2022-23 Women's Candidates, Kickoff

This morning I was surprised to learn that the Women's Candidates Tournament (Pool A) starts in Monte-Carlo (fide.com). In last month's post, Women's Events 2022-23 (September 2022), I mentioned the event without giving dates.

I created a new page World Chess Championship (Women) : 2022-23 Candidates Tournament (m-w.com) and added it to the index page World Chess Championship for Women (ditto). Shown below is the event's logo.

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.

'Inspired by the Fischer-Spassky Match'

For nearly six months I've been running a Fischer Friday series on my main blog. A month ago it switched from the 1972 Fischer - Spassky Match to the 1992 Fischer - Spassky Rematch. I documented the transition in FS 1972 + 20 = FS 1992 (September 2022) and listed all of the previous posts in the series.

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:-

• 2022-10-07: Emily Allred on the WCHOF Fischer-Spassky Exhibit | Round 3 • 'World Chess Hall of Fame Curator Emily Allred talks to Cristian Chirila during Round 3 of the 2022 U.S. Chess Championships.'
• 2022-10-13: Shannon Bailey: Inside Fischer-Spassky at the WCHOF | Round 8 • 'World Chess Hall of Fame Chief Curator Shannon Bailey talks to Cristian Chirila during Round 8 of the 2022 U.S. Chess Championships.'
• 2022-10-18: John Donaldson’s Fischer-Spassky Lecture is Must See | Round 11 • 'IM John Donaldson talks to Cristian Chirila during Round 11 of the 2022 U.S. Chess Championships.'

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.

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.

Women's Events 2022-23

Earlier this year, in a post on my main blog titled A Year of Anniversaries (May 2022), I noted a number of past events worth remembering in 2022. Among more important anniversaries, like 50 years since the 1972 Fischer - Spassky match -- see FS 1972 + 20 = FS 1992 (September 2022), for the most recent post on my main blog -- this year marks a personal milestone:-

25 years documenting the World Chess Championship (m-w.com; WCC site) [...] Later this year I'll be closing down the WCC site, probably after the next title match [...] It's time to put the whole thing to sleep. We will always have Wikipedia, won't we!

What about the rest of the WCC site, specifically the index page for the World Championship for Women (m-w.com)? It's been eight months since I last posted about a women's event: 2021 Grand Swiss PGN and Player Indices (January 2022). Has anything significant happened since then or have I been asleep at the wheel? It turns out to have been a bit of both.

At some time during the year, FIDE changed the format of the Women's Candidates Tournament. It will be a knockout event instead of a round robin. Full details aren't available yet, but I'll start a new page when the time is right. On top of that, the FIDE Calendar (fide.com) lists a series of tournaments under the heading 'FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2022/23':-

1st leg; Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan; 17 Sep 2022; 30 Sep 2022
2nd leg; Munich, Germany; 01 Feb 2023; 14 Feb 2023
3rd leg; India; 2023; 2023
4th leg; Bydgoscz, Poland; 2023; 2023

It also mentions an event to be held in Q4 next year:-

FIDE Grand Swiss and Women’s Grand Swiss 2023; Isle of Man; 23 Oct 2023; 05 Nov 2023

The 1st leg of the Grand Prix started this past week. Since all of those 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.]

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!