Incentivation

As a child I had a catholic education, although I have recovered from it now. As part of this education we were read lots of parables, memories of which I long ago suppressed. But one parable I did remember was the Parable of the Workers in the Field. The basic gist of it is a vineyard owner goes out in the morning to higher some workers for the day. They agree to a price and the workers get to work. Later in the day he hires some more workers (at the same price), and even later hires some more. At the end of the day everyone gets paid the same (agreed) amount, even though some worked longer than others. Much moaning is heard from all day workers, but to no avail as a deal is a deal. Indeed the vineyard owner twists the knife a little bit by stating "Are you envious because I am generous?"
I often think of this parable when I see the interaction between chess players and tournament organisers. Any perceived unequal treatment usually results in somone from the "have-nots" having a whinge about how unfair it all is. One example was the provision of tea/coffee for titled players at this years Doeberl Cup. I suspect if everyone had to pay for coffee then their would have been no complaints, but by providing free coffee to a small group of players (as part of their overall tournament conditions) was somehow a slap in the face of the hard working chess players of this country.
So is there such things as bad incentives to play in a chess tournament? Is something more than a basic prize fund and a good venue somehow damaging to the success of a tournament? Because based on comments to me and comments I've read elsewhere there is a group of players who probably think so.
Oh for the chessplayer who wants to play for the simple enjoyment of the game!

IAGOCOT

The heading to this post stands for "It's A Game Of Chess Out There" and was a popular topic in the Chess Addict column in Chess Monthly. It is kind of like trainspotting for chess players, in that every time you hear a commentator covering another sport use that expression (or something like it) you score yourself a point.
Well after watching the Tour de France every night for the last week and a half I scored my point yesterday evening. Phil Liggett remarked "It is a like a chess game. Evans has to watch every move made by his rivals. And then try and put them in check". Certainly colourful, and even reasonably applicable.

A Tragedy in 3 Acts

The first round of a swiss tournament usually involves the top half demonstrating to the bottom half why they are in the bottom half. Of course there are a couple of upsets just to give people something to talk about, but the above script is normally followed.
But the first round of the ANU Winter Swiss definitely didn't follow the script. There were a number of upsets, and the results of a number of games were decided by single (bad) moves.
The Bronze Medal went to the game where in a drawn position one player missed the only threat his opponent had by allowing his Queen to be pinned against his King.
The Silver Medal was earned when excellent play saw the lower rated player emerge an exchange up with nothing left on the board except RvB (plus pawns for both sides). All that was left was to clean up a few stray pawns, but unfortunately the first move in the plan placed his Rook on the same diagonal as his King allowing a Bishop fork.
But the Gold went to the game shown in the diagram. White had been doing all the attacking, and triumphantly concluded the game by playing Rf8+. Black looked at the board, looked at the opponent, and then reached out his hand to .... Resign! "Can't stop that" he remarked. Watching the game I was also caught up in the mass delusion as it took me 30 seconds to realise (and point out) that Rxf8 just wins a Rook for Black.

But tactics is easier

The attached (constructed) position came up during my weekly chess study group. The author of the position had shown it to a group of junior Canberra players and coaches and asked them what was the correct reply after white plays 1.h3 He was surprised that the most popular choice by far was simply to play 1. ... gxh3 He wasn't sure whether they had missed 2.Kh2 or that they simply hadn't conceived that by keeping the King and Knight trapped in the corner they were effectively a piece ahead.
Attempting to explain this kind of tactical 'group-think' I suggested that most of the kids had been coached to look at tactics first, and positional play later. The reasoning for this is that the outcome of tactics is easy to quantify (even for 6 year olds) while positional compensation is a far more abstract concept. While he agreed with the explanation he still felt that this means that Australian chessplayers may reach a certain level through tactical ability, but won't go beyond it due to a lack of a deeper chess "understanding".

Chess in Port Moresby

The Papua New Guinea Chess Federation organised a successful one-day event in Port Moresby on the weekend. The tournament attracted more than 40 players, and even made the sport section of the local papers (Click here for the story).
This tournament (and future events) is part of a strategy to increase playing numbers in the South Pacific. Working with the Asian Confederation, officials like Stuart Fancy and Gary Bekker, are organising the distribution of sets to schools, clubs and federations in Oceania, as well as receiving Confederation funds to support tournaments (such as the Fiji Zonal).
BTW If you happen to be in Port Moresby and are looking for a game, there is a regular chess group that meets at the Round House Restaurant in Boroko, from 1:30pm on Saturday afternoons.

An interesting prison

While kibitzing at Street Chess yesterday I spied the following position. With White to move (as it was) the bishop is helpless against the advance of the b pawn. And so it turned out. White pushed the pawn and eventually the bishop has to sacrifice itself. Oddly enough Black waited for this by shuffling his king between f8 and g8, so when the Black captured the pawn on b7, the king was on g8, resulting in the knight returning to d6 before the King could escape via e8.
I'm not sure that this was deliberate, as when White executed the second part of the winning plan (by marching the king to e7), Black had exchanged the h pawns, and set a couple of stalemate tricks (eg King on h7 when White could promote on f8 (f8(Q) or f8(R) would stalemate). However White kept his head and wasted a move so that f8(Q) was a check, soon followed by mate.

A free pairing program

Looking for a free pairing program to handle small (less than 30 player) tournaments. Today a friend of mine told me about one such program. Called Vega, it is free to download and use, and runs under both windows and Linux.
The fact that it runs under Linux has two benefits. Firstly, it runs under Linux, and secondly, the 30 player restriction doesn't apply to the Linux version. This is because the development environment is free and therefore developers do not incur purchasing costs. I've seen this pricing model used for other software as well (eg If I have to buy Microsoft Visual Studio to write my software I will charge the end user, while developing for Linux will result in no such cost), and I'm all for it.
As for the software itself it looks pretty good (based on 20 minutes of use). A nice GUI interface makes entering details of players pretty easy, and producing the draw is just a single click. Modifying pairings is fairly straight forward, although a little more round-about than swiss perfect.
It seems to be developed in Italy, meaning it is tailored to the Italian Chess Federation but it does support FIDE/USCF reporting. Also it uses the Dubov system by default, and supports the Lim System (which was the system prior to current Dutch System).
As I've just discovered it I won't make this review a 'recommendation', especially as I'm trying to get the 'late entry of players' functionality to work properly, but I'm sure this can be solved by me reading the downloadable user manual.