I'll come back to the event after it ends in early November. Pool B, the second of two preliminary events, starts toward the end of November.
While I was researching the event, I noticed that my page on the previous Women's Candidates,
2019 Kazan Candidates Tournament
(m-w.com), lacked references to FIDE's site. I added a few important links dating to the time of the tournament.
The following video would have fit well into that series, but I decided that this World Championship blog was an even better fit. On top of that it gives me the chance to incorporate the series into this blog, by mention.
John Donaldson Lecture (41:18) • 'Streamed live on Oct 19, 2022'
The clip starts with sound problems, but they don't last long. The description said,
Join us for a lecture as part of 1972 Fischer/Spassky: The Match, Its Origin, and Influence by IM John Donaldson on his unique experience and perspective on the history of Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky before Reykjavik. Emphasis will be placed on their similar experiences and differences growing up under quite different political systems.
IM John Donaldson joined the Tacoma Chess Club in the fall of 1972, inspired by the Fischer-Spassky match. An international master, with two grandmaster norms, Donaldson has captained the U.S. Chess Olympiad team on 14 occasions. He is the author of over 40 books on chess with his most recent effort being Bobby Fischer and His World.
The lecture is a presentation by Donaldson of photos relating to key events and people in Fischer's career. Three other Youtube videos relate to the lecture:-
Back to my main blog, we saw IM Donaldson in another recent post, unrelated to Fischer Friday:
2022 CJA Awards - Part 3
(October 2022). Specifically,
Winners of multiple awards
•
Although the numbers add up to 11 awards, Spanier and Donaldson were named jointly on one award:-
•
Honorable Mention; Best Story of the Year; 'The Fischer Project'; John Donaldson (author), Ian Spanier (photographer); Chess Life, July 2021
That one story accounted for five of the ten awards. IM Donaldson had one other award for the same story (Winner 'Best Feature Article - Print') plus one Honorable Mention in 'Best Print Articles' for 'Bobby Fischer's Lost Game Scores' in American Chess Magazine (ACM) #26.
After Fischer's official biographer Frank Brady, Donaldson is undoubtedly the most knowledgeable chess historian on Fischer's career. The Fischer - Spassky match has been a guiding light throughout his own distinguished career.
A few weeks ago I noticed that a few of the posts on this blog had no labels, aka tags. Of the 746 posts currently on the blog, I identified 16 without labels and added at least one tag to each post. The most recent post to received its first label was
Gunsberg - Chigorin - Tarrasch
(May 2012), so I've been consistent for over 10 years.
Most of the new labels were in category 'Resources'. The only post where I had to think about a label was
The 1st and 2nd GMA World Cups
(April 2008). Although the GMA was not officially tied to the World Championship, it was a precursor to later complications surrounding the title. I finally decided to add the post to category 'PCA/WCC/etc.'
The most interesting post to receive its first label was
Where's Smyslov?
(December 2007). Since the question is still unanswered, I gave it two labels.
The 1st leg of the [Women's] Grand Prix [WGP] started this past week. Since [the four] events are for the next cycle, I decided not to record their details myself, but to link to the corresponding Wikipedia page. I documented the decision in the index page for the Women's Championship. (NB: PGN still to be decided.)
The 'to be decided' also applied to images that I would normally use on the page, plus links to resources from Fide.com. See the page for the previous cycle,
2019-2020 FIDE Women's Grand Prix
(m-w.com), for an example of the layout.
Although I just wrote 'previous cycle', that cycle is in fact still underway, with the Candidates tournament and title match to be played.
The logo for the first leg of the new WGP is shown above. The link to the official site is
FIDE Grand prix 2022
(womengrandprix.fide.com; 'Astana, the 1st tournament: September, 17 - 20 [sic; see TWIC below for the correct dates]').
I was disappointed to discover that the Wikipedia pages for the most recent WGP's lack crosstables for the individual events:-
On the page for the 2019–2021 WGP, the Wikipedia section 'Events crosstables' says,
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2021).
In TWIC 1454, Mark Crowther wrote,
The Astana FIDE Women's Grand Prix takes place Sat 17th Sep to Fri 30th Sep 2022. The city in which the event is being held was renamed from Astana to Nur-Sultan in 2019 but yesterday a decree was signed to restore the city to the name of Astana, so I went with that. This is the first of four Women's Grand Prix events as part of the FIDE Women's World Championship cycle, three are next year.
Thank goodness we still have TWIC for PGN and crosstables.
