Genius in the Background

Quality Chess are publishing "Genius in the Background" by Tibor Karolyi & Nick Aplin by the end of July.

Short description:

Genius in the Background introduces brilliant chess that will be unfamiliar to even well-read chessplayers. Twelve chess stars are profiled with examples of their greatest achievements, but these stars are not famous – they are geniuses who stay in the background. For example, Pervakov and Afek are not household names but they compose chess studies and puzzles of such elegance and cleverness that they deserve to be famous. Top players such as Garry Kasparov and Veselin Topalov may be famous names to chess fans, but they did not become World Champions without great help – two of their coaches are profiled in this book and provide insights into the education of a chess champion.

Candidates Matches

A new FIDE announcement (PDF) threw some light on initially obscure press release about the Presidential Board Meeting that said - "The PB accepted the new regulations for the World Championship Candidate matches.".

Now it is at least clear that there will be no Candidate round robin tournament, but knockout matches instead. I will post key excerpts about the WCOC and qualification, the full document can be downloaded from the link given above.

Organisation

1. 1 The Candidates Matches to determine the challenger for the 2011 World Chess Championship Match shall be organised in the last quarter of 2010 and represent an integral part of the World Chess Championship regulations for the cycle 2009-2011. Eight (8) players will participate in the Candidates Matches and the winner will qualify for the World Chess Championship Match in September 2011.

1. 2 Governing Body: the World Chess Federation (FIDE). For the purpose of creating the regulations, communicating with the players and negotiating with the organisers, the FIDE President has nominated a committee, hereby called the FIDE Commission for World Championships and Olympiads (hereinafter referred to as WCOC)

1. 3 FIDE, or its appointed commercial agency, retains all commercial and media rights of the Candidates Matches, including internet rights. These rights can be transferred to the organiser upon agreement.

Qualification for the 2010 Candidates Matches

The players who qualify for the Candidates Matches are determined according to the following, in order of priority:

2. 1 Challengers Match 2009 - The player who lost the 2009 Challengers Match (G. Kamsky) qualifies.

2. 2 World Cup 2009 - The winner of the World Cup 2009 qualifies.

2. 3 World Championship Match 2010 - The player who lost the 2010 WCC Match (V. Anand or V. Topalov) qualifies.

2. 4 FIDE Grand-Prix 2008/2009 - The two (2) top players from the FIDE Grand-Prix 2008/2009 qualify to participate.

2. 5 Average FIDE Rating List of July 2009 & January 2010 - Two (2) players qualify to participate by rating (excluding the players who qualify from articles 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 above). For the purpose of deciding the 2 rated player qualifiers, the average from the following lists will be used: rating of July 2009 plus rating of January 2010 divided by 2. In case of equality two decimals will be taken into consideration. If the numbers are still equal then the number of games from the twelve months covering the whole year 2009 shall be decisive. That means the player with the greater number of games shall qualify. If the numbers are still equal then the list of March 2010 shall be decisive. If the rating in the March 2010 list is still the same, the player with the greater number of games in this list will qualify. Players who appear in the inactive list in both July 2009 and January 2010 will not be able to qualify as a rated player. If the player is inactive in one list but appears in the other, then the single rating that is published shall be taken as the average.

2. 6 One nominated player by the Organiser - A player, nominated by the organiser, with a rating of at least 2700 in the FIDE rating list of January 2010.

2. 7 Replacements - Any replacements necessary will be fulfilled from the final standings of the FIDE Grand-Prix 2008/2009.

Biel Chess Festival 2009

The Biel Chess Festival 2009 is going to be one of the strongest events of the year. It will feature six grandmasters with average ELO of 2713. Top seeded is GM Alexander Morozevich (2751, RUS), followed by Vassily Ivanchuk (2746, UKR), Boris Gelfand (2733, ISR), Evgeny Alekseev (2716, RUS) , Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2684, FRA), and the winner of Corus Chess B 2009 Fabiano Caruana (2649, ITA).

The Biel Chess Festival 2009 will take place 19-30 July in Switzerland. The news was first brought by Stefano Bellincampi, who also reveals GM Caruana will be in Biel with his coach GM Alexander Chernin.

Chess doesn't get respect it deserves

While clicking through TV channels recently, Toby and I chanced upon coverage of the Scripps 2009 National Spelling Bee. A day or so later we also watched the finals of the National Geographic Bee. Like thousands of other viewers, the mental acuity displayed by the young contestants bowled us over. I'm glad the media covered those events but couldn't help wondering why important chess events don't receive similar coverage.

The chessboard is one of the few level playing fields in the world of competitive sports. Men, women, boys and girls -- able-bodied and disabled -- compete against each other in divisions determined not by age, gender or physical condition but by strength of mind, mental agility and performance.

One would think a society that medicates more than 2.5 million of its children for attention-deficit and hyper-activity-related disorders would pay more attention to a game that teaches players to think slowly, clearly and logically.

More in Orlando Sentinel

Anand's seconds collecting titles

In addition to being paid, working with top-level players can make the seconds better players. It certainly seems to have helped Ganguly. Late last month, he won the Asian Continental Open in the Philippines. The tournament was a qualifier for the World Cup, an important step on the road to the world championship.

After his victory, Ganguly told The Hindu newspaper, "Being Anand’s second gave me the chance to see how champions play and prepare at the highest level. That helped in reshaping my approach to chess."

Assisting a World Champion Yields Dividends in a Title

Ganguly also won the 46th Indian Championship.

Radoslaw Wojtaszek, who also helped Anand during the match against Kramnik in October, went on to win the European Rapid Championship (December) and Rilton Cup (January 2009)

Bazna Kings 2009

"The strongest event ever to take place in Romania" is scheduled for 14-18th June and 21-25th June in Bucharest and Bazna respectively.

Participants:
Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan 2756)
Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine 2746)
Alexei Shirov (Spain 2745)
Boris Gelfand (Israel 2733)
Gata Kamsky (USA 2720)
Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu (Romania 2675)

More about Bazna Kings on Chessdom.com.

Are we, French players nuts?

I have noticed that when a French players talk about "their" defence is like when a priest talks about religion. Usually a French player thinks 1.e4 e6 and Black wins. It seems a matter of faith. A French player very seldom abandon it. I have been playing the French for 10 years now I am thinking about playing it 10 years more. What do you think?

Pingudon on ChessPub Forum

Chess is the most popular game in Philippines

The LTS survey has separate items on sports which are also physical activities (of which the most popular among Filipinos is, naturally, basketball) and those which are non-physical, called "games" instead. It asks: "Thinking about games rather than sports or physical activities, what type of game do you play most frequently?"

Chess is the No. 1 game. It turns out that chess is the Filipinos’ most popular game, meaning non-physical sport. Those citing it as the game they play most frequently are 15.6 percent in the country. This projects to 8.5 million adult chess players nationwide, based on a population of 54.1 million Filipino adults when the survey was done.

The popularity of chess grows with education and socio-economic class. It is the favorite game of only 1 percent of those who didn’t finish elementary school, 10 percent of those with some high schooling, 20 percent of those with some college, and 26 percent of college graduates.

Full article on Inquirer.net

NBA & Chess

"This is a game of Kings"




Via Gambit Blog

Alexandra Kosteniuk Open Letter

It's been a week since Kosteniuk's open letter was posted on the FIDE website, but I somehow missed it. The letter is titled "FIDE Commission for Women's Chess Proposals", but it is clear that she is proposing on her own.

There are seven points (open issues and proposals) in this letter:
- Predictable Tournaments Calendar.
- Making our Women Stars better known and turn them into Role Models.
- Women's World Blitz and Rapid Championships.
- Creating the CAISSA Award.
- Creating a GOLD ORGANIZER award.
- Increasing Women's Prizes in Open Tournaments.
- Supporting women's events with its Budget.

FIDE Treasurer Nigel Freeman responded boldly with regard to the last point - "In fact, if you had bothered to do so and read the papers for the Dresden General Assembly..." Don't step on his toe...

Brian Callaghan, the organiser of the Gibtelecom International Open Chess Tournament, informed Kosteniuk that - "This coming year we will be increasing the Women’s prize money by 22% to £22,500.- with the first prize for Women of UKP8,000 and a further seven main prizes."

I missed the reaction of Susan Polgar, who is co-chairing in the Commission for Women's Chess. But it is funny how Kosteniuk is targeting Polgar's audience. When I type "Susan Polgar" into Google search, kosteniuk.com pops up on the top as paid link.

"Glamorous Chess Champion proves That beauty and brains go together"