacuum.
We will burn out, and this makes us burn out even faster.
On a final note, eventually the strategists might be playing a game of chess without pawns.
Remember that pawns are the pieces that can advance on the board, and if you sacrifice all your armies, you will end up fighting a losing battle alone.
DEMOTIVATED AUDREY
Kuching
The rest is here:
Candidates 2020, 5: Nepo takes the lead – chess24
Posted: at 2:48 pm
Ian Nepomniachtchi squeezed out a win against Wang Hao in Round 5 to become the first player to take the sole lead in the 2020 Candidates Tournament. The other games were drawn, but not without a real fight. Alekseenko-MVL was a spectacular Najdorf where Kirills 48-move think midgame proved to be time well spent, while Anish Giri missed a great chance to beat Fabiano Caruana. Ding Liren-Grischuk was quieter than the post-game press conference where Alexander called for the tournament to be halted due to the coronavirus situation.
You can replay all the games from the 2020 Candidates Tournament using the selector below click a result to open the game with computer analysis:
15-year-old Indian star Nihal Sarin joined whats become the regular team of Jan, Lawrence and a certain Magnus Carlsen for Round 5, and you can rewatch the show below:
And here's a recap of the day's play from 2-time Canadian Chess Champion Pascal Charbonneau:
It was an important day on the chessboard in Round 5. Ian Nepomniachtchi became the first player to take the sole lead, and with 9 rounds to go, the length of an average supertournament, that could be significant. Historically the leaders after Round 5 have won these 14-round Candidates Tournaments!
A decisive result in Giri-Caruana could have made or broken the players tournaments, but in the post-game interviews it was the clear the players thoughts are on more than chess. It seems a very long time ago that Teimour Radjabov withdrew over coronavirus fears, but if wed known 17 days ago how the world would look now its hard to imagine the tournament would not have been postponed, as he requested.
Anna Burtasova asked whether the players try to avoid news and social media during the event, with Fabi explaining that would take too much discipline nowadays. Giri interrupted:
You might have to, because at some point there might be a message like you have to go to that place otherwise we all die, so you really have to follow, because if you dont it might be really, really bad simply. I think with stakes this high its more important to follow the news than to focus on the event.
A question on the difficult life of a constantly traveling chess professional provoked nostalgia:
I think the coming few months are going to be easier when it comes to traveling. In general, those were the good days we travelled and got to see different places. It was good. You could get out of the house. It was nice. I enjoyed it!
Travel was of course on Fabianos mind too:
I have a situation where Im usually away from home for three months at a time, but now Im not actually sure Ill have anywhere to return to at the end of this tournament. I might be stranded somewhere, and Im not exactly sure where, because the US State Department said that American citizens have to come back to the US or wont be able to come back if they dont come back right now. Im not exactly sure, but Im not really thinking about it now - where Ill have to go at the end of this event.
When Anna tried to reassure the players on getting back home, Giri responded with what is essentially no joke:
I have faith in the private jet of FIDE, that we will fly all players to their houses. Thats my only hope!
Private transportation arranged by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich or the tournament organisers may well be the best hope for many of the players to return home, though there are restrictions everywhere.
The most dramatic intervention on the virus, however, came from Alexander Grischuk, who has never shied away from speaking his mind.
He was asked about his form:
My form is terrible. I dont want to play at all because of this situation. When it was the beginning I did not have a clear opinion but now already for several days I have a very clear opinion that it should be stopped, this tournament. The whole atmosphere is very hostile. Everyone is with masks, the security and so on. For me its very difficult, I just dont want to play, I dont want to be here and actually considering this Im quite happy with my result, but overall its no coincidence that everything else is stopped. We are the only ones left playing, the only major sport event in the world, and I think it should be stopped and postponed.
He went on to clarify:
Im not talking about myself, Im talking in general, of course. Im not saying it should be stopped because I dont want to play that is not what Im trying to say. Im just saying in general, and also Botvinnik was commenting on this, that if you make two players play while standing its completely unsure that the same one will win who would win while playing seated.
Ding Liren has suffered more than most from the situation around the virus, finding himself in lockdown in China before having to spend 14 days in quarantine near Moscow before traveling to Yekaterinburg. Its understandable he wants to be able to open his hotel window!
My form is much better compared to the first two days. Since I moved to a new hotel I get some fresh air and life became more beautiful after that.
What is certain is that the Candidates has been a godsend for many chess fans around the world who are currently on lockdown:
But now lets get to the days chess:
Of all Anish Giris misses in the 2016 Candidates Tournament in Moscow perhaps the most crazy was his game with White against Fabiano Caruana, where he had no less than four extra pawns but failed to go on to win. This game in Yekaterinburg didnt reach quite such legendary status, but it was close.
Fabiano repeated the Slav Defence hed played against Ding Liren, and Giri was ready. Caruana admitted he had to improvise after 10.Qc2 came as a surprise, with Giri commenting, I think Fabiano wanted to be clever with 13Qb8 but then after 14.h4 there is no real point to it. Although the computer was showing equality at this point Magnus explained that something had gone badly wrong:
Events developed fast, with Carlsen enjoying the change in the structure that followed:
He soon commented, he's just showing superior understanding... of chess, of life, of everything! and it was more or less genuine praise of how Anish had handled the position, since the Dutch no. 1 was building up a very significant advantage.
The first hints this might not be Giris day appeared on move 25:
26.f5! was a powerful move, but both here and for a few more moves Giri resisted (playing 26.Bd3), with Magnus commenting, "He doesn't want f5 g5 at all - our boy is not about taking those chances!"
He did eventually play it, however, and it was only 33.Re2?! that finally spoilt what was still a very promising position:
Again Magnus was enjoying himself as he described that as showing, a little too much class (33...Rxh4? 34.Qc6! wins) while here Fabiano really did show class to find the resource 33d4!, suddenly threatening Nd5-c3+. After 34.Re5 Black was also just in time with 34Ng4!, though Anish thought he still had a win until 35.Rc5 Ne3 36.Rc8+ Rxc8 37.Qxc8+ Ke7 38.Rc1:
The threat of Rc7+ means White would be winning here if not for the backwards move 38Nd5! that Anish had missed. After that there was nothing better than to take a draw after 39.Re1+ Ne3 40.Rc1 Nd5 and repeating the position. Fabiano admitted it had been a lucky break.
This was a spectacular Najdorf, but there was more than a hint of dj vu. One move quicker (Bg5 instead of Bg5-e3 and h5 instead of h6-h5), the players reached the same position as in the first playoff game of the Carlsen-MVL Grand Chess Tour semi-final in London last year:
In that game Maxime played Bf8, but soon realised that Bg5! Qc7 Rh4! would have been winning for Magnus. The World Champion missed that, got a winning position anyway but then went on to lose!
The reason Maxime had gone for that bishop move instead of his intended g6 was that he suddenly realised it was losing to Rxg6 fxg6 Nxe6, but computers immediately spot that things arent so simple, and in Yekaterinburg we saw 16g6! 17.Rxg6! Rxc3!
And here Kirill sank into a 48-minute think. Jan and Lawrence felt this was a horrible situation for Kirill to find himself in, pondering a crazy position over the board while his opponent was clearly in home preparation, but Magnus insisted, he's rather just enjoying calculating all the lines. Kirill explained afterwards that his preparation consisted of the knowledge that Rxg6 was a good move, but that he only saw that Rxc3 was coming at the board.
The long think paid off as he found the crisp continuation 18.Nxe6! Qc8 19.Ng7+! Kf8 20.Rh6! Rxh6 21.Bxh6 Rxc2! 22.Nf5+ Ke8 23.Nxe7 Kxe7 24.Qh4+ f6 25.Bf4:
25Rxb2+! 26.Kxb2 Na4+ 27.Kb1 Nc3+ 28.Ka1 Nxd1
Kirill had 7 minutes to his opponents over one hour at this point and sensibly chose to force a draw by perpetual check after 29.Qh7+.
It was the second day in a row that Maxime had seen his opponent spend almost an hour on a move when just out of preparation, with the French no. 1 joking:
I just wanted to add, if my next opponents another time think for like 50 minutes Im going to have to ask the arbiters to bring some board games to the rest room!
Kirill began to apologise, but Maxime intervened:
At least you had a reason after Rxc3! Sasha (Grischuk) really had no reason for that yesterday.
Alexander Grischuk described his draw against Ding Liren in Round 5 as a very good game, but not a very interesting one. Ding varied from the line of the Anti-Marshall he lost to MVL in Round 2 with 9d5 instead of 9d6, but still found himself outprepared and had to find some good moves to hold.
That brings us to the days one decisive game:
Ian Nepomniachtchi took a long break from chess after a crazy schedule last year, pulling out of Wijk aan Zee at the last moment, and so far that seems to have paid off. In Round 5 he unleashed a novelty on Wang Hao, playing 13.h4 in a position where, for instance, Vishy Anand had played Ne3 against Yu Yangyi in Norway Chess last year:
Ian already identified it as a mistake that Wang Hao replied 13Nc7 14.Ng5 Bxg5!? (14g6! seems a better try), since White got a nagging advantage in the simplified position that followed. It became a full-blown AlphaZero approach when the pawn reached h6, allowing Nepo to push his c-pawn to c4:
The position looks relatively quiet, but after 29Nxc4?? 30.Nxc4 Qxc4 here 31.Qh2! (not e.g. 31.Qg3? Qc1+ and the h-pawn falls) wins on the spot due to the threat of mate against the black king. Our Russian commentators were full of praise for Nepos grasp of such positions, where fine technique is woven from the brilliant calculation of short variations. As former Russian team coach Evgeny Bareev put it, you realise that in a minute (and he doesnt spend longer on a move) he sees more than youll see in the next life!
After 29Kg8 30.Qh2 Boris Gelfand already felt it would be extremely difficult for Wang Hao to handle the impending infiltration of the white queen, and so it proved, though it turns out there was a chance to hold after 30Kf7 31.c5 Nb5 32.Qb8:
32Nxd4! was the move, and although after the game Nepo still didnt believe you can play like this it seems that after 33.Qxb7+ Qe7 34.Qxa6 Qe4! there's nothing White can do to stop a draw by perpetual check.
Wang Hao agreed it was very hard to play like that, however, and in the game he went for 32Qd7? 33.Qh8 Ke6 34.f4 Nxd4 35.Qg8+ Qf7 36.Qc8+ Qd7 37.Qg8+ Qf7 and was here hit by the move hed missed 38.Qd8!
38Nb5 can be met by 39.a4, so theres nothing better than losing a piece to 38Qd7 39.f5+! gxf5 40.gxf5+ Nxf5 41.Qxd7+ Kxd7 42.Nxf5. It was still a puzzle, however, that after 42Ke6 43.Ne3 Wang Hao simply threw in the towel:
Black has a lot of pawns and an active king, so maybe there are still chances of holding? Often in such cases the win is obvious to grandmasters, but in this case even World Champion Magnus Carlsen wasnt so sure! We're assuming there's a way, but resignation seems premature.
The post-game press conference didn't solve that mystery, but there was a lot of analysis of the game:
In any case, that victory in a clash of the co-leaders was huge, since it leaves Ian Nepomniachtchi in sole first place on 3.5/5, with MVL now in sole second on 3/5:
In Round 6 Nepomniachtchi has a chance to make a real statement with the white pieces against Ding Liren, while MVL is Black against Wang Hao. Fabiano Caruana is likely to try and makes things complex and time-consuming with Black against Alexander Grischuk. Our English commentary team will again feature Nihal Sarin, while Swedish no. 1 Nils Grandelius will be joining for the first time!
Follow all the games with live commentary in 9 languages on chess24 from 12:00 CET!
See also:
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