It's Later Than You Think

A number of complications -- a failing PC, two new chess960 correspondence events, complications around an inheritance, tax season, vacation -- have all arrived at the same time and have resulted in a serious lag between the date on this post and the date that I'm writing it. I wanted to catch up by doing a series of easy posts as a follow-up to Fischer vs. Carlsen (December 2023) and Rogues' Gallery (ditto), but I ran into technical issues with the underlying cloud software.

Since I'm not seeing an easy fix to the technical problems, I'll skip posting to this blog until I get my affairs in order. Back in a jiffy ... (he said).

21 World Champions at a Glance

The previous post, World Championship Posters (January 2025; alternate title: 'Of Posts and Posters'), started,

I discovered a photo of historical interest among others from game 10: [see link to photo; (Photo credit: FIDE / Eng Chin An)] Posters in the background told a couple of important stories.

Along with the posters featured in that post, was a poster with a unique prespective on the official World Champions. It is shown below.

The World Champions
(can be expanded)

The historical path starts with Steinitz in the upper left corner, shows the five non-FIDE World Champions, then drops to Botvinnik in the middle of the second row, who was the first FIDE World Champion, no.6 in the accepted sequence of numbering the World Champions. He is flanked by the two players who beat him in a title match (then lost a rematch), after which the path moves to Petrosian (no.9). The path then runs sequentially through Kasparov (no.13).

After Kasparov, the path resembles spaghetti. Kasparov is succeeded by Karpov and Kramnik (no.14). Karpov is succeeded by Khalifman then the other three FIDE Knockout (KO) World Champions plus Topalov. The Bulgarian is succeeded by Kramnik then Anand (no.15). The Indian is succeeded by Carlsen then Ding Liren (no.17). The current World Champion, Gukesh (no.18), is not shown.

The total of 17 numbered World Champions plus five FIDE World Champions makes 22 faces. Who's missing? No one, because Anand sits on two paths, as the second KO champion and for beating Kramnik in 2006. Karpov's win as the first KO champion in 1997/-98 is not shown, probably because he succeeded himself.

The colors used for the arrows could have been better chosen, but that's a detail. All in all, it's an informative chart with tons of info and good photos packed into a small space. Kudos to its designer. For more clarity on the spaghetti portion of the chart (ten faces), see the main page of my World Chess Championship (m-w.com) site.

World Championship Posters

While I was searching FIDE's official photos in preparation for previous posts, e.g. 2024 Gukesh - Ding Liren, Closing Ceremony (December 2024), I discovered a photo of historical interest among others from game 10: 2024-12-07 FIDE World Championship Singapore 2024 Others (Photo: FIDE / Eng Chin An). Posters in the background told a couple of important stories.

First, here is a composite extract from the photo showing posters from various World Championship matches. Beneath the extract is a legend linking to my own pages (m-w.com).

Top to bottom, left to right [notes in brackets]; first row:-

• 1995 Kasparov - Anand; PCA Title Match; New York, IX-X, 1995. [see '(A)']
• (ditto)
• 1987 Kasparov - Karpov; Seville, X-XII, 1987.

Second row:-

• 2012 Anand - Gelfand; Moscow, V, 2012.
• 1993 Kasparov - Short; PCA Title Match; London, IX-X, 1993.
• 2016 Carlsen - Karjakin; New York, XI, 2016. [logo same as poster]

Third row:-

• 1981 Karpov - Korchnoi; Merano, X-XI, 1981.
• 1987 Kasparov - Karpov; Seville, X-XII, 1987. [as above, different poster]
• 1972 Fischer - Spassky; Reykjavik, VII-VIII, 1972. [program; see '(B)']

Fourth row:-

• 2014 Carlsen - Anand; Sochi (Russia), XI, 2014.
• 1990 Kasparov - Karpov; New York/Lyon, X-XII, 1990.

Notes:-

• (A) Chess at the World Trade Center (June 2018)
• (B) 1972 Fischer - Spassky Poster (March 2013)

It's noteworthy that some of the posters were created for non-FIDE World Championship matches; see the three PCA title matches in the first two rows.

The same FIDE photo which was the source of the composite image above included another poster/chart showing the relationships between the World Championships starting with Steinitz. I'll save that for the next post.

Twenty-Five Years into the Millennium

https://cooltext.com/

***

Is 2025 a Dystopian Year?
(Cooltext Style: Tesla)

Rogues' Gallery

On my main blog I've been experimenting with AI Comic software. The most recent post in the series, Fischer vs. Carlsen (December 2023), explained,

For this post, I used the tool to see how well it drew World Champions, both past and present. [...] The AI likenesses were generally acceptable, although sometimes barely. I'll look at that in another post, maybe on my World Championship blog.

The following composite image is assembled from 18 times '[Name] plays chess', where '[Name]' is one of the World Champions. Each execution of the command created a 'comic' page with four panels and I picked the best panel to include with the composite.

AI Comic Factory

The likenesses are in chronological order and start with Paul Morphy in the upper left corner. He is followed by Wilhelm Steinitz, after whom they run left to right, top to bottom through Ding Liren in the bottom right corner.

Most of the likenesses resemble their real life champions. The worst match is probably Max Euwe in the upper right corner, which doesn't resemble the Dutchman at all. The first five Soviet Champions, who all appear on the second row before Fischer, are only so-so. Petrosian in the yellow jacket and Spassky to his right are barely recognizable.

The best likenesses are the six most recent champions on the last row. Karpov and Kasparov look much older than when they were in their prime. Kramnik, next to them, deserves a better likeness, but I ran out of time. [NB: Where's Topalov?]

If I find the time, I'll try to do better for Euwe, Petrosian, Spassky, and Kramnik. It might also be interesting to try the same exercise with Women World Champions.

World Championship eBay Auctions

In a recent post on my main blog, Fischer - Spassky Top Items by Price (December 2023), I wrote,

So many years of following Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010) [...] My short list for this post had a dozen items, any one of which could have been featured for the post. By coincidence, the three most expensive items on the list were all related to the 1972 Fischer - Spassky match.

That started me wondering how many earlier eBay posts featured an auction related to the World Championship. There's no easy way to count these using the search available on this public-facing blog, but the private site to create blog posts, Google's Blogger.com, allows for search on multiple tags/labels, e.g. 'eBay and WCC'. I found 49 posts with those tags, including 'Fischer - Spassky Top Items'.

I loaded the control info about the 49 posts into a database and sorted on number of views by descending order. Following are the top five posts ranked by apparent popularity. I say 'apparent', because the number of views depends on factors external to the post. The oldest posts, for example, appeared before blog statistics were introduced on Blogger.com. During the period 2012-2018, posts were affiliated by Chess Club Live (CCL), which greatly boosted their viewing stats. Here's the list of no.1-5:-

• 2013-03-03: 1972 Fischer - Spassky Poster
• 2013-11-24: Carlsen - Anand, Signed Board • 'The Carlsen - Anand World Championship match ended just two days ago, so I [...] looked for Carlsen - Anand items.'
• 2016-02-23: The Real Bobby Fischer? • 'While I was studying the [Darrach] book I was reminded of the many press photos that appeared in the news before, during, and after the 1972 match. I gathered as many of these as I could find and started to sort them. I found close to 100, of which 30 are shown in the following composite photo.'
• 2008-02-05: Halldor Petursson Cartoons
• 2016-07-12: Chess Champion Trading Cards • 'Svijet Sporta card[s] from Yugoslavia in 1980-1981. 'Svijet Sporta' translates to 'Sports World' in English.'

Three of those five posts were related to the 1972 Fischer - Spassky match. Among the posts ranked no.6-10, two were related to the same match. I suppose this all stems from Fischer's mystique, especially among Americans.

Chess Photos : 'Courtesy of FIDE'

The previous post, 2023 Nepomniachtchi - Ding Liren, Fourth Week (May 2023), used a photo. And it wasn't just any photo; it was a photo from the official site for the Nepo - Ding match: Photos from 2023 FIDE World Championship Match (worldchampionship.fide.com). That FIDE page offers reuse of the photos, but with a condition:-

Please note that these photographs are provided to the media as a courtesy from FIDE, strictly for editorial use only. when used, these photos must include proper credits in the caption, using the following formula:

"Photo: FIDE / Name of the photographer"
or
"Courtesy of FIDE / Name of the photographer"

In case of doubt regarding the authorship, please contact a FIDE representative at press@fide.com

I'm pleased to oblige. I'm not sure if this post qualifies as 'editorial use', but I'll take a chance that it does.

Photos from 'Closing Ceremony'
Courtesy of FIDE / Stev Bonhage

At the beginning of last year, I posted on my main blog, Chess Photos : 'All rights reserved' (January 2022). The post ended saying,

I imagine that all of the photos in these albums are marked '© All rights reserved'. That's why they never appear on my short lists. Would it hurt any of the expert photographers who took the photos to license a few under 'Creative Commons'? That would allow other content creators (like me) to share the photos with a larger public.

My prayers have been answered. I'm a happy blogger.

Kasparov the 13th

Once in a while I like to look at chess newsletters that might offer insight into the World Championship. See, for example, FIDE Newsletters Revisited (August 2020). The link to 'archive of all issues, FIDE Newsletter (fide.com)' still works, although the frequency is becoming erratic. The most recent issue was '#47 (11-16-2022)'.

One newsletter I haven't discussed is a monthly effort from the 13th World Champion. I received the first, unsolicited issue at the email address I use on the index page for my World Championship site (m-w.com). I often receive spam at that email address, but this was one piece of email that I was happy to see:-

• The 13th from Garry Kasparov - July 2021 • 'A Message from Garry'

Kasparov's message started,

I'm happy to greet you with one of many new or relaunched projects. On the 13th of every month, this newsletter will send you my most recent op-eds and interviews, recommended reading, and more exclusive content. I’m excited to share my latest work and partnerships, as well as my insight into current events and an inside angle on developing stories that caught my eye. We’ll be making many additions and improvements in the coming months.

The first segment was an excerpt from Yuri Dokhoian, Dear Friend and Peerless Coach (kasparov.com). The second segment was about 'the launch of KasparovChess.com'. I wrote about that site on my main blog in The Second Incarnation of Kasparovchess.com (June 2022). Those segments convinced me that the newsletter was more than just another vehicle for his 'I-told-you-so' diatribes about Putin and was therefore worth keeping for its chess content. The next two newsletters arrived on schedule:-

• The 13th from Garry Kasparov - August 2021
• The 13th from Garry Kasparov - September 2021

Skipping over the next half-year we come to the first newsletter after the start of Russia's attack on Ukraine:-

• The 13th from Garry Kasparov - March 2022

Just so no one misunderstands my sentiments, I first covered the conflict in Yahoos of Madness, Yahoos of Tragedy (March 2022; 'Russia's brutal, barbaric attack on neighboring Ukraine and its impact on international chess'). Kasparov, who has no military experience and even less diplomatic instinct, was not shy about giving advice to Western military, diplomatic, and political leaders. In early March he granted interviews to two CNN news commentators. I saw the original, live(?) interview on CNN's 'New Day Weekend', but had to change the channel after Kasparov said,

[No] boots on the ground is a typical trick when they [NATO] want to cover their weakness. They introduce an argument that was not there. We are talking only about a no-fly zone. If NATO is not ready to confront Russia militarily in the skies, how are they going to defend the eastern flank [of NATO].

A no-fly zone is not considered boots on the ground? Defending non-NATO Ukraine is equivalent to defending a member of the NATO alliance? If anyone in authority had followed Kasparov's advice, we would all be dead now, so let's move on; the latest newsletter was:-

• The 13th from Garry Kasparov - November 2022

There's some chess in that issue, but there's much more about Putin. When Kasparov discusses chess, I listen carefully. When he disusses almost anything else -- AI included -- I change the channel. Apparently, I'm not alone. See We Need to Talk about Garry, Part 1 (kingpinchess.net; 'Why Life Does Not Imitate Chess'...), and follow the links for the other two parts. Once again we see that hubris is the occupational disease of the professional chess player.

Chess.com Global Championship

Earlier this year I wrote a post titled It's Not an April Fool's Joke (April 2022). It was about two events that were announced around the same time:-

• 'The $1,000,000 Chess.com World Championship'
• 'The Lichess World Championship'

I asked and answered,

Are these real World Chess Championships? In my opinion, no, they aren't, but I'm just one voice in the court of public opinion that decides such matters. I think they're more like site championships. I'll come back to the subject if public opinion eventually disagrees with me.

The Chess.com event quickly changed its name:-

• 2022-04-21 ... 2022-11-07 Chess.com Global Championship 2022: All The Information

The results are scattered across many Chess.com pages:-

• 2022-05-02 ... 2022-10-17 [CGC] Results (chess.com) • Qualifier Results; Play-in Results; All the players who qualified
  
  
• Results & Standings - [CGC] Knockout 2022 (ditto; see 'Results' tab) • Round 1 to 3; Quarterfinals; Semifinals; Finals
  
  
• 2022-10-16 ... 2022-11-08 [CGC] Finals 2022 (ditto)

That 'All The Information' page informed,

GM Wesley So won the inaugural Chess.com Global Championship in November 2022. This event was the first Chess.com championship with a cycle open to all of our verified players. Players competed in official Chess.com verified events for their share of the $1,000,000 prize fund and the Chess.com Global Champion title.

As for the Lichess version, Announcing the Lichess World Championship (lichess.org/forum), it looks like it was intended as a joke. Lichess can sometimes become very strange.

Missing Labels

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.

2022-23 WGP, Astana

A few weeks ago, in the post Women's Events 2022-23 (September 2022), I wrote,

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:-

• FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019–2021 (wikipedia.org)
• FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2022–23 (ditto)

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.

The First Quarter Century

Earlier this year, in a post on my main blog titled A Year of Anniversaries (May 2022), I wrote,

On a more personal note, I'll see a couple of significant anniversaries myself:-
[...]
• 25 years documenting the World Chess Championship (m-w.com; WCC site)

The first incarnation of the site was on Compuserve.com. In Archive.org's Wayback Machine, the earliest capture of the WCC site's index page on that domain is shown below. Archive.org dates the page to 3 December 1998.

Source:
Wayback Machine [ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Mark_Weeks]

My first backup of all pages on the site was dated 18 September 1997. The first event listed on the index page was '1994-96 FIDE' and the last was '1886 USA Steinitz - Zukertort', i.e. all events were on a single page and there were no unofficial events from earlier in the 19th century.

I recorded the first statistics on 23 September 1997, when I noted 213 visitors to date. I'm not sure how many days that covered, because I neglected to record the day I added the Icount.com counter to the index page. There were only three additional pages linked from the index page:-

• 'Index of players - Alphabetical list of all players who have participated in a World Chess Championship event.'; All names A-Z were on a single page. [WCC-PLYR.HTM]
• 'Recent news about the World Chess Championship (aka "chess politics")'; e.g. 'Organizations' and 'Relevant pages on the Web'. [WCC-NEXT.HTM]
• 'The World Chess Championship and Computers'; the emphasis was on the two Kasparov - Deep Blue matches. [WCC-COMP.HTM]

By the time of the December 1998 page returned by the Wayback Machine, those pages had been reorganized into a table titled 'Related topics'. The WCC-NEXT.HTM page had disappeared.

For an earlier post on the creation of the site, see The Second Decade (March 2007). It was the first post on this blog and started,

Almost ten years have passed since I first started assembling the information that became my first web site. Chess had always been good to me and I wanted to do something for the game. No one had yet put anything on the web that tackled thoroughly the history of the World Chess Championship, so I decided that it would be my little gift to chess.

For the story behind another noteworthy anniversary on the site, see Status of the Women's World Championship (October 2019). I moved the site from Compuserve.com to my own domain in October 1999.

World Champs from Morphy to Carlsen

This video, from Chess.com, could play a significant role in introducing chess history to the general public, although the title is misleading. More accurate would be 'The History of the World Chess Championship'. After a brief introduction covering centuries of chess history, the narrative decelerates starting with the career of Paul Morphy.

The History Of Chess: The World Chess Championship (1:14:37) • '[Published on] Aug 21, 2022'

The description said,

Learn about the champions who have defined the game such as Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, and Magnus Carlsen from some of the game's greatest players and commentators, including Viswanathan Anand, Bruce Pandolfini, Ben Finegold, and Danny Rensch.

I could quibble about some of the 'facts' -- was Genghis Khan's contribution really worth a mention? -- and many of the photos do not correspond to the story at that moment. I'll look the other way because one of my pages makes a brief appearance at the appropriate moment: Lasker - Schlechter Title Match; Vienna/Berlin, I-II, 1910 (m-w.com). Fame at last...

At around 48:00 into the clip, Nigel Short says,

Spassky. It's actually a tragedy in a way. The guy is best known for losing a match. He did so much more than this in his chess career, but sometimes your fate in life is to be known for a defeat rather than all the many, many victories that you've had over those years.

Was GM Short also talking about himself? For more about the video, see Chess.com Releases Documentary 'The History Of Chess: The World Chess Championship' (chess.com). Bravo, Chess.com!

A Giant Among GMs

Earlier this week, in Yuri Averbakh, 1922-2022 (chess.com), Peter Doggers reported,

GM Yuri Averbakh, the world’s oldest grandmaster, a trainer, international arbiter, chess composer, endgame theoretician, writer, historian, honorary member of FIDE, and the last living participant of the famous Zurich 1953 Candidates Tournament, has passed away, three months after turning 100. His death has been confirmed by the Russian Chess Federation and FIDE. Averbakh was one of the few strong players who managed to simultaneously reach significant heights in chess theory, literature, journalism, history, and chess politics.

Of the dozen photos of GM Averbakh in my eBay photo archive, this was my favorite. From an eBay auction in February 2012:-

The description informed,

Original Soviet chess press photo. The 26th Championship of USSR in Tbilisi 1959. Grandmasters from left to right: Tigran Petrosian, David Bronstein, Mikhail Tal, Yuri Averbakh.

The photo pictures a former World Championship challenger (Bronstein) and two future World Champions (Tal, Petrosian). GM Averbakh competed in the 1952 Saltsjobaden Interzonal (5-8th/21), the 1953 Zurich Candidates (10th-11th/15), and the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal (7-11th/21) a half point behind the group that qualified for the 1959 Yugoslavia Candidates (all links m-w.com).

Averbakh has figured many times on this blog, as well as on my main blog, e.g. in these related posts:-

• [WCCB] Averbakh on the World Championship (July 2013)
• [CFAA] Averbakh's 'Index of Names' (August 2013)

Many of the posts on my main blog were related to his contributions to endgame theory. This post is all Averbakh:-

• [CFAA] A Brief History of Endgame Theory (December 2011)

In another post on that blog, Friendly Chess Players (July 2013), I mentioned,

Near the end of the book ['Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'], GM Averbakh divides great players into six groups. Here are quotes from Averbakh describing each group [...]

Another obituary from this week, Yuri Averbakh, Chess’s First Centenarian Grandmaster, Dies at 100 (nytimes.com), by the NYT's top chess writer, Dylan Loeb McClain, referenced the same categories:-

Though Mr. Averbakh was talented, he said he knew he lacked the necessary qualities to become a world champion. In his autobiography, he wrote that great players fall into six categories: killers, fighters, sportsmen, people who like to play games, artists and explorers. All of the world champions came from the first four groups, he said. He put himself in the sixth category -- that of an explorer.

GM Averbakh was a World Champion chess explorer, possibly the greatest ever. Who else comes close?

It's Not an April Fool's Joke

You've seen the publicity: Announcing The $1,000,000 Chess.com World Championship (chess.com). Now watch the trailer!

Announcing The $1,000,000 Chess.com World Championship (?:??) • '[Published on] Apr 21, 2022'

Hey, wait a minute! Now it says, 'Video unavailable; This video is private'. I watched the clip yesterday and recorded the description, which said,

With $1,000,000 in prizes, we are excited to announce the Chess.com World Championship! Prepare for open qualifiers, play-in and knockout rounds featuring the world's best chess players, and you! Take part in this record-breaking event by verifying your Chess.com profile!

Yes, the video was sort of silly. It started with an inside joke -- 'World Hess Hampionship' -- seen in Chess.com's broadcasts of the last *real* World Championship, the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi match. If you don't get the joke, see the 'CHR' column in a post from my main blog, A Trio of World Championship Video Makers (December 2021). Sorry I can't be more specific about which round the joke appeared. It was worth a smile at the time, but that was nearly six months ago.

My guess is that someone pulled the plug on the video because the subject is serious, but the video wasn't. It's not every day a chess site announces a World Chess Championship of its own. Why would they turn around and make fun of it? As an April Fool's joke maybe, but they missed that by three weeks. A few days after the Chess.com announcement, there was a similar announcement from another online chess play site: Announcing the Lichess World Championship (lichess.org).

Are these real World Chess Championships? In my opinion, no, they aren't, but I'm just one voice in the court of public opinion that decides such matters. I think they're more like site championships. I'll come back to the subject if public opinion eventually disagrees with me.

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 current cycle (C30) zonals and other qualifiers; see posts starting C29 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (September 2019); and
• GM Carlsen's record since the last World Championship match; see posts starting Carlsen's Events 2017-18 (September 2018).

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

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?

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!

Olimpbase Zonals

In last week's post, Another Azmai Controversy? (February 2021), I discovered an exciting development on Olimpbase concerning the documentation of zonal tournaments. As a consequence, I assigned myself a future action:-

For further investigation: [...] How much more than 'Zonal 1.2b, Struga 1995' is available on Olimpbase?

Unable to find an index to zonals on the site, I concentrated on the directory where the zonal files are located: olimpbase.org/ind-wcc. I loaded the filenames of the zonal pages into a database and learned that they were all similarly structured:-

[cycle]-zonal[info], e.g. 'wc1998-zonal12b' for the Struga 1995 page mentioned above.

This let me count the number of zonals available for each [cycle], as shown in the following chart (excludes playoffs).

For example, the 'wc1998' cycle has 21 zonals associated with it, of which one is the Struga 1995 page. The codes shown in red in the last column correspond to my system of numbering the cycles. From this we can see that cycles C01 through C10 are represented, C11 to C14 are missing, and C15 to C20 are represented, although C20 has only a single zonal. (The current cycle is C29.)

The largest number of zonals are from the 'wc1996' cycle (C16), so I decided to compare the Olimpbase data with my own data on the page C16: 1993-1996 Zonal Cycle. The word 'compare' isn't the most precise term, because Olimpbase has full crosstables, round-by-round progress, and much more, where I often have only the year/place of the event with a clipping to confirm its existence elsewhere in chess literature. For example, my C16 page mentions,

1.5a Kladovo YUG 1993-06
1.5a Zouberi 1993-00

On several occasions I've looked for more info about these events, without success. The equivalent Olimpbase page, Zonal 1.5a, Kladovo/Zouberi 1993, has crosstables for both events plus links to a corresponding PGN file and a playoff. The Olimpbase home page, OlimpBase :: the encyclopaedia of team chess (olimpbase.org), currently says, 'Individual tournament finally available - a long expected feature is ON', plus:-

Under construction a.o.: • Individual World Championship (including complete results of zonals) • Individual Continental Championship (Panamerican, Asian, African, European) - most complete! [...]

This indicates that the championships of the four continents, which are equivalent to zonals for cycle qualification, are available elsewhere. The site's right sidebar lists all four under 'Continental Championships', but the links only lead back to the Olimpbase home page. Technical glitches of this sort are common on new resources. The timestamps on the zonal pages show that most were released on May 2020, so I expect we'll see updates at some time in the future.

OlimpBase's Wojciech Bartelski shows once again that he is a trailblazer in chess history. Thanks, Wojciech!

***

Later: Re...

The site's right sidebar lists all four under 'Continental Championships', but the links only lead back to the Olimpbase home page. Technical glitches of this sort are common on new resources.

...the 'glitch' was mine. I was trying to open the links in a new browser tab -- as I often do -- but the target page was not loading as it usually does. It was defaulting to the site's home page. A straightforward click on the link produces the desired target page. Apologies for the misleading remark!

Weeksipedia

On the sidebar of my main blog -- follow the sidebar on this blog to find it -- there's a link called 'My Scrapbook (Google Alerts)'. In fact, it's been years since the service was rebranded as 'Giga Alerts', but I've never taken the time to update the name of the link. The link's target page is a service that keeps track of results for the search term 'chess "mark weeks"'. It's a simple way to see who is referencing my material and what they are saying about it.

Those 'Giga Alerts' aren't updated very often, some of them don't make much sense, and many of them are for other folks who go through life bearing the name 'Mark Weeks', but all-in-all, the alerts are useful. Recently I discovered that turning the page search into an image search returns many more relevant pages than does the straightforward page search. Many of the images are from Wikipedia pages that reference my World Championship pages for crosstables.

Using the same technique as I used for the post Imagery of 1995 Kasparov - Anand (June 2018), the following image shows the first three lines of a search restricted to Wikipedia pages. It's a real who's who of world class players who are a tier below the familiar names of the World Champions and their main challengers.

Google image search on 'chess "mark weeks" site:wikipedia.org'

[Call the rows 'A' to 'C' (from top to bottom) and number the images in each row '1' to 'x' (from left to right).]

Images A1 and A10, for example, are from Wikipedia's page on Fenny Heemskerk, who, according to Wikipedia, competed in four women's tournaments at the highest level. My own page, Index of Women Players lists a fifth tournament, the 1967 Candidates Tournament in Subotica, then Yugoslavia, now Serbia.

Image B9 shows Lubomir Kavalek (wikipedia.org), who died this week. Wikipedia has links to two of my Interzonal pages, although my Index of Players (H-M), lists a third, the 1987 Subotica Interzonal Tournament (Subotica again), where I note, 'Kavalek withdrew after six rounds'.

Why do the Wikipedia pages link to my pages rather than to other Wikipedia pages on the same subject? Or to Chessgames.com crosstables? That is a question for which I have no answer. Perhaps the links were created before the other pages existed. (NB: I'm *not* complaining!)