hhdbvi is published

 Harold van der Heijden's sixth database is published now!

If you did receive a special invitation e-mail because you work for EG or are a friend of Harold, make sure to read the instructions there. Everyone else can order the database for 55 Euro:

https://www.hhdbvi.nl/

 

If you have no previous version of the database, or if you are an endgame studies aficionado/enthusiast, I highly recommend it. But of course I am biased as I write for EG...

New study about After-Death Communication by Evelyn Elsaesser

As I am very interested in the field of Near- and After-Death experiences, I am very thankful that Evelyn Elsaesser, a famous Swiss researcher on that field, makes her new research available for free (in English and Spanish). She very kindly sent me the research via e-mail two days ago, now I see that it is also on her website (PDF).

I hope that, despite this not being about chess, some of my readers will enjoy the interesting science carried out here.

https://www.evelyn-elsaesser.com/research/

While you hopefully will stay safe during these fierce times, the research shall reinforce your knowledge that - while the process of dying is a very horrible one from the current pandemic - death itself is a mere transformation.

(I want to however warn that now suicide is not an option, as it will lead to repeating the issues you had in this life, as evidenced by many reports. Exceptions are justified suicide, such as saving the life of another person by giving yours - jumping into a river to save a child but not making it out yourself, for example. Another exception is when your death is already imminent and you face excruciating pain, such as with terminal cancer. But those are narrow, and in general suicide is not a way out, but rather one to prolong your suffering into your next life.)

FIDE stops Candidates 2020 (uncommented statement by President Dvorkovich)

Today, the government of the Russian Federation announced that starting March 27, 2020, Russia interrupts air traffic with other countries without indicating any time frames.

FIDE can not continue the tournament without guarantees for the players' and officials' safe and timely return home. In this situation and on the basis of clause 1.5. Rules of Candidates Tournament, the FIDE President decided to stop the tournament. It will be continued later, with the exact dates to be announced as soon, as the global situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic will allow. As it was stipulated by the special rules agreed with the players before the start of the event, the results of the 7 rounds played remain valid, and the tournament will be resumed in the same composition starting with the games of the 8th round. FIDE is grateful to the players, officials, volunteers and the entire team of organizers, including the Chess Federation of Russia and the main partner of the tournament - SIMA-Land.

Sincerely,
Arkady Dvorkovich,
FIDE President


(source: ChessBase)

Fact Check I: (WRONG) Was a 7yo Israeli girl denied access to a World Chess Championship in Tunisia?

The Times of Israel has published an article on 21 July claiming a 7yo Israeli girl was not allowed to participate in the rapid WCh in Tunisia.
Thanks to an informant who wants to remain anonymous it was found out that this information was plain wrong. The tournament there is a privately organized tournament. There was not a FIDE sanctioned event, let alone a World Chess Championship.

We can at the time not confirm if or if not a 7yo Israeli girl was denied entry to that private event, but even if so we would be unable to know the reasons for that (there could be safety reasons, worries for her, not wanting such a young girl to play far away from home, not necessarily an anti-Israeli motivation). However, I believe that a private organizer has the right to choose whom he wants to let participate, meaning even in the event that she was denied participation there would in my opinion be no obvious violation of FIDE guidelines.

So the Times of Israel article is WRONG!
https://www.timesofisrael.com/7-year-old-chess-champ-cant-compete-in-tunisia-tourney-because-shes-israeli/

Many thanks to the informant for the investigation!


Update, 6 August 2018: I was sent the following article:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tunisia-backtracks-allows-israeli-child-to-compete-in-chess-tourney-1.6342006
The child now is allowed to participate. Again, this is no official FIDE event and we don't know the reasoning of the organizers to not let her play at first or why that decision was changed.

About project "Study of the Month"

I have sent my annual report to the WFCC president and the president of the Subcommittee for Endgame Studies in the WFCC yesterday. I believe the project "Study of the Month", which is hosted by ChessBase, is a great success, and although not many people comment on it, I have the unofficial comments per e-mail that tell me that the chess composers are reading it, they enjoy it, and they are unfortunately too polite to tell what should be changed when it should.

For this year, i.e. 2018, we have undertaken the historical examination.We have shown several early composers, and will continue to do so. For December a special christmas issue is already in the works, but details can't be given yet.

The articles about the following main topics were published in 2018 so far:


January: Alexey Troitzky
February: Platov brothers
March: Kubbel brothers
April: Nikolay Grigoriev (extensive)
May: Chess Studies; or: Endings of Games

The following topic is scheduled for June, to be published on June 30.
Henri Rinck

So far only very famous composers have been covered, but those are incidentally the most important figures. I am worried about the new EU copyright directive, as it might prevent the re-use of still copyrighted endgame studies for educational and scientific purposes without permission of untracable heirs. History might end with the studies of people who died in 1947 then. This would be a horrible cultural holocaust. (Link in German, as there is no English article fitting.)

PraggnANANDhaa Rameshbabu is grandmaster!

https://en.chessbase.com/post/praggnanandhaa-a-game-away-from-becoming-a-grandmaster

"Pragg" (* 10 August 2005), as he is often called, has received his third norm in the small Italian village Ortisei. Congratulations!

Open source chess engine tries to reproduce AlphaZero algorithms

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/882jr8/leela_chess_zero_the_fork_of_leela_zero_for_chess/

Some people here probably followed Deepmind's AlphaGo, then AlphaGoZero and finally AlphaZero's achievements. However Google did not release the weights for all thoses networks, so a community has formed trying to reproduce and maybe improve the AlphaZero engine.
To do this, a distributed effort to play self-play games has started, and the training is done on a single powerful computer (It can update the weights in about 5 hours currently).

The developers also allow everyone to play against their engine:
http://play.lczero.org/

Further information can be found on the website  http://lczero.org/ which necessarily is rather technical.

And while people like Magnus Carlsen struggle to reach 2850 Elo, the engine struggles as well... to reach 4250 Elo. Yes, that is a 4, not a 3. But how "real" that number is, is the real question.

Imageboard activists donate possibly several 100,000 Euro to cancer charity

Protesting against an article by cybersecurity "journalist" Brian Krebs, users of a big German imageboard donated - using the pun of "Krebs" as being the German word for cancer - an official 103,000 Euro to the Deutsche Krebshilfe until several hours ago. As the donations are still ongoing, the DKMS received also a lot of donations, and some donations were also made to foreign charities and other diseases' charities, the entire sum of the donations will likely remain unknown but in my estimation could be as high as 500,000 Euro.

The semi official slogan of the action:
Krebs ist scheiße >_

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/angry-users-donate-120k-to-cancer-research-after-brian-krebs-coinhive-article/

London 2017 Chess Classic Press Release

With explicite permission of John Saunders, who among other things also is press officer for London 2017, we publish hereby the press release including the players of London 2017. As I would need to use cryptography, such as zip files in images, to upload it directly here, a link is instead provided to the files on my Dropbox. Enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3if5yj97hknwuwr/AACj706xGE1wsQiso7oUlMvja?dl=0

Did Kasparov destroy his own legend? An opinion piece.

The Rapid and Blitz in St. Louis is over, and we have seen that Kasparov still belongs to the top players of the world - in the top 20 to top 30 in any case, possibly even in the top 10 - but he is not the eight-eyed monster that sees everything anymore. He is not the Linares winner of 2005 anymore. He is not the world champion anymore. Kasparov has demontaged his own legend, he has become a mortal, an aging chess master over his zenith. He still is a great player, and for many having the strength that Kasparov showed in St. Louis is a target they can only dream of, but he now is one of many, not even a primus inter parem, far less the number one.

The world champion who played David Braben's Elite in his free time has matured into a political activist for whom chess has become a hobby, just like Elite back then. Maybe it is time to train hard, to have the greatest comeback in chess history. Or maybe it is time to just enjoy chess, play some tourneys for fun, win some opens, retire from politics and enjoy life.

Or maybe it is time for something new. Who knows what is Garry's next invention? The video game loving boy of the 1980s soon ventured into chess software and hardware, having an own series of chess computers. Will the mature Kasparov use his influence once more to find ways to improve chess for the general public? Now he is a politician, and countries that teach chess in schools have proven it to be successful for the social development of children. And in fact Kasparov already worked towards chess in schools. Why not again?

Garry, you might not be the best anymore. But you are still a legend. Use it for the best!

12 years later, Kasparov returns to play chess in St. Louis - but only Rapid and Blitz

As Peter Doggers on chess.com reports, Kasparov will be attending the Rapid and Blitz tourneys in St. Louis this year. A one-time event, or does Kasparov return to professional chess? In Kasparov's own words, there is little time for the dedication serious chess requires and deserves. So it seems like a one-time event, but who knows?

Even if it is just this one time, it will be interesting to see if Kasparov can hold up to a new generation of chess. Or if he still dominates with ease.

FIDE Album 2013-2015, section D (endgame studies) scores

The scores are online.

http://www.wfcc.ch/fide-albums/fa1315sl/fa1015d/

Welcome to Levon Aronian in the exclusive club of FIDE Album composers! Inspired by Smyslov and Co.?

Study of the Month (on ChessBase)

Readers will be excited about, in cooperation with the WFCC and ChessBase, a new monthly column "Study of the Month" by Yours Truly in which older but interesting studies will be explained in detail.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-the-pawn-is-the-soul-of-the-game

In the first issue, we take a look if a pawn can draw against queen and two pieces. The following columns are planned to appear around the beginning of each month.

Special thanks go to all members of the WFCC subcommitee for studies, especially Yochanan Afek, John Nunn and Martin Minski, as well as Frederic Friedel and Fernando Offermann from ChessBase to enable this project!


EDIT:
This post may serve as repository for the links. As SOTM 1 is linked above, here are the further links. All links open in a new window (tip: set them to open in a new tab in your browser settings instead for better navigation).

Study of the Month 2 - http://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-an-impossible-move
Study of the Month 3 -  http://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-a-knight-a-knight-my-kingdom-for-a-knight

Two matches - different, yet similarly writing history

We would like to draw attention to two top-class matches where history is about to be written.

1. The Women World Chess Championship match might see Hou Yifan, who is currently leading 4:2 against Maria (Mariya) Muzychuk, regaining her title again, thus breaking the record of Elsiabeth (Elisabeta / Jelisaweta) Bykowa, who regained her title once after losing it. However, in total years of holding the title, Hou Yifan is far behind the record holders.

2. The Go match of Google's AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol saw the spectacular loss of Sedol in the first game. With up to four more games to go, this could be anoher success for computer game science after Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess (1997) and Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy (2011).

EDIT, 10 March 2016: Both Hou Yifan and AlphaGo won again, making the matches now a 4:2 score (Hou Yifan vs. Muzychuk) and a 2:0 score (AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol).

EDIT, 15 March 2016: Hou Yifan eventually won with 3 victories at 6:3 against Muzychuk. Congratulations! AlphaGo preliminary won 3:0 against Lee Sedol, but as the games went on there regardless, Lee Sedol defended humanity's honor with a spectacular win in the fourth round. I still will welcome our machine overlords. ;-)
(You can see Lee Sedol's "hand of god" move here: https://youtu.be/yCALyQRN3hw?t=3h10m20s)
The machine won the last game, so the final result is 4:1, but Lee Sedol's one win will go down into history.

UAPA 2015 Conflict

Yours Truly will NOT give any statement on the UAPA 2015 affair for lack of information. You can read on Didukh's blog, however, what he writes about it.

http://didok.moyblog.net/2016/01/28/uapa-2015/

As a disclosure, Yours Truly was contacted by Peter Krug a few days ago about this, Krug claims that the UAPA has (via Garcia from what I understood) rejected his award for reasons within the award itself, although no technical error has happened. Rather Krug decided to award too few studies to the UAPA taste.

We would like people to remain calm here. Possibly a neutral investigation, led by officials (WFCC) would be necessary.

UPDATE, 8 February 2016: The official award is now available here:
 http://www.problemistasajedrez.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Provisional-Award-UAPA-2015.pdf

WCCI judges to be supervised

After the high number of Russian and Ukrainian judges at the WCCI was mentioned in the MatPlus forum, the WFCC has made a decision to not let any rumors of any kind of unneutrality spread.

(8) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Monday, Jan 18, 2016 09:08]
We have recently decided that *ALL* WCCI judges should send the spreadsheets with their points not only to the director, but simultaneously also to the members of the supervising panel and to the WFCC president.

Thsi is a very good decision that strengthens the trust of the public into the WFCC procedures, especially as it had to fight with such allegations of not preventing maljudgement several years ago when in international contests judges of one country gave no points and no explanation to compositions from another country, leading to the biggest scandal in the history of the organisation (then named PCCC).


This blog entry shall also serve as a final reminder that the period for sending compositions to the WCCI ends tomorrow. See the announcement and news here.

Chess composition news (9 January 2016 edition)

Here's a few news about recent chess composition activities:

Yehuda Hoch 70 JT
Ofer Comay sent me an e-mail that the Variantim 2016 tourney will also serve as the birthday tourney Yehuda Hoch 70 JT. Please send your originals to Ofer Comay at his gmail.com address (first name and last name together without any point in the middle at gmail.com). As I checked for this article, the official website has no announcement yet but builds up an archive of old issues of Haproblemai and Variantim.

Didukh's pseudonyms
In the comments on his always interesting blog, Sergiy Didukh has admitted to using two pseudonyms. The article is to be found here, with thanks to Martin Minski for showing it to me. Yours Truly is interested if the pseudonym himself once used will also be found out eventually.

hhdbv
The endgame study collector Harold van der Heijden has published the fifth version of his database, now containing a total of 85,619 entries, 164 of them bear the name of Yours Truly. The internet address to order the database (download only, 14 MB, PGN format) is http://hhdbv.nl/ and the price of 50 Euro that, while looking steep at first, are made up for by the huge content. For hhdbiv owners, there are over 9000 new studies - literally, as it had 76,132 entries. Most of the year 2015 is covered, seeing as the database was issued in December (the previous one was of October 2010). For those who decide to wait, the next version is scheduled for 2020, which Yours Truly expects to be around the same price, unless the Euro breaks apart. (As a full disclosure, Yours Truly received as EG editor a free database download. The EG Archive has the issues 1 to 152 for download but those were long before he became an editor.)

Study of the Year 2014 entries
The entries for the annual contest Study of the Year for the year 2014 are online. The contest does not want to show the best study, but rather the one most suitable for the general chess public. In the past, we saw easily accessible studies without deep analysis but with a memorable ending or idea as the winner, suggesting that this time again analytical endgames would be without a chance - rightfully so, as they lack appeal to newcomers, even if they might importantly contribute to the theory.

EDIT, 14 January 2016: I found all previous "Study of the Year" winners on Sergiy Didukh's blog, with PGN.
Article on Didukh's blog in Russian

John Roycroft has a new website

John Roycroft now also has an own website:
http://www.roycroft-ajr.uk/

It contains (to my knowledge never before published) private information about Roycroft as well as his bibliography and a link to a Youtube video where he practices yoga.

We hope for more content to come.

An incredible move

We would like to draw attention to the game of Denis Khismatullin vs. Pavel Eljanov, played on 6 March 2015 in the European Individual Championship in Israel. After 43 moves, the following position was reached:

 White to move

There are five possible moves for White: 44.Ra1, 44.Re1, 44.f4+, 44.h4+ and 44.Qe7+. Let us analyze them.

• 44.Ra1 Rf6 45.f4+ Kh4 46.Qh6+ Kg3 47.Qg5+ Kh2 48.Q:f6 Qe2 mate (or 48.Qg4 h5 49.Qf3 Q:c6 or even stronger 49.-h4! and Black wins).
• 44.Re1 Rf6 45.f4+ Kh4 46.Qh6+ Kg3 47.Qg5+ Kh2 48.c7 Rc6! and Black wins, or 48.Q:f7 Q:g2 mate.
• 44.f4+ Kh4 45.Q:d6 Q:d1+ 46.Kf2 Qe2+ 47.Kg1 Q:e3+ 48.Kh2 Qg3+ 49.Kg1 Qe1+ 50.Kh2 leads to perpetual check.
• 44.h4+ Kh5 45.g4+ K:g4 leaves White in a difficult situation, where 46.Q:f7!! Q:d1+ 47.Kg2 leads to a draw, according to the computer.
• 44.Qe7+ Rf6 45.f4+ Kh6 46.Qf8+ Kh5 is dangerous for White, although here also 47.Kg1!! draws, according to the computer.

It seems obvious that White should play 44.f4+ with a rather easy draw then. Of course, there is no possible way to win.

It did not matter that day. Khismatullin found an impossible way to win.
44.Kg1!!
Wait, what? The rook hangs with check, Black has an incredible passed pawn, and he still is lost? Indeed. The real depth of the trouble can be seen by the computer giving 44.-Rd5(!!) and 44.-Q:c6 as the best suggestions, both of which leave White with a big advantage but Black could fight for a draw. It really is difficult to give a question mark to the next move, although it objectively deserves one.
44.-Q:d1+?
This loses soon, but it is difficult to see why. Most likely Black assumed Khismatullin was going for a draw in style.
45.Kh2 R:c6 46.Qe7+ Kh6 47.Qf8+ Kg5
With a draw, after all, Eljanov might have thought.
 48.Q:f7!!

 Black to move

Black has every advantage in this position - active pieces, a rook up, a dangerous passed pawn - except one: The king's security. And as unfair as it is, no matter how good you have played and how many advantages you collected: if you are checkmated, you lose.

And Black will be checkmated sooner or later. The game lasted for another nine moves, which will be given without further comment.

An incredible position we have in this diagram, great play by Khismatullin!

48.-Rf6 49.f4+ Kh6 50.Q:f6 Qe2 51.Qf8+ Kh5 52.Qg7! h6 53.Qe5+ Kh4 54.Qf6+ Kh5 55.f5! g:f5 56.Q:f5+ Kh4 57.Qg6 and Black gave up.

As a postscriptum it should be added that both did not take a top rank. The tournament was won by Jewgeni Najer, in front of David Navara and Mateusz Bartel. If there was a beauty prize, however, this 44.Kg1 would have deserved it.

Thanks to fellow historian Wolfgang Pieper (Osnabrück) for telling me about the game!

Recent news, 13 August 2014

Hermann Weißauer dead at 93

On the weekend of 2nd and 3rd August, the German composer Hermann Weißauer has died. The sad news was confirmed by Franz Pachl. Dr. Weißauer was Honorary Master for Chess Composition. Born on 4 October 1920, he invented the Weißauer-Bahnung in 1978, which is described as follows in Milan's encyclopedia:

Black clears a line for White after a capture on this very line

The thematic problem can be seen at the de-Wikipedia link given above.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov re-elected as FIDE president

The disputed ex-politician Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was re-elected as president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). His opponent, World Chess Champion 1985-2000 (undisputed until 1993) Garry Kasparov, received 61 of 174 votes, Ilyumzhinov received 110 of 174 votes. I have no information regarding the three missing votes.

One interesting fact: Ilyumzhinov was a politician first, friend of the Russian government... and then became FIDE president. Kasparov became a politician only after retiring from chess and - after being a political activist, opponent of the Russian government... also wants to become FIDE president.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was president of the Republic of Kalmykia, a Russian republic, from 1993 to 2010. Garry Kasparov dominated the chess world from the late 1980s to 2004 when he retired. Kasparov held the biggest chess rating of all time, an Elo of 2851, in 1999 and 2000. The record was only recently surpassed by the current World Champion, Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen, who set a record Elo 2882 in May 2014. With the Elo inflation, however, a match between Kasparov in his best times against Carlsen today would hold a great suspense...

First Israel Open Solving Championship

The Israel Open Solving Championship was held on 20 July 2014 in the Leyada. The winner was Piotr Murdzia (Poland) while the Israel Championship was won by Ofer Friedland. More information can be found on the official website.

Judit Polgar to retire from competitive chess

While preparing this news article, the message has reached us that Judit Polgár, the possibly strongest chessplaying woman in the world (she never played a woman world championship since she doesn't want to participate in pure woman tourneys), has announced to retire from competitive chess. An article on Chessbase brings further details. Polgár's sister Susan is also a rare chess composer.

Current Woman World Chess Champion is Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan who first gained the title at 16 years old.