Thinking Time Can Be a Guide

Continuing with Year-end News from LSS, here is the first game picked from the finals of the 1st LSS Chess960 Championships (2012). I tried to use the technique discussed in the previous post -- having an engine locate a position where the evaluation changes dramatically -- but it turned out to be most useful for middlegame and endgame positions. How to locate a critical opening position?

Since elapsed times from LSS games are recorded along with the moves, it occurred to me to use the players' thinking time in the opening to pinpoint positions that they found difficult. As I discussed in my first post about LSS, The Lechenicher SchachServer, the site uses the 'countdown time control', where each player starts with a fixed amount of time that is never augmented, similar to a sandglass timer. If a player uses more time than originally allocated, the game is lost on time forfeit. Reflection time is precious and shouldn't be squandered.

While there are many reasons a player might use more time for a single move, like having higher priorities for the moment than working on a chess game, elapsed time is still a useful guideline. The players were assigned SP144 BBNRNQKR for their two games with each other. In one game, after 1.c4 c5 2.b3, the position shown in the diagram was reached. Black spent a relatively large amount of time on the next move. What would you play?

1. LSS Chess960 Final
C.Zolendowski - V.Nemchenko

After 2.b2-b3

Black, the higher rated player by about 200 points, played 2...e5. The move might seem surprising, since it creates a hole on d5, but it achieves two positional objectives:-

• It stops d2-d4, a natural move for White with the Rook sitting on d1.
  
  
• It cuts the a1-h8 diagonal, where the Bishop on a1 is aimed at the likely future position of Black's castled King.

For his next move, White also gave the position considerable thought and finally played 3.Nf3, attacking the e-Pawn. The game continued 3...f6 4.e3 b6 5.Nh4 Ne7 6.Ne2 Qf7 7.Nf5. Here Black again thought for a longer time than on most of his other moves. After 7...Nxf5 8.Bxf5 d5 (Eliminating the backward d-Pawn after another long thought.) 9.cxd5 Bxd5 10.Nc3 Be6 11.Bxe6 Qxe6 12.e4 Nc7 13.Qe2 O-O 14.O-O, both players have castled and the position could have arisen from the traditional start position.

With the players castled, it's clear that Black has the better position. White's d-Pawn is backward on an open file and will be a problem for many moves. White kept finding counterplay, but was eventually overwhelmed and resigned on the 77th move, far behind on the clock along with a lost position.

Year-end News from LSS

Let's turn our attention away from chess960 on the ICC (last seen in Fischer and 'Wild Variant 22') and turn it toward LSS (last seen in Games Between Skillful Players). In the 'Skillful Players' post, I wrote,

Continuing with my copy of the LSS database, I identified games between players rated 2000 or more. Of the 7308 games on file, a little more than 100 games met this criteria. [...] The site now offers annual 'LSS Chess960 Championships', but the 2012 edition has only completed the preliminary stage, where there was just a single pairing of 2000+ players. We should see more games between top players as the semifinal and final stages complete.

In November, the 1st LSS Chess960 Championships (2012) finished with an unbreakable tie for first place, as shown in the following chart.

The co-winners, Valery Nemchenko and Marek Sadowski, tied their games with each other and had perfect scores against the two other players. Since the drawn games might lack tension, I looked instead at their games against the third-placed player, hoping to find one to use on this blog. I ran into two challenges.

The first challenge applies to correspondence chess games in general. There are so many dynamics in the course of a game between first class players, that it is almost a hopeless task for an outsider to dissect it intelligently. I decided to concentrate on a specific position in the chosen game. Which position to choose? The most instructive approach is to narrow the possibilities -- at one point the game is equal and at a later point the game is objectively lost. A critical position must lie somewhere between the two points.

The second challenge applies to chess960 games. In traditional chess, where we understand the start position and initial moves so well, we usually have a good sense of the dynamics as the game emerges from the opening. The play is either balanced or one side has an advantage. That gives us one of our two endpoints to search for a critical position. In chess960 we're never really sure which dynamics were in the start position (SP) and which were introduced by the players' moves. Engines aren't as much help here, because their opening evaluation heuristics are usually taken directly from traditional chess.

That is the main reason why I prefer analyzing chess960 openings on this blog. It's the phase of the game which is the most difficult for experienced players of traditional chess. Many chess960 middlegames and all endgames are better suited for my main blog.

Games, games, games; ultimately that's what chess960 is all about. In January, LSS released a new edition of the games database.

Complete LSS Chess960 Database upto December 2013 with a total of 8874 games in zipped PGN-Format for 1.3 MB

Over the next few weeks, I'll load those games into a database, perform some simple statistical analysis, and discuss the results. One idea just came to mind : identify SPs where an initial Pawn advance into the center looks problematic.

More 'Me and Bobby Fischer'

Thanks to a forum post on Schemingmind.com, Bobby Fischer about Fischer Random (works only if signed-in), I learned that the full version of the documentary 'Me and Bobby Fischer' is now on Youtube.

Me and Bobby Fischer (1:25:14) • 'Part of a documentary about Bobby Fischer in Iceland in the last part of his life.'

In two posts on this blog a few years ago, I transcribed the chess960 portions of this film: Fischer Compares Chess960 to Puffed Wheat and 'Me and Bobby Fischer' and Chess960. The Youtube description says 'part of a documentary', but with a length of 85 minutes, the clip must include most of the full version. • HT: Space, Schemingmind

Who's Interested in Chess960?

A few years ago, in Stats and More Stats, I presented some statistics about visitors to this blog. Here's an update.

May 2009 – December 2013

The three charts, all of which are prepared on demand by Google, show 'Pageviews by Countries', 'Pageviews by Browsers', and 'Pageviews by Operating Systems'. The most significant difference between this world map and the 'More Stats' world map is the appearance of Russia. Interest in this blog -- and by extension, interest in chess960 -- is now at the same level as in Germany and the U.K.

Here's wishing you a great 2014!

Fischer and 'Wild Variant 22'

I ended the previous post, Notable Chess960 Players (on the ICC) with an observation.

I discovered two active players who don't feature on any 'best' list but who might be important to the history of chess960: GM Miguel Quinteros, aka mquinteros, and GM Eugene Torre, aka Bradidik. Both are known to have been friendly with Fischer.

After writing that paragraph I started to wonder whether Fischer might possibly have played chess960 on the ICC. There were, after all, rumors that he had been spotted there in the early 2000s. Before looking into the details, I checked whether chess960 was available on the ICC at that time. Indeed it was: ICC News Item #1125, 'Fischer-Random Chess is now available on ICC', dated 15 January 1999.

The Internet Chess Club now has Fischer-Random Chess available as wild variant 22. The pieces start out in one of 960 possible initial positions. Pieces are arranged randomly on the first rank, with the only restrictions being the King must be between the two Rooks, and the Bishops must be on opposite colors.

That was well before the ICC sightings were reported; for example, The third coming of Bobby Fischer? [Chessbase.com], 18 September 2001:-

The story is not going away, in fact it is gaining momentum. Many people believe that Bobby Fischer has returned and is performing miracles on the Internet. Nigel Short said he was "99 per cent sure" he has played Fischer.

The reports attracted so much attention that the ICC put up a help page titled Short's Encounter with...Fischer? [Chessclub.com]. Using the links on that page I located a radio interview where he was asked about the rumors (see Bobby Fischer Radio Interviews '20th, Reykjavik, Iceland, Jan 27 2002', about 2:00 into the first audio clip).

Q: There has been news that you might have been playing on the Internet. Is that true? A: Not true. That's a lot of BS. [...] Q: Nigel Short said that he met someone on the Net that might have been you. A: He can say whatever he wants.

It turns out that the radio interview was the same I once featured in Fischer: 'The *Old* Chess Is Dead'. The question about Short was asked between the two excerpts I gave in that 'Chess Is Dead' post.

None of this rules out the possibility that Fischer played 'wild variant 22' on the ICC, but it's definitely a stretch. If the ICC ever releases better tools to query the game database, I'll take a second look, but that's unlikely to happen soon.

Notable Chess960 Players

Afer that brief detour for The Week in Chess960, let's return to Finding Top ICC Chess960 Players. At the top of the 'Best' list is Hikaru Nakamura, aka Smallville, whose last chess960 game was played in August 2010 against the second best player on the list. The American GM has been featured several times on this blog, where the previous post was 'I wish there were more opportunities to play'. While I would like to present some of his ICC games, they were all played at a three-minute blitz time control and there is no classification by start position on ICC. If I think of some clever way to filter the games, I'll take another look.

Further down the ICC list is Yasser Seirawan, aka Om (as in the Hindu mantra?), another former U.S. Champion. He last played in November 2013, and was last featured on this blog in A Few More Chess960 Resources.

Ranked just beneath Seirawan is Fabiano Caruana, aka Adaptation, and, like Nakmura, another world top-10 player at traditional chess. I wasn't aware that he was a chess960 player until I wrote the 'Top ICC' post. He last played in July this year.

While I was writing this current post, I discovered two active players who don't feature on any 'best' list but who might be important to the history of chess960: GM Miguel Quinteros, aka mquinteros, and GM Eugene Torre, aka Bradidik. Both are known to have been friendly with Fischer. Did they ever play his invention with him? I hope that some day we find out one way or the other.

The Week in Chess960

In my previous post, Elite ICC Chess960 Players, I ended with a declaration by GM Andrei Deviatkin [Andrey Devyatkin], "Maybe I will continue playing Fischer's chess, but the fact that there are no tournaments in this format means that chess is over for me. It's time to try out something else." Around the start of the recent Carlsen - Anand match (game two), I happened to record a Twitter dialog between Deviatkin and TWIC's Mark Crowther. For some reason that escapes me, Twitter excerpts are usually presented as visual snippets. Here it is.

And here's the same conversation transcribed for the sightless, like search engines.

Mikhail Golubev ?@mikhail_golubev 10 Nov • GM Nigel Davies: "I wonder when the fans of 'classical chess' World Championships will finally admit that a change is required".

Andrey Deviatkin ?@AndreyDeviatkin 10 Nov • @mikhail_golubev Fischer random change

Mark Crowther @MarkTWIC 10 Nov • @AndreyDeviatkin @mikhail_golubev If Fischer random is the answer then it's time to take up a completely different game.

Andrey Deviatkin @AndreyDeviatkin 10 Nov • @MarkTWIC @mikhail_golubev Global chess laws, middlegame and endgame theory, tactics - everything will be the same except the openings.

Mark Crowther @MarkTWIC 10 Nov • @AndreyDeviatkin There is a beauty and balance to the start position we have. You can be pretty much lost with some random positions.

The last tweet, missing from my snippet, was

Andrey Deviatkin @AndreyDeviatkin 10 Nov • @MarkTWIC "Ugly" is subjective. And I'm sure Black isn't lost in any of the positions. Isn't it like saying Caro-Kann or French is losing?

It's mind-boggling how often I see fans of traditional chess rejecting chess960 for imagined faults. I'll cut Crowther some slack, because the success of TWIC is partly based on his weekly distribution of recent games. The interest in his work stems from players maintaining chess databases for opening research and would shrink (disappear?) if the game scores were chess960 games. In the world of traditional chess, the middlegame and endgame receive far less attention than the opening, putting Crowther in the same company as titled players who earn a living from books like 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Amar's Opening'.

Question to Mark Crowther: If 'it's time to take up a completely different game', what game do you recommend? Halo?