Zonal Qualifiers C09-C12

At the end of the previous post, Zonal Qualifiers C11, I concluded,

I've decided that the format of the data in the chart is sufficient for new zonal pages on my World Championship site.

I applied the format to four cycles and created four new pages:-

• C09: 1972-75
• C10: 1975-78
• C11: 1978-81
• C12: 1981-84

These pages show only the qualifier data. The other bells and whistles found on the existing pages, like (C13) 1984-1987 Zonal Cycle Qualifiers, will be added after I create similar pages for C01 through C08.

Zonal Qualifiers C11

Last month, in Zonal Qualifiers C12, I developed a technique of documenting the qualification paths for the early World Championship cycles. The following chart shows that technique applied to the preceding cycle.

The first two columns are from the ZQP (zonal qualifying paths) data that I described in the C12 post. The last two columns are from my own pages. The zone numbers 'z01' etc. correspond to my page (C11) 1978-1981 Zonal Cycle. The last column is a code for the two interzonals that were held during the cycle:-

• 1979 Riga Interzonal; IX-X, 1979
• 1979 Rio de Janeiro Interzonal; --, 1979

There are two gaps in the data. One is for Mecking; the other is for Sunye Neto. I'll follow those up another time.

I've decided that the format of the data in the chart is sufficient for new zonal pages on my World Championship site. See the table at the bottom of the index page, World Chess Championship Zonals, for cycles C13 (1984-87) and after.

Postcard Pretty Merano

While searching for Korchnoi images on my main blog -- e.g. Korchnoi's Defection and Composite Korchnoi -- I came across a couple of attractive postcards.

The event was the 1981 Karpov - Korchnoi Title Match; Merano, X-XI, 1981. Merano/Meran has multiple associations with chess; from Wikipedia's entry on Merano:-

Merano or Meran is a town and comune in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Generally best known for its spa resorts, it is located within a basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to 3,335 metres (10,942 feet) above sea level, at the entrance to the Passeier Valley and the Vinschgau. [...]

A chess opening, the Meran Variation of the Semi-Slav Defense, is named after the town, from its successful use by Akiba Rubinstein against Ernst Grünfeld during a tournament held in the town in 1924. In 1981, the World Chess Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi was held in Meran. The first act of the musical Chess also has a world chess championship match set in Meran, and features a song entitled "Merano", which includes the line, "rosy-cheeked Merano, flourishing to a fault".

I have spotted many examples of the upper card on eBay, but the lower card is seen less frequently.

Averbakh on the World Championship

In yesterday's post on my main blog, Friendly Chess Players, I introduced Averbakh's 'Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'. The book is filled with stories about the World Championship, some of them new to me, many of them in more detail than I've seen before. Here's a list, each entry starting with its first page number in the book.

059 : 1950 CT
063 : 1951 19th USSR Chp semifinal (pre-zonal)
064 : ---- Pen portraits (A)
070 : 1951 19th USSR Chp (zonal)
071 : 1952 IZ
078 : 1953 CT
092 : 1955 22nd USSR Chp (zonal)
100 : ---- Sparring partner to MB
108 : 1958 25th USSR Chp (zonal)
110 : 1958 IZ
112 : ---- Early rules for WCC
120 : 1959 CT
129 : 1962 CT
147 : 1968 IZ playoff
154 : 1971 CM: TP-VK, RF-TP
157 : ---- Baturinsky
163 : 1972 WC: RF-BS
164 : 1963 VS & zonal
166 : 1974 CM: TP-LP, VK-TP
169 : 1977 CM: VK-TP
171 : 1974 FIDE Congress: AK-RF
175 : 1974 CM: AK-VK
178 : 1976 VK defection
185 : 1978 WC: AK-VK, Sevastianov
190 : 1982 IZ
193 : 1972 WC: RF-BS, Euwe
194 : 1982 FIDE President Campomanes
199 : 1982 CM: VS-RH, VS-ZR, GK-VK
214 : 1984 WC: AK-GK I
220 : 1985 WC: GK-AK II
221 : 1986 WC: GK-AK III
223 : 1987 FIDE Presidential election, GMA
223 : 1987 WC: GK-AK IV
224 : 1988 USSR Chp, GK-AK playoff
227 : 1988 USSR vs. World charity match
229 : 1990 Women's CT, Krogius
232 : 1972 Graz, Huebner - Rogoff (B)
233 : 1990 FIDE Presidential election
235 : 1987 GMA
236 : ---- Chess psychology (C)
240 : 1982 OL: Manila
242 : 1993 Schism, PCA, GK-NS, AK-JT
247 : 1994 OL: Salonika -> Moscow
250 : 1994 FIDE Presidential election
251 : 1995 FIDE Congress, Paris, Ilyumzhinov

IZ: Interzonal
CT: Candidate Tournament
CM: Candidate Match
WC: World Championship
OL: Olympiad (esp. Congress++)

AK: Karpov, BS: Spassky, GK: Kasparov, JT: Timman, LP: Portisch, MB: Botvinnik, NS: Short, RF: Fischer, RH: Huebner, TP: Petrosian, VK: Korchnoi, VS: Smyslov, ZR: Ribli

(A) Zubarev, Blumenfeld, Duz-Khotimirsky, Rabinovich, Verlinsky, Romanovsky
(B) A little known story about the future IMF Chief Economist; nothing to do with WC
(C) Incl. six categories of player as in 'Friendly Chess Players'

Although Averbakh's book deserves a review on my blog, this summary will have to do for now.

Carlsen Quits (Again)

GM Magnus Carlsen's announcement that he would no longer participate in the current World Championship cycle -- Magnus Carlsen drops out of World Championship cycle (Chessbase.com) -- sent shock waves through the chess world and shivers (déja vu style) up my spine. Instead of jumping to any conclusions as to Carlsen's motives, I decided to compile a list of similar incidents. Before I could start, I discovered I had been anticipated by the Daily Dirt (the dates in square brackets '[]' are mine):-

Alekhine dodged Capablanca [>1927]. Fischer disappeared instead of playing Karpov [1975]. Or was he taking a principled stand for rigorous rules? Shirov should have played Kasparov for next to no money. Or was it Kasparov who was dodging Shirov [1998]? Kramnik dodging Kasparov's quest for a rematch, or was he trying to restore a credible cycle [2001]? Kasparov skipping the Dortmund qualifier [2002], Ponomariov and Kasparov never playing [2003], and now Carlsen and, well, Ilyumzhinov [2010]. There are a dozen more we could add. • Carlsen Bails from WCh Cycle (Chessninja.com)

'Only a dozen more?', I thought. Here's a list I came up with after about 30 minutes, mostly spent on verification:-

• 1948: Fine [WCC match tournament]
  
• 1950: Reshevsky, Fine, Euwe, Bondarevsky [Budapest CT]; for several reasons
  
• 1965: Botvinnik [CM]

• 1964: Fischer [Amsterdam IZ]
  
• 1967: Fischer [Sousse IZ]
  
• 1972: Fischer [Reykjavik WCC]; will he or won't he?
  
• 1975: Fischer [WCC vs. Karpov]

• 1971: Huebner [CM qf vs. Petrosian]
  
• 1980: Huebner [CM f vs. Korchnoi]

• 1985: KK1; terminated by Campomanes
  
• 1986: KK3; Kasparov threatened to quit
  
• 1993: Kasparov - Short; played wthout FIDE

• 1996: Ilyumzhinov cancels Interzonal and replaces with KOs
  
• 1997: Kramnik [Groningen KO]
  
• 1999: Karpov [Las Vegas KO]

• 1998: Anand [WCC vs. Kasparov, declined]
  
• 1999: Anand [ditto, cancelled]
  
• 2000: Anand [ditto, declined]

There's some overlap there with the Chessninja list. I could have added more from the FIDE KOs played after 2000, but I became bored with the exercise. More challenging would have been a list of cycles where there weren't any such shenanigans. For a similar overview, see my post Troubled Matches from a few years ago. Maybe it has something to do with chess players not wanting to submit to authority.

Catching up on Maintenance

No one, especially me, likes doing maintenance, but once in a while it's worthwhile taking the time to get various odds and ends out of the way. I changed the following pages (listed in reverse chronological order).

• 2010 Anand - Topalov • I brought this page up to date with the various FIDE announcements from the last quarter of 2009. The match starts in less than three months.
  
  
• 2004-05 Unification • This had links into About.com which were broken since 2008; I converted them to Archive.org.
  
  
• 1998-99 World Chess Council • I added a small crosstable for the 1998 Shirov - Kramnik match.
  
  
• 1979-81 cycle : Candidates Matches • I added the months when a match was played to the description for each match.
  
  
• Index of FIDE Events 1948-1990 • I had one of the first Interzonals listed as Stockholm and another listed as Saltsjobaden, even though both were played in Saltsjobaden. I corrected this on the index and on the pages for the two events. (While I was doing this I noticed that four of the first five Interzonals were played in Sweden.)

A few more maintenance items on my TODO list will have to wait until I can research certain details.