Fast chess is sometime fun chess

Earlier this month I flagged the possibility that the FIDE Standard Rating List would include games played with a minimum time control of 60m. This proposal was rejected by the FIDE Executive Board, and so the current minimum time controls remain.
While I did not support the proposal, it would have opened up some extra possibilities for the Australian chess scene. My local club (Australian National University) plays four tournaments with a time control of 60m+10s, while a number of weekend events in Australia use the same time control.
The main complaint is that the quality of chess drops at the faster rates, and it is an opinion I agree with. But that does not mean you do not get some exciting, and well played games at this time control. As an example here is a game played at the 60m+10s time control. Both players whipped out the first 10 moves pretty quickly, but after White forgot the main line (11.Bxf6) both players were on their own. 16.g6 was pretty strong, but is was 26.Qg4 that was the start move (White needed to see this before playing 25.Rxf6!). After that the Black king was too exposed, and White just needed to find the right order of moves to win the game. (NB The game score was reconstructed from memory so the moves might not be an exact match! ** And I've edited the moves at least once!)


Chibnall,Alana - de Noskowski,Adrian [B99]
Spring Swiss ANU, Canberra, 30.10.2013

Not giving up the day job

I was a little surprised to receive a letter from google the other day, that wasn't the usual 'please advertise with us' snail mail spam. In fact it was the opposite. It instead said 'here, have some money' and was a my first payoff for the annoying ads I have on this blog. It wasn't a great amount (a little over $100) and the fact it has taken me 6 years of almost daily blogging to earn that small amount shows that this was never going to be a full time career.
But nonetheless, thank you for everyone who has visited this blog and clicked on the annoying adds down the side of the page. The next time I fill the car with petrol (bye bye $100) I will be thinking of you.

Chess gear for Halloween

'Do chess players dress up like cosplayer's do?' was a question I was asked just the other day. 'Of course not' I replied 'What do you think we are, nerds?'.
Turns out I was wrong, and it is possible to get dressed for chess, or at least as a chess piece.
Just in time for Halloween you can get a full size adult Chess King Costume from Amazon. And for the chess playing lady in your life, you can even get the matching Chess Queen Costume. There is even a smaller costume for the kids.

(Disclaimer: I definitely have no commercial relationship with any of this)

India and France lead the chess world

For a long time the country with the largest number of FIDE rated players in the world was Germany. This fact was often greeted with surprise, as a lot of people simply assumed that Russia would easily be number 1. But it isn't just the number of players that contribute to this stat, but the number of organisers. While Russia has lost of players they seem to have less FIDE rated events.
Now it seems that even Germany has been overtaken, by India and France. Currently both countries share the lead (with 35,200 rated players) but based on recent trends India will soon hold the outright lead. It does help to have (a) a billion people and (b) the current World Champion, but it still requires tournaments to be organised to get players into the system.
I'll have to do a bit of digging to find the rest of the rankings, and I suspect there will be other surprises hidden in there. Apart from bragging rights, it may reveal just who are real chess countries and who just think they are!

It is not the size of the dog in the fight.

It is the size of the fight in the dog.*
Czech team G-Team Novy Bor are the somewhat surprising winners of the 2013 European Club Championship. The secured their victory with a win over Minsk in the final round. However it was their 6th round win over top seeds SOCAR which was the real triumph. Despite being outrated on every board, they won the match 3.5-2.5 including going 3-0 on the top boards. The loss also seemd to knock the wind out of SOCAR's sails as they only drew their final round to fall back to 3rd place, behind Malachite.


Navara,David (2703) - Caruana,Fabiano (2779) [C84]
29th ECC Open Rhodes GRE (6.1), 25.10.2013

* This is a favourite saying of my father, who celebrated his 70th birthday today

One side is playing chess, the other checkers

A recent peeve of mine is the expression "One side is playing chess, the other checkers". I get what it is trying to say (one side is just smarter than the other), but it still strikes me as weird. Most often I've seen it used in the context of American (US) politics, although I feel it is giving away more about the american mindset than commentators realise. To me it is admitting that the default game in America is Checkers, while only really smart people play Chess.  For a country that argues it is 'exceptional', this is a kind of damning admission. Better would be "One side is just better at chess than the other".

Space, smashe

The Svidler Nakamura game from the current European Club Championships is a good example of the adage "give a man enough rope ... ". Svidler starts off by grabbing a huge amount of space but in doing so gives Nakamura plenty of targets to aim at. Possibly due to sense that he 'must be better' Svidler then overreaches, before his position suddenly collapses. I suspect if Reti had been alive to see this game he would have concluded that Black had been winning all along!


Svidler,Peter (2740) - Nakamura,Hikaru (2783) [E71]
29th ECC Open Rhodes GRE (5.1), 24.10.2013