29 December 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Crosstable & PGN

Looks like I jumped the gun on last week's post 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Wrapup, (December 2021). Before writing it I should have added the crosstable and PGN to the page, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi; Dubai, XI-XII, 2021 (m-w.com). Done and done.

Now I'll have to update the 'Wrapup' post to include this current post. At the same time I can add the most recent post on my main blog, A Trio of World Championship Video Makers (December 2021).

As for adding the Carlsen - Nepo match to the World Chess Championship : Index of Players, the 'Wrapup' post had a list of actions...

What to do tackle next on this blog? I have open actions from two series of posts started before the match.

...where one of them was to update the same 'Index of Players'. To be done (next year!)...

22 December 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Wrapup

With this post we bid farewell to the recent World Championship match, following a series of posts on this blog under the heading '2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi'.

Because I spent less time following the match than I did with previous matches, I had fewer posts on my main blog. I could find only three.

Given GM Nepomniachtchi's performance, it's unlikely that we'll see him back for another match against Carlsen. This is a good time to document a series of posts from earlier this year, also on my main blog.

What to do tackle next on this blog? I have open actions from two series of posts started before the match.

It might have been premature to 'bid farewell' to the match. For example, I still haven't tackled the material in the 'Flood of Videos' post. Then there's the little matter mentioned in the 'Third Week' post -- World Champion Carlsen might decline to play any further matches unless the conditions suit him.

That stance, trying to dictate the rules for subsequent matches, follows a long tradition established by previous World Champions. Several of the pre-FIDE champions were guilty of arranging the cards in their favor. It continued with Botvinnik, the first FIDE champion, then later with Fischer and Kasparov. I thought this had been settled with Kasparov, who ultimately accepted that the title belongs to FIDE. The world federation, not the champion, sets the rules.

With Carlsen there is the additional complication that he has profited from branding his name through the 'Play Magnus' company, using it to acquire other companies involved in chess. I gave an outline in Carlsen's TMER 2019-21, Chess24 (November 2021). Now he has shareholders who might not be so thrilled that he risks damaging his own brand.

Yesterday GM Carlsen expressed his position in writing: Dubai Expo FIDE World Championship Match (svw.no; 'Written by Magnus Carlsen').

I have by now played against the previous generation and three leading players of my generation. Being result-oriented has worked out for me in these matches, but it doesn’t feel sustainable long term. Passion must be the main driver. It is unlikely that I will play another match unless maybe if the next challenger represents the next generation.

Will the next title match be held in 2022 or 2023? The FIDE calendar (fide.com) currently lists 'FIDE Candidates Tournament 2022', without being more specific, and has no entry for the next World Championship. Whatever happens, there promises to be plenty of drama for Magnus Carlsen's many fans.

15 December 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, the Third Week

I started and finished last week's post 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, the Second Week (December 2021), with:-
It ain't over 'til it's over, but it's over. The score is now +3-0=6 with five games to be played. [...] If one of the top American chess journalists [the New York Times' former chess columnist Dylan Loeb McClain] thought the match 'may have been decided already' after two wins for Carlsen, what can we say after three wins? It's over...

*It*, being the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi match in Dubai (m-w.com), continued for another two games : a draw and a win for Carlsen with the Black pieces. A score of +4-0=7 with three games left to be played was the most convincing, crushing victory in World Champion Carlsen's five title matches. Continuing with the 'Second Week' post, let's reference the last official reports titled 'FIDE World Championship 2021' from Fide.com:-

Let's also not overlook the last Youtube videos in the series 'FIDE World Championship Match - NBC Recap Game':-

Post-match, Carlsen dropped a bombshell piece of news. In an earlier post in this series, The First Week (December 2021), I referenced a couple of stories from Sean Ingle of The Guardian. His take on the latest news was Magnus Carlsen may opt against world chess defence due to lack of motivation (theguardian.com; December 2021), subtitled:-

Carlsen retained world championship title in Dubai • "It doesn’t mean as much any more as it once did" • Magnus Carlsen insists he has other priorities outside of the world championship.

What happens if Carlsen declines to play? The rules for the Dubai match, 'Regulations for the FIDE World Championship Match 2021', said,

2. Participation [...] 2.2. If the World Champion or the Challenger withdraws for any reason, he is replaced by the runner-up of the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2020.

Assuming that rule remains in effect, the participants in the next Candidates Tournament might be playing for *both* places in the subsequent World Championship match. The Guardian story mentioned,

The 31-year-old [Carlsen] said the only thing likely to persuade him to keep defending his title would be if his next opponent was the brilliant 18-year-old Alireza Firouzja, who recently broke Carlsen’s record as the youngest 2800-rated player and is now ranked world No 2.

Firouzja qualified for the Candidates event in last month's 2021 Grand Swiss (m-w.com) held in Riga. No one can accuse Carlsen of avoiding a tough challenge. Maybe he's just setting the stage for a nail-biting Candidates Tournament.

08 December 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, the Second Week

It ain't over 'til it's over, but it's over -- the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi in Dubai, that is. I started last week's post, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, the First Week (December 2021), with an observation:-
The first four games of the match all ended in draws.

The fifth game was also a draw, then World Champion Magnus Carlsen won three of the next four games (g.6/8/9), conceding a single draw to the challenger, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi. The score is now +3-0=6 with five games to be played. For the game-by-game action, let's turn again to press reports Fide.com, all under the heading 'FIDE World Championship Dubai 2021'.

And here are the latest Youtube videos titled 'FIDE World Championship Match - NBC Recap Game':-

On my main blog I've been running a monthly series on chess in the mainstream news, nicknamed 'Yahoos' (don't ask why). The most recent post in the series was World Championship Yahoos 2021 (November 2021). One of the angles I'll be watching for the next post, end-December, will be coverage of the Dubai World Championship. After the 2020-21 chess boom powered by the covid pandemic and Netflix, wa should see considerably more interest than for other recent matches.

In the meantime, curious about coverage of the match, I checked Google News to see what it considers the top stories on the match. Here's what I recorded as sources for the current top-10:-

  • 3 x chess.com
  • 3 x theguardian.com
  • 1 x nytimes.com
  • 1 x essentiallysports.com
  • 1 x chess24.com
  • 1 x chessbase.com

Because the top-10 news stories change constantly, the list is dynamic. The first source and the last two sources -- with 'chess' in their names -- would nevertheless figure on most lists. The second and third sources -- theguardian.com and nytimes.com -- have been covering world class chess for years. Only one source -- essentiallysports.com -- was not familiar to me; for more of its stories, see Latest Chess Updates | Essentially Sports.

The New York Times story, Did the World Chess Championship End When No One Was Looking?, by the NYT's former chess columnist Dylan Loeb McClain, started,

The world chess championship currently underway in Dubai is not over officially, but for all intents and purposes it may have been decided already. After a string of five draws to begin the championship, Magnus Carlsen, the reigning champion from Norway, has won two of the last three games, to take a lead of five points to three over his challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia.

If one of the top American chess journalists thought the match 'may have been decided already' after two wins for Carlsen, what can we say after three wins? It's over...

01 December 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, the First Week

'The first four games of the match all ended in draws.' That's how I opened my report three years ago for 2018 Carlsen - Caruana, the First Week (November 2018), and it works just as well in 2021 as it did in 2018. I continued the 2018 report with a summary of the first week of previous World Chess Championship title matches.
Of the seven most recent matches, all with 12 games at standard time control, the first three (2006, 2008, 2010) saw the eventual winner jump into the lead after four games. The last four saw a tied score after four games, where only one (2014) had decisive games. The other three matches started with six consecutive draws (2012), four draws (2013), and seven draws (2016).

Let's add to that list 'twelve consecutive draws (2018)'. Yes, the most recent World Championship match, 2018 Carlsen - Caruana (London), had all 12 regulation games end in draws. I doubt that the current contest, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi (Dubai), will suffer the same fate, but with the players so evenly matched, who can say for sure?

In the previous post on the current match, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Warmup (November 2021), I started keeping track of articles emanating from Fide.com. I'll continue that method of summarizing the events of the first week, all under the title 'FIDE World Championship Dubai 2021':-

On my main blog I posted a look at World Championship Social Media 2021 (November 2021). One of the highlights was a Youtube video from the FIDE chess channel under the title 'FIDE World Championship Match - NBC Recap Game'. Here are links to the first three games covered by NBC:-

There's much more non-NBC video material available on the 'FIDE chess' channel. For more info on the source of those three listed videos, NBC Sports, see that post, 'WCC Social Media 2021'. Another post on my main blog, World Championship Yahoos 2021 (November 2021), introduced another mainstream resource, The Guardian:-

That last story, by 'Sean Ingle in Dubai', looks like continuing coverage of the Carlsen - Nepo match. In each of the last few World Championship matches, I've discovered at least one professional, non-chess journalist who provided an outsider's view of the match. Will the Guardian continue the trend?

I learned from the writer's page, Sean Ingle | The Guardian, that he 'is the Guardian's chief sports reporter', which means he probably doesn't have the time to cover a niche match that lasts three weeks. While I fully expect the highly respected Guardian to provide continuing coverage, it might be from their other writers, like the legendary Leonard Barden. Here are two of Sean Ingle's pre-match reports:-

It's curious that the address of that first story, 'Inside the Mind', uses a different headline than that which appears on its page. Was there a problem with the original? -- 'Magnus Carlsen: The big advantage is that I am the better chess player'. It's unusual to get that sort of edgy reporting from professional chess journalists, but it makes for interesting stories.

24 November 2021

2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Warmup

Today is the opening ceremony for the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi (m-w.com) World Championship title match at Dubai. Because of the covid confinements and the Netflix series 'The Queen's Gambit', chess has seen a spike in popularity since the previous title match, which I followed three years ago on this blog:-

The Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi match, originally scheduled for a year ago, might well turn out to be the most widely followed match in chess history. As a final preparation for the match I updated that page on m-w.com, where the main change was a link to FIDE's own site. It looks like this:-

Official Site:-

fideworldchampionship.com

The m-w.com page has a dozen links to FIDE announcements, which must be a record for my pages and which attests to the organizational difficulties encountered by FIDE over the past two years, again because of the covid-19 coronavirus. One of those dozen links published the schedule for the match, reproduced here:-

No need to memorize that chart. The games will be played on the weekend -- Friday, Saturday, and Sunday -- plus Tuesday and Wednesday during the week. The other two days of the week are 'Free Days'. The small print on the bottom right of the chart says, 'Games start at 16:30 GST | 12:30 UTC'. If you're like me, 'GST' and 'UTC' don't mean much, so here's a useful link to understand that in local time:-

I could have added a few more pages to the dozen links already referenced on m-w.com. Instead, I'll start to document them on this blog. The two most recent are:-

That second page, the 'Preview', is curious. It mentions the first person pronouns 'I' and 'me', but is anonymous. The same writeup on the official site, A Special Sense of Occasion (fideworldchampionship.com), is also anonymous. Oversight or intentional, with so many sites scrambling to cover the match, why should the official site not trumpet its own sources?

There's so much more I could say about the match, but I'll stop here. Chances are that it's already been said a dozen times in a dozen other places.

17 November 2021

2021 Grand Swiss Crosstables

Continuing with 2021 Grand Swiss Preparation (November 2021), I added crosstables to two pages:-

Still to do is add the PGN to the same pages and update the corresponding player indices:-

Before I tackle that, there's a big event due to start next week: the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi match, Dubai. In a year filled with big chess events, it's the biggest. The first game is scheduled for Friday, 26 November, aka Black Friday.

10 November 2021

2021 Grand Swiss Preparation

This past weekend two concurrent Grand Swiss events finished. Here are links to their pages on my WCC site:-

In addition to the new page for the women's event, I collected the PGN -- see TWIC Documents Chess History (August 2021) for an overview of that process. I also started building the crosstables.

The equivalent sequence for the recent World Cups took eight posts to finish (nine, if I count the 'Wrapup'), as documented in 2021 World Cup Wrapup (October 2021; NB: name mismatches). I should finish the Grand Swiss events in another couple of posts.

27 October 2021

C30 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers

After catching up with current events in the previous post, Upcoming World Championship Events (October 2021), there remains one more action from 2021 Women's World Cup Crosstables (September 2021):-
For those in-between weeks with nothing special to report, I'll document the zonals for the current cycle, C30. Here are a few corresponding references for the previous cycle, C29. [...]

Here is the complete list of corresponding references:-

The qualifiers for the recent 2021 World Cup, Sochi (m-w.com) were published in Players lists and full pairings of FIDE World Cups published (fide.com; June 2021). The following chart, similar to the one developed for 'C29 Regulations', shows the various qualification paths for the World Cup plus the number of players qualifying via that path.

The numbers in parentheses, e.g. 'World Cup 2019 (4)', show the number of players authorized for that path by the regulations. That allows a quick calculation to check the number authorized by more complicated paths. For example, 'Americas Continental (20)' equals 8 players from that tournament plus 12 players from the zonals 2.x.

I noticed only one discrepancy, 'European Continental (47)', where the actual count in the chart totals to 48. This turned out to be an error on my part; 'Zone 1.10' produced only one qualifier, not two as shown in the original chart.

That error was caused by my erroneous manipulation of the data for players marked 'withdrew'. There were 17 such players, out of the 214 players listed as qualified.

It's worth noting that all of the players qualified by 'African Continental (4)' were from 'EGY' (Egypt). There were no African zonals 4.x in the current cycle. In the line marked 'Other (*)', the asterisk stands for:-

FIDE President’s wild cards [4], replacements of missing federation’s nominees [6], and Zonal 3.5 [2].

The four players nominated by the FIDE President were listed in the FIDE announcement from June 2021. In addition to the 17 players marked 'withdrew', six federations were missing a name under 'Federation Nominees (91)'.

The 19 events listed in the right column will be the subject of future posts. The covid coronvirus created havoc with qualifying events for the cycle C30. I hope I don't fall into any more traps along the way.

20 October 2021

Upcoming World Championship Events

After finally finishing with the most recent events in the World Championship, as documented in 2021 World Cup Wrapup (October 2021), it's time to move on to future events. One of the posts in the World Cup series, 2021 Women's World Cup Crosstables (September 2021), laid down a small follow-up plan:-
After that, I'll catch up with the latest news for two upcoming events:-
* 2021 Grand Swiss; 25 Oct - 8 Nov, and
* 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi; 24 Nov - 16 Dec

I identified recent announcements from Fide.com and updated two of my pages (both m-w.com):-

I also noted some changes required to bring the pages behind World Championship for Women up to date. I'll tackle those for my next post.

While looking for relevant info, I noticed two different banners for the Grand Swiss events, shown below. The first banner appears to have been discarded in favor of the second, which is the model for the logo shown at the top of this post.

13 October 2021

2021 World Cup Wrapup

In the previous post -- see the last entry in the table below, 'Player Indices', for a link and see that post for links to the two World Cup pages under discussion -- I promised to add PGN files to both pages. Done & done.

Before adding the PGN, I cleaned up some name mismatches. The discussion after the table provides some details. The table summarizes the effort required to document a World Cup on my site, where I always build a page from the PGN game scores for the event. The table covers two recent World Cup events held concurrently: (1) unrestricted by gender, and (2) women only.

Post U W
2021-08-04: TWIC Documents Chess History Y Y
2021-08-11: A New Cycle Is Evolving Y Y
2021-08-18: 2021 World Cup Tiebreak Y -
2021-08-25: 2021 World Cup [Name] Mismatches Y -
2021-09-15: 2021 World Cup Crosstables Y -
2021-09-22: 2021 Women's World Cup Preparation - Y
2021-09-29: 2021 Women's World Cup Crosstables - Y
2021-10-06: 2021 World Cup Player Indices Y Y

In brief, here are the steps required for each event:-

  • Collect the PGN for an event
  • Prepare the PGN according to my preferences
  • Create a text file with the structure for the event
  • Convert the text file to HTML
  • Add the players to the index of of players
  • Add the PGN to the page for the event

While the steps are largely automated, they require constant supervision because of various booby traps at each step. As for name mismatches between the official site and the PGN delivered for the event, I discovered a half-dozen:-

Unrestricted event
- Ali / Salih
- Elarbi/ Elarabi
- Gareev / Gareyev
- Iyti / Eiti

Women only
- Bhakti Kulkarni / Kulkarni Bhakti
- Medina / Aulia

I've incorporated my decision for each name on the pages holding the player indices. I hope I've been consistent with previous decisions.

06 October 2021

2021 World Cup Player Indices

In last week's post, 2021 Women's World Cup Crosstables (September 2021), I ended with an action:-
As for the PGN and the 'Index of Players', the same task needs to be done for the concurrent event already documented in '2021 World Cup Crosstables' (September 2021).

The two events were:-

I updated the respective indices that cover all World Chess Championship (WCC) events since the 19th century:-

The unrestricted event included 200 players, of which 122 were veterans of other WCC events, and 78 were competing for the first time in a WCC event. In an earlier post on Sochi, 2021 World Cup Tiebreak (August 2021), I noted that the regulations specified 206 players: 156 players in round 1, joined by 50 top seeds in round 2. The same post explained that 'The difference of six players stems from six first round matches that were not played.'

The women's event included 101 players, of which 57 were veterans of women's events and 44 were competing for the first time. How does this compare with the regulations? Here I ran into a problem. I had regulations for 'Women’s World Cup 2020' and for 'Women’s World Cup 2022', both downloaded February 2020, which was pre-covid pandemic.

Digging deeper, I discovered that FIDE released 'Regulations for the FIDE Women’s World Cup 2021' in June 2021, a month before the event took place. That document specified that 78 players in round 1 were to be joined by 25 top seeds in round 2, for a total of 103 players. The difference of two players (103 in the regulations vs. 101 who actually played) was again accounted by two first round matches that were not played.

I spent so much time researching those numeric mismatches that I was unable to tackle the PGN. I'll do that for my next post, along with a second look at 2021 World Cup Name Mismatches (August 2021), where I wrote,

Other mismatches had to do with the spelling of player's names on TWIC and on the official site. Although I resolved the name mismatches, I ran out of time to go further. I'll document the mismatches at the appropriate place.

In retrospect, I think I made a mistake trying to document both Sochi events at the same time. The result has been a process that has dragged out for too long, with neither event fully documented. The upcoming Grand Swiss will also have concurrent tournaments. I'll try a different approach for those.

***

Later: Re 'two first round matches that were not played', the players who forfeited those matches are listed here:-

Ovezdurdiyeva (Badelka)
Paramzina (Bhakti)

Their opponents, whose names are listed in parentheses, advanced to the second round.

29 September 2021

2021 Women's World Cup Crosstables

In last week's post, 2021 Women's World Cup Preparation (September 2021), I wrote,
I'll need some more time to finish the 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup crosstables. After that I'll add the PGN files to the page and update the Index of Women Players.

I added the crosstables to the page for 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup. The Fide.com server error that I mentioned in the 'Preparation' post has disappeared, so I am more confident that my data is correct.

As for the PGN and the Index of Players, the same task needs to be done for the concurrent event already documented in 2021 World Cup Crosstables (September 2021). After that, I'll catch up with the latest news for two upcoming events:-

For those in-between weeks with nothing special to report, I'll document the zonals for the current cycle, C30. Here are a few corresponding references for the previous cycle, C29:-

All that will keep me busy well into next year.

22 September 2021

2021 Women's World Cup Preparation

In the previous post, 2021 World Cup Crosstables (September 2021), I noted,
Still to be done: [...] prepare the crosstables for the concurrent event 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup.

That harks back to an earlier post, A New Cycle Is Evolving (August 2021). There I wrote,

The two World Cups finished this past week, so I used the TWIC files to prepare the PGN files for both events [...] and created 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup.

I'll need some more time to finish the 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup crosstables. After that I'll add the PGN files to the page and update the Index of Women Players.

NB: The official site from Fide.com is currently returning the message 'Oops! An Error Occurred; The server returned a "500 Internal Server Error"', so I wasn't able to check the TWIC player names against FIDE's, or verify that the individual match results were correct. I hope to be able to do both when I add the crosstables.

15 September 2021

2021 World Cup Crosstables

After pausing a few weeks, I continued with 2021 World Cup Mismatches (August 2021). In that post I wrote,
The third and last step is to convert the text file [crosstables] to web page format by adding HTML markup tags. I wasn't able to do this for the current post, because I ran into a number of mismatches that had to be resolved.

Markup tags in place, I uploaded the result to 2021 World Cup; Sochi (Russia), VII-VIII, 2021. Still to be done:-

Before doing that, I'll prepare the crosstables for the concurrent event 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup.

25 August 2021

2021 World Cup [Name] Mismatches

In the previous post, 2021 World Cup Tiebreak (August 2021), I documented the first step in converting a TWIC PGN file for a World Cup to a page like 2021 World Cup, Sochi (Russia):-
TWIC delivers the files sorted by game and round : all of the PGN game scores for the first game of the first round, followed by all of the PGNs for the second game, etc. I prefer to have all of the games for each mini-match together.

The second step is to create a text file using my standard structure for a World Cup page. I've been using the same structure since the first FIDE knockout tournament, 1997 FIDE Knockout Matches, Groningen (Netherlands). It's not elegant, but it serves my purpose well enough. While I'm creating the text file, I also compare my results against the official site.

The third and last step is to convert the text file to web page format by adding HTML markup tags. I wasn't able to do this for the current post, because I ran into a number of mismatches that had to be resolved.

One mismatch was an error I made in that 'Tiebreak' post. The other mismatches had to do with the spelling of player's names on TWIC and on the official site. Although I resolved the name mismatches, I ran out of time to go further. I'll document the mismatches at the appropriate place.

***

Later: After I wrote this post, I realized that the title '2021 World Cup Mismatches' might easily be misunderstood to mean mismatches in playing strength. While there were certainly plenty of those in the event, I corrected the title to describe the content of the post more accurately.

18 August 2021

2021 World Cup Tiebreak

In last week's post, A New Cycle Is Evolving (August 2021), I wrote,
Two World Cups finished this past week, so I used the TWIC files to prepare the PGN files for both events.

That was just the initial preparation. TWIC delivers the files sorted by game and round : all of the PGN game scores for the first game of the first round, followed by all of the PGNs for the second game, etc. I prefer to have all of the games for each mini-match together, e.g. for the second round of the unrestricted World Cup (open to both men and women), I prefer to see both games of the Carlsen - Martinovic match, followed by both games of the Caruana - Megaranto match, and so on (using the top two boards in the second round as an example).

That sort takes some effort, but I like being able to get a bird's eye view of each match without any additional work. Since that's not much info for this current post, I'll add a count of the games played in each round of the unrestricted event.

For example, there were 144 players competing in the first round -- 72 mini-matches total for the first and second games of the round -- of which 19 matches went into tiebreak. One of those matches reached the third tiebreak.

The 72 winners of the first round joined 56 seeded players to contest 64 mini-matches in the second round. One of those matches reached the 'Armageddon' tiebreak.

For an explanation of a similar chart and the tiebreaks used in a previous World Cup, see 2015 World Cup Tiebreak (October 2015), on my main blog. NB: I haven't compared the details for the tiebreaks used in the 2015 World Cup with those of the 2021 event, but I suppose they were similar. For the details of the recent event, see 2021 World Cup, Sochi (Russia).

***

Later: In the next post for this series, 2021 World Cup [Name] Mismatches (August 2021), I wrote,

I ran into a number of mismatches that had to be resolved. One mismatch was an error I made in that 'Tiebreak' post.

That error stems from the sentence above that says,

The 72 winners of the first round joined 56 seeded players to contest 64 mini-matches in the second round.

That statement doesn't square with the official rules, copied on my page about the Sochi event, that said,

Round 1: 156 players
Round 2 (78 winners of Round 1 + 50 top seeds): 128 players

The difference of six players (78 winners - 72 winners) stems from six first round matches that were not played. The players who forfeited those matches are listed here:-

Atabayev (Erdos)
Fan (Lupulescu)
Rodriguez (Ivanisevic)
Wynn (Mikhalevski)
Zaibi (Deac)
Ziska (Moradiabadi)

Their opponents, whose names are listed in parentheses, advanced to the second round.

11 August 2021

A New Cycle Is Evolving

In my previous post, TWIC Documents Chess History (August 2021), I wrote,
I'm currently waiting for two concurrent World Cups to finish, so I decided to bring my personal copies of TWIC up to date.

The two World Cups finished this past week, so I used the TWIC files to prepare the PGN files for both events, added the headers for the rounds to 2021 World Cup; Sochi (Russia), VII-VIII, 2021, and created 2021 FIDE Women's World Cup [same venue and dates] on the index page for World Chess Championship for Women. I also updated two pages for qualifying events by adding the latest announcements from FIDE:-

The FIDE announcements were all made in the three weeks since I created the pages for the post A New Cycle Is Advancing (July 2021).

04 August 2021

TWIC Documents Chess History

Last week's post, Early Women's Grand Prix Events (July 2021), was a placeholder because,
I'm currently waiting for two concurrent World Cups to finish [plus links]

The same is true this week, so I decided to bring my personal copies of TWIC up to date. Along with the games from the World Cups, I'll need TWIC data to document:-

The two referenced posts document the start of the work I did for the previous cycle.

28 July 2021

Early Women's Grand Prix Events

I'm currently waiting for two concurrent World Cups to finish:-

I didn't have a good idea for today's post, so I looked at ideas in my 'Follow-up' category, Showing posts with label zFLUP. Most of the ideas required more time than I have to spend, but I found one that seemed reasonable:-

At the time of the post I wrote, 'The first two [WGPs], 2009-2010 & 2011-2012, could use a chart like the one shown.' For each of the players who competed in the Grand Prix, it showed the total score achieved across all events and the number of games played by the player. I added the new charts to the two wrapup pages:-

What's the plural of 'Grand Prix'? I decided to use the phrase shown in the title.

21 July 2021

A New Cycle Is Advancing

In the previous post, A New Cycle Is Starting (June 2021), I added the first page for the new World Championship cycle:-

That tournament is currently underway. For this current post, I added pages for the next two events in the cycle:-

Those three pages give me anchors for any subsequent announcements from FIDE concerning the new cycle.

30 June 2021

A New Cycle Is Starting

The last time I posted about the next FIDE World Championship cycle, A New Cycle Is Coping Nicely (June 2021), I noted an additional twist:-
FIDE's Handbook, D. Regulations for Specific Competitions (handbook.fide.com), includes the usual qualification paths for the 2021 World Cup, and adds a new one:- "VIII. One hundred (100) players are determined according to the Final Ranking of the Chess Olympiad 2020 open section."

The 2021 World Cup starts in a few weeks, so I added basic info about the new cycle to my index page for the World Chess Championship. I also added a new page 2021 World Cup; Sochi (Russia), VII-VIII, 2021. It currently consists mainly of excerpts from the regulations governing the tournament, but much more will be added over the next few months.


worldcup.fide.com

23 June 2021

2019-20 WGP, Last Actions

Last week's post 2019-20 WGP Crosstables listed a number of finishing touches for my page on the 2019-2020 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. These have all been implemented.

The chart on the left was the working document used to update the World Chess Championship : Index of Women Players. Of the 20 players listed, two were new to the index: Irina Bulmaga and Gunay Mammadzada. Both played in a single event, Gibraltar, but I could find no explanation for their participation.

The chart also shows that four women played 11 games (one event) and four others played 22 games (two events). This was probably due to covid complications, but I'll leave the whys and the wherefores for another time. The FIDE report on the last round of the last event, Gibraltar, Round 11: to Zhansaya, the glory; to Kateryna, the ticket to the Candidates (fide.com), reported,

Kateryna Lagno of Russia drew her game with Mariya Muzychuk of Ukraine to finish on 6.5 and clinch her place in the Candidates' tournament alongside Humpy Koneru, who also qualifies via the Grand Prix series, and Aleksandra Goryachkina of Russia, who qualifies as runner-up in the last Women’s World Championship.

Humpy Koneru achieved the goal despite having participated in only two events. For the previous final report on a WGP see 2015-2016 Women's Grand Prix, the Players, (December 2016), including links to older WGP final reports.

16 June 2021

2019-20 WGP Crosstables

Continuing with last week's post, 2019-20 WGP Gibraltar (June 2021), where 'WGP' stands for Women's Grand Prix, I added the crosstables for the four individual events to my page 2019-2020 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. I still have a few finishing touches to do:-
  • Add PGN
  • Add 4 x event logos
  • Add FIDE press releases
  • Update the index of players

I should be able to finish those for the next post.

09 June 2021

2019-20 WGP, Gibraltar

A few weeks ago, in More Notes on the Women's Championship (May 2021), I wrote,
Still missing is any trace of the Women’s Candidates tournament. FIDE partially compensated for this requirement by making a key announcement...

Following the link I gave for that announcement, 'Qualification for FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2022 (fide.com)', one point gave a welcome confirmation:-

The eight spots in the Women’s Candidates Tournament 2022 will be allocated based on the following criteria [...] B. 2 spots – FIDE Grand Prix Series 2019-20 • The players who finish 1st and 2nd in the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2019-20. If one or two of these players is/are GM Ju Wenjun and/or GM Goryachkina, the reserved spot(s) is (are) awarded to the next non-qualifying player(s) in the final ranking of the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2019-20.

In past posts I repeatedly decided not to document the 2019-20 FIDE Grand Prix on my own pages:-

  • 2019-10-02: Status of the Women's World Championship • 'For this post I intended to add a new page for the 2019-20 Women's Grand Prix, because the first event, held in Skolkovo (Russia), finished a few weeks ago. [...] I'll wait until FIDE has published the necessary documents before I tackle the new cycle.'
  • 2019-12-18: 2019-20 Women's Grand Prix • 'The second event in that Grand Prix, held in Monaco, has ended and there is still no sign of documentation covering the full cycle.'
  • 2020-04-22: 2019-20 WGP, Lausanne • 'The necessary documentation is still not available, nor is there any sign of activity.'

Reversing that decision, I created a new page, 2019-2020 FIDE Women's Grand Prix (m-w.com), including the recently finished 2021 Gibraltar, and added it to the index page World Chess Championship for Women (ditto). • Next step: For the four events that were played in the Grand Prix, add the crosstables and PGN to the new page.

02 June 2021

A New Cycle Is Coping Nicely

A couple of months ago, in A New Cycle Is Struggling to Survive (March 2021), I gathered available info on the next FIDE World Championship cycle. That's the cycle that follows the forthcoming title match, Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Dubai, XI-XII, 2021. I'm happy to report that the cycle is not only surviving, it appears to be thriving.

The 'Struggling to Survive' post included the dates for the next world class event:-

FIDE World Cup; Sochi, Russia; 10 Jul; 03 Aug

That's next month! FIDE's Handbook, D. Regulations for Specific Competitions (handbook.fide.com), includes the usual qualification paths for the 2021 World Cup, and adds a new one:-

VIII. One hundred (100) players are determined according to the Final Ranking of the Chess Olympiad 2020 open section.

The top one hundred (100) national federations are given one qualification spot (hereinafter referred to as Olympiad spot). If any federation is represented by two (2) or more teams, it cannot get more than one Olympiad spot. Not more than forty (40) federations per Continent may get Olympiad spots. If there are more than forty federations from the same Continent in top 100 of the Final Ranking, Olympiad spot(s) go(es) to the next federation(s) in the Final Ranking.

Each Continent has [the] right to transfer up to 50% of the eventual respective Continent’s Olympiad spots to Continental events (see Article 2.1.V). Such a decision is to be announced by March 1st 2020. If this decision is taken, the remaining Continent’s Olympiad spots are given to the best federations representing the respective Continent according to the Final Ranking of the Chess Olympiad 2020.

Each national federation having won the Olympiad spot needs to work out qualification criteria for its representative. The Olympiad spot is to be given to one of the Olympiad 2020 national team members. If all Olympiad 2020 national team members qualify to World Cup by other paths or decline participation, the spot can be given to any other player.

All the Olympiad spots are to be announced between June 1st and July 1st 2021.

It remains to be seen how that will work in practice, especially the provision to 'transfer up to 50%', which I don't understand. The two most recent issues of TWIC ('The Week in Chess' by Mark Crowther) mentioned a number of World Cup qualifying tournaments.

The AICF Qualifier was a special event brought on by the covid crisis:-

FIDE has already issued reports on two of the Continental qualifiers:-

  • 2021-05-30: 36 European players qualify for 2021 FIDE World Cup (fide.com) • 'The European Hybrid Qualification Tournament for the FIDE World Cup took place from May 24-30 on Tornelo online platform. All the federations had specially designated and approved venues supervised by local arbiters and monitored by cameras. The event brought together 264 players from 35 European federations.'

  • 2021-05-31: Eight American players qualify for 2021 FIDE World Cup (ditto) • 'The American Hybrid World Cup Qualifier was an 8-group (16 players in each) knockout tournament taking place from May 22-29. The winner of each group qualified for the 2021 FIDE World Cup that will be held in Sochi, Russia from July 10 to August 7. All the games were played online on Tornelo platform from designated venues.'

'China Zonal 3.5' was missing from the 'Struggling to Survive' post. As for the other events covered by the TWIC reports, I'll wait for official reports before I go any further.

I discussed the hybrid format in FIDE Hybrid Competitions (March 2021), where I wrote, 'In a few months we'll learn how well this works for World Championship qualifiers.' The results so far appear to be positive.

26 May 2021

More Notes on the Women's Championship

The last time I looked at the current cycle for the Women's World Championship was in Notes on the Women's Championship (November 2020). I used a screen capture from the FIDE handbook to show that the documentation available to the public was poorly maintained: women's events mixed with unrestricted events (open to both men and women); events listed in no particular order; and important events missing entirely.

Here's another screen capture showing the current status of the FIDE handbook. The organization of the material has been much improved.


handbook.fide.com (May 2021)

Still missing is any trace of the Women’s Candidates tournament. FIDE partially compensated for this requirement by making a key announcement:-

After the fourth and last leg of the Women's Grand Prix currently underway in Gibraltar, the two other qualifying events are scheduled for later this year:-

  • Women's World Cup 2021; Sochi, Russia; 10 Jul 2021; 03 Aug 2021
  • Women’s Grand Swiss 2021; Isle of Man; 25 Oct 2021; 08 Nov 2021

Another piece of the overall picture was announced last week:-

The Women’s Candidates tournament and the title match are currently not scheduled. Which will come first -- the documentation, i.e. the rules, for the events -or- the formal announcement of the events? Based on recent performance, I'm betting on the announcement.

19 May 2021

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Wrapup

It's finally time to terminate the interminable. Here's a summary of the posts -- mainly from this blog -- stemming from the recently concluded Yekaterinburg Candidates. Let's start with the posts from the first half of the tournament.

During this time, there was only one post on my main blog:-

  • 2020-03-31: Coronavirus Candidates • 'With every major sports event getting cancelled or postponed this month, you might think the Candidates tournament would have attracted considerable attention from mainstream sports broadcasting ... and you would be wrong.'

For the previous Candidates tournament, the summary Berlin Candidates - Wrapup (April 2018) listed 15 posts on my main blog. Why the big difference? Because the following year I announced, 'The End of Daily Blogging' (September 2019).

After the first half was of the Yekaterinburg Candidates was played, there was a long hiatus before the second half started. Of course, no one could know how long it would be.

That last FIDE announcement finally hit the right note.

Next stop: 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi; Dubai, XI-XII, 2021.

12 May 2021

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Last Updates?

To my page:- I added the PGN and crosstable for the second half of the tournament, plus the chart from last week's post Yekaterinburg Candidates - Cumulative Score (May 2021). Then I added Nepomniachtchi's name, as challenger, plus other relevant info to the pages:-

I also added recent announcements from Fide.com to the same pages where appropriate. Then I ran out of time. To be continued?

05 May 2021

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Cumulative Score

My first action after last week's post, Yekaterinburg Candidates - Fourth Week (April 2021; 'Congratulations to GM Nepomniachtchi on a well deserved victory'), was to gather the PGN for the second half of the tournament. Combining that with the PGN for the first half let me calculate the cumulative score, shown below.

The red line separates the two halves of the tournament, where the second half was played more than a year after the first. As soon as I get a chance, I'll add that image -- plus the PGN and crosstable for the second half -- to my page 2020 Candidates Tournament; Yekaterinburg (Russia).

The cumulative score continues a pattern I've noted several times on this blog. The previous mention was Yekaterinburg Candidates - First Week (March 2020):-

The eventual winner was from the group of players who had a plus score after round 3. The winner was also one of the leaders after the first half of the tournament.

That makes five consecutive candidate tournaments showing the same pattern. What are the odds?

28 April 2021

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Fourth Week

After waiting more than a year for the continuation of the 2020 Candidates Tournament, Yekaterinburg, the whole affair was over in a little over a week. Unfortunately for me, after last week's post Yekaterinburg Candidates - Third Week (April 2021), I didn't find the time to watch a single minute of the action. To compensate, I collected the following links from two of the most respected chess news sources.

Rd. Chess.com Chessbase.com
R08 Well-Prepared Caruana Moves Up As MVL Stumbles In Endgame Caruana impresses, wins marathon [with links to rds.1-7]
R09 Giri Strikes, Moves Into Second-Place Tie? Giri wins, climbs to shared second place
R10 Nepomniachtchi Wins Quickly, Increases Lead Nepomniachtchi widens the gap
R11 Giri Approaches Nepomniachtchi, MVL Stumbles Giri in sole second place after brilliant win
R12 Four Winners, Nepomniachtchi Maintains Lead Nepo wins to keep the lead as Giri beats Caruana
R13 Nepomniachtchi Wins FIDE Candidates Tournamen1 day Nepomniachtchi to challenge Carlsen for the World Championship title
R14 Three Winners In Final Round, Wang Hao Announces Retirement Ding, MVL and Alekseenko finish on a high note

Congratulations to GM Nepomniachtchi on a well deserved victory. Another article on Chess.com, published just before the second half of the tournament started, is worth noting: FIDE Candidates: Karjakin Names Nepomniachtchi As Most Difficult Opponent For Carlsen (Peter Doggers). Over the next few weeks, I'll add the finishing touches to my own online record of the event.

21 April 2021

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Third Week

In writing this post, I had two problems to solve. My first problem was what to title it. In the previous post, Yekaterinburg Candidates - Second Week (April 2020, a full year ago), I wrote,
This might become one of the shortest blog posts I've ever written. After last week's post, Yekaterinburg Candidates - First Week, there was no second week.

I decided to keep the title ordinally simple: First Week, Second Week, Third Week. Next week's post will be titled ... no prize for a correct guess.

My second problem was what to write about. The first round of the restarted second half finished yesterday, so there's not much new material to work with. Let's just say that the continuation of the event is finally underway -- there were no further postponements or delays. On top of that, all of the players arrived safely -- there were no last minute cancellations. Those points are both noteworthy, in and of themselves.

Once again, like for 'Second Week', that's not much of a post. Fortunately, I have a backup idea. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Eric van Reem telling me that he had released a couple of podcasts about the Candidates tournament, with a third podcast on the way. Last year I became familiar with Eric's work thanks to my chess960 blog; see The Norwegian Connection (November 2020), for his two part chat with GM Jonathan Tisdall (which covers much more than chess960). The three more recent podcasts are well worth a listen:-

  • 2021-03-30 #26 Lennart Ootes, 'Let's talk about the Candidates Tournament and photography'
  • 2021-04-06 #27 Leontxo García, 'Let's talk about your escape from Yekaterinburg'
  • 2021-04-18 #28 Douglas Griffin, 'Let's talk about chess history' [with an emphasis on past candidates tournaments]

Each of those podcasts links to the full index of all 28 podcasts. That's guaranteed to provide some entertainment between rounds of the tournament. What will podcast #29 bring?

14 April 2021

1976 Arandjelovac Zonal Revisited

My index of zonal pages, The World Chess Championship : Zonals, follows a straightforward structure. Players in a zone assemble for a tournament, they play each other, and the winners qualify into an Interzonal. Repeat that sequence for as many zones as were authorized for a particular cycle.

Sometimes the evolution of a zonal is not so straightforward. One example is documented on my page (C05) 1960-1963 Zonal Cycle, where the zone two tournament at Berg en Dal was annulled and played again the following year at Marianske Lazne. The underlying reason had to do with Cold War Chess Politics (July 2015).

Another such cold war event involved two zonals, 1975 Barcelona & 1976 Arandjelovac (August 2014). I outlined the circumstances in that blog post, but there's more to the story. Vladica Andrejic of Perpetualcheck.com, sent me scans of the following clippings, which tell the tale of 1976 Arandjelovac.


Å ahovski glasnik, 1976-09, p.305-306

I ran the scans through (1) an OCR to text converter, followed by (2) a language translator, and was pleased enough with the results that I'll incorporate them here. The article, written by V. Sokolov, is titled 'Supplementary Zone Tournament in Arandelovac'. The first two paragraphs [with some minor edits by me] say,

It is in Arandelovac at the time of 16. to 25. [April] o. g. held supplementary match-tournament of four grandmasters who for obvious reasons did not participate in the zonal tournament in Barcelona (Spain).

After many vicissitudes and months of negotiations on the route FIDE-SSJ ['Å SJ' = 'Å ahovski Savez Jugoslavije' = Yugoslavian Chess Federation] finally four grandmasters Uhlmann (DDR), Smejkal (CSSR), Adorjan (Hungary) and Velimirovic (Yugoslavia) got a chance to [be] subsequently included in interzone tournaments. It needed to be won the first two places, i.e. the last two are dropped.

The next eight paragraphs describe the evolution of the tournament, especially taken from the point of view of Velimirovic. Unfortunately for his Yugoslav fans, he had a poor tournament and finished last behind the other three players who finished tied for 1st-3rd. The next paragraph says,

So the tournament ended in a dead race. Three players found themselves in the first place and should have continued with a new two-round tournament. They have, however, opted for gambling, just like Parma and Liberzon. Such as it is known that the dice were not in favor of Adorjan, [so] Smejkal and Uhlmann were placed for interzone tournaments. It seems that it should not be applied gambling when it comes to such a serious matter as the World [Championship]. Yet it is in a sense chess degradation.

I added the crosstable shown in the clipping to the page (C10) 1975-1978 Zonal Cycle, then reorganized the page to clarify the different sequences of events. There are still some open questions involving the 'IZ Qualifiers', but perhaps 'Å ahovski glasnik' will prove useful there as well.

07 April 2021

Viktor and Petra Korchnoi

A couple of recent reports from the mainstream chess press have their roots in a World Championship match from the 1970s. It's curious that all three title matches from the 1970s -- 1972, 1975 (unplayed), 1978 -- have achieved legendary status.

2021-03-23: 'The dirtiest chess match in history': Stean on Karpov-Korchnoi, 1978 (chess24.com; Colin McGourty)

The great Viktor Korchnoi, one of the strongest players never to become World Champion, would have turned 90 today. On the eve of that anniversary, the BBC dedicated an episode of the radio broadcast Witness History to the match that saw Viktor come within a win of claiming the World Championship title. The clash with Anatoly Karpov in Baguio City in the Philippines is described as "a surreal experience" by English Grandmaster Michael Stean, who turned 25 during the match and was working as a second for Viktor.

2021-03-19: Petra Korchnoi dies at 93 (chessbase.com; Frederic Friedel)

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Petra Korchnoi – Petronella Leeuwerik before her marriage to the two-fold World Championship Challenger. She was a remarkable personality and a great friend, and will be sorely missed.

More than 20 years ago I used database techniques to compile a summary of the many themes that occurred in the match: 1978 Karpov - Korchnoi Title Match : Yogurt, Parapsychology, Ananda Marga, ... (m-w.com). That analysis still holds up today.

31 March 2021

A New Cycle Is Struggling to Survive

It's been two years since FIDE restructured its World Championship qualifiers, as I documented in FIDE Starts the New Cycle (May 2019; 'I added three new pages to my site for the World Chess Championship'), meaning it's time to start the next cycle. Although the coronavirus pandemic has played havoc with tournament plans, the FIDE Calendar shows that many qualifying events are already scheduled. The following table gives an overview of those events.

Source: FIDE Calendar
[World Events 2021]
Candidates Tournaments Yekaterinburg, Russia 19 Apr28 Apr
FIDE World Cup Sochi, Russia 10 Jul03 Aug
FIDE Women's World Cup 2021 Sochi, Russia 10 Jul06 Aug
FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss and Women’s Grand Swiss 2021 Isle of Man 25 Oct08 Nov
FIDE World Chess Championship Dubai, UAE 24 Nov16 Dec
[Europe]
European Hybrid Qualification event for the FIDE World Cup Online 22 May30 May
[Americas]
('No Data')
[Asia]
Asian Continental Open Chess Championship Hybrid 20 May30 May
Zone 3.1 Zonal Open Championship Hybrid 01 Jun09 Jun
Zone 3.2 Zonal Open Championship Dhaka, Bangladesh 01 Jun09 Jun
Zone 3.3 Zonal Open Championship Hybrid 01 May10 May
Zone 3.4 Zonal Open Championship Tashkent, Uzbekistan 06 May15 May
Zone 3.7 Zonal Open Championship India 2021 2021
[Africa]
2021 African Online World Cup Pre-Qualifying Chess Championship Tornelo Platform 23 Apr02 May
African Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Lilongwe, Malawi 17 May28 May
Zone 4.1 Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Algiers, Algeria 29 Oct06 Nov
Zone 4.2 Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Lomé, Togo 03 Sep11 Sep
Zone 4.3 Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Libreville, Gabon 01 Oct09 Oct
Zone 4.4 Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Kigali, Rwanda 27 Aug04 Sep
Zone 4.5 Individual Chess Championship 2021 (Open & Women) Maseru, Lesotho 05 Nov13 Nov

[World Events 2021] - My most recent posts on these subjects were:-

[Europe] - See also European hybrid qualification tournament for the FIDE World Cup (chessbase.com), which starts,

The European Hybrid Qualification Tournament for the FIDE World Cup will take place on May 22-30 and will be played Online as a hybrid event. 36 players will qualify for the FIDE World Cup 2021. The event will be played under a knock-out system with matches consisting of 2 standard games plus tiebreaks if needed.

[Americas] - The calendar section of the FIDE America site returns an error message: '404 Error : Article not found'. A recent page, Participants in the World Cup, says,

FIDE has asked the Continents to send the names of the participants in the World Cup before May 31st, 2021, also approving to organize Continental Hybrid Championships where no titles will be granted.

[Asia] - Zone 3.5 is missing. Zone 3.6 was covered on 2021 Oceania Zonal (chessexpress.blogspot.com). That kickoff post explained,

The 2021 Oceania Zonal is now going ahead as a 'hybrid' event. This means that the players will be playing online, but supervised by an in place arbiter. Due to the logistics of organising such an event, it will be a round robin tournament, with 1 player per country, except Australia, who can nominate 2 players.

[Africa] - I first mentioned the new zone 4.5 in FIDE Details the New Cycle (May 2019).

For more about the hybrid format, see my recent post FIDE Hybrid Competitions: 'In a few months we'll learn how well this works for World Championship qualifiers.' The experience started with zone 3.6.

24 March 2021

A World Correspondence Champion's Games

The subject of last week's post, Three Time World Correspondence Champion (March 2021), was ICCF GM Aleksandr Dronov. Wanting to know more about GM Dronov's games, I downloaded the PGN file from his ICCF player page (see the 'Three Time WCC' post for a link) and started to analyze it.

Although the ICCF page promises '149 games completed' (three more than last week), I received 150 games. Dronov is currently playing the 'World Championship 31 Final' and the crosstable for the event indicates that three of his games, all draws, have been added since a week ago.

Of the 150 games, there was a preponderance of games where Dronov was Black. It turned out that two of the earliest events had him as Black in nearly all of his games. These games in the PGN file were only stubs -- no moves available -- a bookkeeping convention I've also used to build crosstables. Going a little deeper, I counted 34 such games without moves.

The following chart gives an overview of Dronov's opening repertioire. Of course, it doesn't pretend to be complete. He has also opened 1.Nf3 and 1.c4 in a few games. Where he plays several different moves in a position, his most frequent choice is shown first. It's also worth noting that 1.d4 as his first move was more frequent in older games, while 1.e4 was more frequent in newer games.

What more can I say about this chart? Not much. These are all popular lines and the moves shown here are all well known. The same chart would apply to many of today's titled correspondence players. The choice of move depends not only on a player's experience (i.e. repertoire), but also on the opponent's repertoire, previous experience against the opponent, the objective against a specific opponent, and up-to-date engine analysis.

Two games were mentioned in the AJEC interview, already referenced in the 'Three Time WCC' post. Both games were from the WC22 Final, the event that gave Dronov his first World Champion title. The first game mentioned was a controversial decision on an adjudication:-

Q: Several strong players (Langeveld, Hamarat and Timm) are convinced that the [win] which you have been granted in the arbitration against Rune Holmberg is completely fanciful and that you wouldn't you have won this game against one of them.

Dronov answered with a few specific points and summarized,

A: The arbitrator (just like me), had no doubts about the outcome of this game and that is why he awarded me the win.

The second game mentioned was the last to finish in the tournament, and allowed Dronov to tie for first place, thereby winning on tiebreak:-

Q: What was your most difficult part in this world championship? • A: The last, decisive game against Buecker was the most difficult and the most interesting.

Both of those games are worth a deeper look. Since the purpose of this blog is not to analyze games, I'll leave that exercise for another place.

17 March 2021

Three Time World Correspondence Champion

In a recent post, Small Projects for 2021 (February 2021), I wrote,
The ICCF started one new World Championship, the 32nd, but finished none. It might be worthwhile to write a post about three time ICCF winner Aleksandr Dronov, so I'll keep that in mind.

My first stop was the ICCF site, from which I cobbled together the following composite image. It shows GM Dronov's titles and ICCF events


140915 RUS GM Dronov, Aleksandr Surenovich
(iccf.com)

Comparing the 146 games there with The chess games of Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov (chessgames.com; 'Number of games in database: 47'), shows that many of his games are not in the online databases. If the best correspondence player in the world is underrepresented, the same must be true for lesser players.

My next stop was Wikipedia's page, Aleksandr Dronov (en.wikipedia.org). The following 'snippet' repeats nearly the entire content of the page.

Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov is a Russian International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster. He is most famous for being the 22nd, 27th, and 29th World Correspondence Chess Champion.[1][2][3] He is the only person to win the World Correspondence Chess Championship three times.

Country: Soviet Union; Russia
Born: 6 October 1946 (age 74) Moscow, Russia
Title: ICCF Grandmaster (2005)

The footnotes '[1][2][3]' lead to the relevant crosstables on ICCF.com. That English language page is not very informative, but indicates that Dronov also has Wikipedia pages in six other languages. Only one of these, the German language page Alexander Surenowitsch Dronow (de.wikipedia.org), has much to add. Google Translate informs,

Dronow began in 1988 at the age of 41, inspired by the successes of Fritz Baumbach with correspondence chess. Before that he had tried his hand at local chess without any notable success and had been taking a break there since 1981. After taking 3rd place on the first board of the 13th Correspondence Chess Olympiad behind Baumbach and Chytilek, he won the gold medal on the 1st board of the opening group for the 18th Correspondence Chess Olympiad.

My final stop was a French language page, AJEC - 01.01.2011 - Interview d'Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov (ajec-echecs.org; AJEC = 'Association des Joueurs d’Échecs par Correspondance'). Taking only a small portion of the interview, Google Translate again informs,

Q: Do you have any favorite books? A: 'My System' by Aaron Nimzowitsch and 'Zurich 1953, The Art of Chess Fighting' by David Bronstein. • Q: What do you think is the essential trait that enabled you to win this [World Championship] tournament? A: A very solid confidence in [myself]. • Q: How do you prepare your games with Black? A: I always look for positions with counterplay. I always play to win.

Correspondence chess grandmasters don't get the attention they deserve, but we knew that already.

P.S. In the final of the 31st ICCF World Championship (follow the link under the image above), the leader is presently on plus-2 with all games completed. Dronov is on plus-1 with four games unfinished. He might win a fourth title!

10 March 2021

FIDE Hybrid Competitions

Earlier this year we had an announcement from FIDE about online chess rules, including the concept of 'hybrid competition'.
  • 2021-01-04: FIDE approves Online Chess Regulations (fide.com) • 'The FIDE Council has approved a new set of rules to be applied to official online chess competitions. The document, which will be incorporated into the laws of chess, is the result of a joint effort by a dedicated task force, in which several FIDE Commissions were involved. [...] The so-called "hybrid competition" is a new format where the games are played online, but the participants are physically present in a public place like a club, federation headquarters, hotel, et cetera. [...] FIDE expects the hybrid format to be used in some official events in the near future, and some Continents have expressed their intention to hold their Zonal and even Continental Championships under this format.

A few weeks later we learned that the hybrid competitions would be rated.

  • 2021-01-18: FIDE approves hybrid competitions valid for rating (ditto) • 'A few weeks ago, the FIDE Council approved a new set of rules to be applied to official online chess competitions. The document also established the framework for “hybrid” events [...] After receiving some additional input from the Qualification Commission, and adding some minor amendments to the first version of the regulations, the FIDE Council has approved that hybrid competitions are officially rated in equal terms with traditional games.'

Just a few days ago we learned that hybrid competitions were valid for World Championship qualifying events.

Shown below is the table of contents for the 'Online Chess Regulations'. Note specifically 'Part III b: Regulations for Hybrid Chess Competitions'. In a few months we'll learn how well this works for World Championship qualifiers.


FIDE Handbook E. Miscellaneous / 04. Online Chess Regulations

03 March 2021

FIDE Candidates Tournament, Final Chapter?

Regarding the February announcement, FIDE resumes the Candidates Tournament (fide.com), shouldn't that say, 'FIDE plans to resume...'? The announcement started,
The Candidates Tournament, the biennial 8-player event that decides who will be the Challenger for the World Chess Championship title, will resume on the 19th of April in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

It also gave an overview of the tournament standing, reproduced below, when it was interrupted after the first half had been completed.

I added a link for the announcement to my page, 2020 Candidates Tournament; Yekaterinburg (Russia), III-IV, 2020. There are now 19 Fide.com links on that page, which might be some kind of a record. For the recent announcement about the subsequent title match, see Expo 2020 Dubai (in 2021).