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January 30, 2004Kramnik vs. German National TeamVladimir Kramnik challenged four players from the German National Chess Team to a simultaneous match. You can follow the games at Result: 2.5 : 1.5 (for Kramnik)
Posted by Thomas Stahl at 03:36 PM
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January 22, 2004MiniaturesBoth chess books I had as a child contained a full introductory chapter with miniatures. I never appreciated the educative value of short games (if anybody has an idea, please, let me know) but recently I found an important historical reference. As Garry Kasparov mentions in the very first page of the first chapter of his book "My great predecessors"(Everyman Chess 2003): ?A manuscript of the legendary representative of the ?Italian School? Gioacchino Greco (1600-1634) is full of miniatures resembling those that occur with all novices.? Statistics Searching the HCL database with 2003 games I found that there are 10 games with checkmate in only 5 moves. However, a private game holds the absolute record as it ended with checkmate in only three moves: I am not going to mention any name here except for footyhead who has a unique record: He played the same game against two different opponents scoring the point:
It is amazing that he did it twice! Here is a second pair of footyhead's games against two different opponents:
Both (pairs of) games are almost identical. The lesson we learn, is always to study our opponents? games when enrolling in a new tournament. footyhead must follow this instruction too, because he also holds the negative record: He has played 3 games against cantilever and lost all of them in 9 moves with an identical move order!!
Very short games happen even between GMs as the following examples show. One player resigns after realizing a decisive blunder in an early phase of the game. Lautier,J (2596) - Bologan,V (2608) [B10] 1.c4 c6 2.e4 d5 3.cxd5 cxd5 4.exd5 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nbd7 6.Nf3 a6 7.d4 Nb6 8.Ne5 Nbxd5 ?? 9.Qa4+ Bd7 10.Nxd7 1-0
Here is another game. This time White resigns. Lutz,C (2590) - Dautov,R (2595) [B12] 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.dxc5 e6 5.Be3 Nh6 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.c3 Nf5 8.Bf4 Bxc5 9.Bd3 Nh4 10.Nbd2?? Nxg2+ 0-1
Games from PlayChess database One may say that a miniature game is a very compact example of a big chess battle including all phases of a game (opening, middle game, endgame). This is not so. A miniature is actually a game that never escapes the opening phase. One side either blunders or underdevelops, offering the chance to the opponent to attack with all of his forces. The following example shows exactly that. White is under pressure and commits a blunder.
Three minor pieces attack White's Kingside; the position is crucial. White decides to take the d5 Knight, the safest option since Black cannot take the Bishop (or can he?) 7.h3 or 7.f3 would be much better moves, though White must play very carefully to balance the game. 7.Bxd5 Qxd5 8.Nxd5 A beautiful Queen sacrifice and mate in 2 follows: 8... Nf3+ 9.Kf1 Bh3+ 0-1
Most miniatures have something in common. The checkmate is achieved by the Queen (f7 square for White, f2 for Black) with the support of a Bishop (c4 or d5 for White, c5 or d4 for Black) or a Knight(e5/e4). Here is a typical example.
Last move was a mistake. A move like 7...c6 or 7...h5 or even 7...Rg8 would be much better in order to improve Black's defense. As you can see White's attack is tremendous: 8.Bxd7+ Nxd7 9.Qh5+ g6 10.fxg6 Bg7 Development? What for? The end is near. A move like 10...Nf6 can only delay the end. White mates in 2: 11.gxh7+ Kf8 12.Qf7+ 1-0
Finally there are games that the blunder comes surprisingly. One side, White in the following example, gives the opportunity to his opponent to achieve a quick mate. One must always double check next move especially when hostile pieces have crossed the border.
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 07:49 PM
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January 16, 2004Why create chess communities?Quite simply, humans (including chess players!) are social creatures. Chess players want to be around other chess players. And, interestingly, chess players (like most humans) feel most comfortable in a hierarchical organization. For a fascinating article on this, look at the March 2003 Harvard Business Review, for the article "Why Hierarchies Thrive", by Harold Leavitt. The description at the bottom of page concludes "...Over the past 50 years, for example, they [hierarchies] have co-opted the three major managerial movements--human relations, analytic management, and communities of practice. Hierarchies also persist because they deliver real practical and psychological value, and they fulfill our deep need for order and security. Despite the good they may do, however, hierarchies are inevitably authoritarian." Another way to think of these hierarchical communities is like a bee hive (hierarchical, group oriented). Most people like belonging to a good hive, rather than being alone. For example in programming, most programmers would rather work in a good perhaps new and growing hive (pick from JAVA, internet, .NET, etc), rather than work in an old, perhaps decaying hive (pick from ISAM, ASM, VMS, etc), or worse yet, working alone. This psychology relates to the aforementioned "communities of practice", which are mostly hierarchical, and I will claim that chess (like programming) is a community of practice. So a chess community: (a) is a community of practice (how to do something, get better, etc); (b) provides emotional and psychological security/stability (identity, ratings, awards, titles, etc); (c) is authoritarian (rules, arbitration, etc.).
Ultimately, most chess communities are created at the grass roots level, and grow & prosper, or die. Someone, an individual, or small group of people, decide they need to start one. Yes, a concious and emotional decision to start a chess community. Very typically, this would be a local club where "the charter" people decide they wnat a community that better serves their interests, than any existing community. The reasons can be varied: 1. A club closer to where you live (want better accessibility)
The three basic dimensions of a chess community are: (a) accessibility; (b) service (includes price); (c) governance. There is no "right" formula, but you can be sure it is a combined effort to balance volunteer effort into the community, versus production of accessible service. The communities that prosper determine a formula that will work (is focused on) only a segment of the population of chess players. That is, the successful communities will (almost by definition) never be attractive or useful to all chess players all of the time. But they will be extremely attractive and useful to some of the players most of the time. Since different communities will have different offerings, over time a chess community ecosystem will form. That is, a community of communities. Thus we have local clubs that belong to national associations, national associations that belong to international associations. We also have new transnational communities (IECG, IECC, PlayChess.de, etc) that are still sorting out how they fit into the big picture. But fit they must, over time. We already see IECG and ICCF forming tighter ties which gives IECG more credibility, ICCF considering a web server and individual membership, etc. In addition, for new communities to thrive and prosper they must complement, not compete directly with the successful incumbents (for example a new email chess group is not likely to survive against IECG or IECC), or offer services that are new or compelling (such as a web server with a new twist, like PlayChess.de with its great interface, and these blogs!). There is still much competition and sorting out happening in the server space. Nonetheless, my opinion is that a new "general purpose" online server like ICC could not survive because we already have ICC, FICS, etc. They are the successful incumbants. However, new national online servers offered as an extension to the already existing national org stand a chance to erode some server market share. One example is the U.S. Chess Federation, and its new online service. However, I don't expect much erosion, because chess loyalty runs deep.
Chess communities die due to lack of momentum, or disuse. Chess players need a community that feels alive, has a lot of activity, a sense of identity, history, giving meaning to ranking, titles and awards. As long as the governance is providing a structure to channel sufficient volunteer energy to provide valuable services to the community, all is well. If the governance gets distracted, perhaps forgets that it is but one piece of a larger ecosystem, gets arrogant, places its needs above the members or communities interests, then all is lost. In other words, the governance needs to provide valuable, relevant services to its members. Pretty simple, but easy to forget for some. Consider FIDE. FIDE for a while (perhaps even now?) gave community members, and the public, the impression that they were aloof, and did not care much about the average professional chess player. They were (are?) catering to the sponsors, by forcing faster time controls and perceived silly tournament structures onto the membership (players). And yet, despite catering to the sponsors and ignoring players, FIDE was not even treating sponsors well. You can read all about this in the rec.chess.politics newsgroups. The point is that a governance such as FIDE may not yet realize or remember that chess communities are usually created spontaneously at the grassroots level. Thus, with all of the disappointment, disdain, and disgust over FIDE in the last few years, who is to say they too won't die and be replaced? Once a community falls into disuse and disrepair, it is dead. No community is immune. Only time will tell.
A chess community is nominally created by an individual (or a small group of people) who: 1. Are frustrated with existing communities, and personally believe they can provide a more valuable chess service, where one does not exist (either locally or globally); or... This last point is particularly important for chess communities because so much of the chess service delivery is volunteer (or "low wage I do it for love") based, and without good governance, you won't have a good volunteer org, which reduces services. This creates a vicious cycle that leads to decay and death. Particularly vulnerable are "one person shops" like Stan's NetChess, that start great, then when the "one person" gets overloaded, the community falls into disrepair, and loses momentum then relevance. So the bottom line, chess communities are usually created out of a personal and emotional need to offer a new, improved, different service and/or governance. When a chess community is created, you must consider the entire ecosystem that you will fit into, and the kind of governance you are capable of creating and sustaining. Everyone wants to be associated with a winner, no one wants to be associated with a loser. Next we will examine: "What makes a good chess community?" continued...
Posted by Harvey G. Reed at 10:17 PM
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January 14, 2004PlayChess Open - 3rd roundMost games of the second round are over. Accelerated pairing would have been possible earlier, but I wanted to make sure that all players (me inclusive) are back from their christmas holidays and ready for the fight. This second round had a number of surprising results. Some "underdogs" used their silicon partner in a clever way and grabbed half or even full points from their opponents. But these "Grandmaster defeats" do not prevent these favourites from winning the tournament. There are still 7 rounds to go...
Players who refused to play their first two games will be eliminated from the tournament. This will reduce the number of timeouts in this round. Players who lost both games by timing out, but wish to continue the tournament, should notify me as soon as possible.
- MegaCorr 3 CD-ROM I will soon describe these prizes on the pages of the PCO. Thank you (again), Mr. Harding! Please visit our new sponsor at www.ChessMail.com!
Posted by Thomas Stahl at 04:04 PM
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January 11, 2004Why do we have chess communities?When two people play a game of chess with each other, at that moment when they are making moves that is their whole universe. No one may interfere with their play, it is just them, and the chess position. When the game is done, there is a result. A win/loss/draw. At this point, the completed game must be seen in a larger context. Have you played this opponent before? What is your record so far? Is there a defined group of opponents that you play against? Is there a ranking system? Who maintains rankings? Who maintains the rules? What about titles, awards? So then, what is a chess community? Why do they exist? What is the minimal description of chess community, and why would people want something more? Let's assume for the moment that a minimal chess community is a small group of players who play each other for fun, and perhaps informally keep track of wins/losses. You still need the rule book. So at a minimum you need some "institution" that everyone agrees will maintain the rules, and possibly ratings. So far this is obvious, but think about how these communities have evolved so far. They have evolved along country boundaries, and countries themselves have sponsored the creation of international organizations, such as FIDE for over-the-board, and ICCF for correspondence chess. FIDE and ICCF each have their rulebook, and mercifully ICCF defers to FIDE for the basics, only adding the bits about correspondence play. Within a country, the country org generally keeps game result records and their own rulebook (usually specifics that override FIDE rules); and clubs and other organizations abide by the country rules, and rating requirements. Thus, when you play rated chess (over-the-board) it is generally at a tournament, operated by an affiliate of the country org (or FIDE). We should examine the dynamics of why these affiliates are created, and grow and die (regional organizers, clubs, etc.), but first, lets consider the impact of globalization, and the internet. Globalization and the internet has allowed us (all the people that like to play chess) to ignore country boundaries. We form groups (such as PlayChess, IECC, IECG) that are independent of country boundaries. Why are these organizations created? What is the relationship between these trans-national orgs and country orgs? Why are some free, and others fee-based? Why create any chess communities or organizations at all? continued...
Posted by Harvey G. Reed at 08:35 PM
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January 08, 20042003 in numbers (part I)Happy New Year everyone! I have collected some statistical data from HCL and ACL databases. Here are the details regarding HCL: Human Chess League Games, moves, results In 2003 the playchess site hosted 33950 completed games by 2964 players. cccmember has 1185 games in C, B, A and E and Thematic categories. 7072 games were played in A class tournaments, 9110 in B, 8868 in C, 4751 in E, 2837 in M and 1312 in thematic tournaments. Here is a graphical representation of this result: HCL-A616-36 between Flanker and ETC_Chess lasted 127 moves and ended in a draw. 63 games lasted only 5 moves, though only 10 out of those ended with checkmate. There is a private game with a checkmate in only 3 moves; more about it and a lot of entertaining ?miniatures? in a future article. 586 games ended with early draws (less than 20 moves). Openings 20388 games started with 1.e4, 8477 with 1.d4, 1495 with 1.c4 and Irregular openings (ECO A00; that is also excluding 1.b3 and 1.f4 from the above list) are a total of 1387 games.
5074 games follow the Sicilian defense (B20-B99). Most popular variation is the B30 Nimzowitsch-Rossolimo attack 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 with 357 games and the B22 Alapin variation 1.e4 c5 2.c3 with 335. The French defense (C00-C19) has 2605 games, 604 of which follow the C02 advance variation 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Games with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 (C50-C59) have a total of 1557 games. The following diagrams show the most popular openings: Philidor?s defense (C41) is very very popular in PlayChess. It is a very good opening, to begin opening studies. I have already played 4 games (3 as Black) with this line in my earlier B and C class days in this site. With a closer look I discovered that more experienced players do not prefer this opening. The graph above represents games with Philidor?s defense as a percentage of total games played in each category. The results of a C41 game also vary in tournaments of different categories. The first five bars of the graph above show the result of the games in each class, the next bar shows the result across all HCL games. The far right bar represents the score of C41 games, with at least one player over 2400 ELO, from a commercial database. Members of PlayChess tend to draw in less games with this opening than professional chess players, who avoid to play 2?d6 after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 because of the low success rate. A similar research is possible for every opening. However I decided to present here, as a sample, the Advance variation of French defense (C02). I have tried the line twice and then abandoned it in favor of Tarrasch variation 3.Nd2, because I realized that it would not be easy to score a point against a more experienced opponent. The following graphs follow the same convention as above. As you can see this line appears more frequently in M class tournaments. Surprisingly the potential of a draw result is higher than in professional chess. In lower categories, White cannot take full advantage of the 3.e5 move. Black dominates the game. Special thanks to Kounoupidi who contributed to the concept and realization of this article.
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 07:09 PM
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