While it is still a couple of months away, the Oceania Zonal website is now up and running, and it looks good. The address is http://www.oceaniachess.com/ and while there isn't much content it does contain the list of entries so far.
There are obviously a few names missing from the entry list that are certain to be going (eg IM Zong Yuan Zhao) but the official PNGCF selections, Stuart Fancy and Imelda Flores, are listed.
The Zonal runs from the May 5-12 and is being hosted by the Fiji Chess Federation.
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
Monday, 12 March 2007
FIDE Time Controls
Recently I have been appointed to serve on FIDE's Technical Commission and one of our first tasks is to look at time controls the FIDE will recommend in the following areas.
A) Standard Chess (World Ch, festivals, continental championship etc)
B) Rapid chess - World Championship, tie-breaks in the standard
WCh and Continental Ch., , rapid tournament etc
C) Blitz chess - World Blitz Championship, friendly event,tie-breaks for the standard WCh and Continental Ch
Now I have my own reasonably strong feelings on this matter, both based on events I have organised, and events I have seen, but opinions are always welcome. No guarantee I'll listen to them of course, but no harm in trying.
Actual decisions won't be made until November, but I will probably make my own suggestions fairly soon.
A) Standard Chess (World Ch, festivals, continental championship etc)
B) Rapid chess - World Championship, tie-breaks in the standard
WCh and Continental Ch., , rapid tournament etc
C) Blitz chess - World Blitz Championship, friendly event,tie-breaks for the standard WCh and Continental Ch
Now I have my own reasonably strong feelings on this matter, both based on events I have organised, and events I have seen, but opinions are always welcome. No guarantee I'll listen to them of course, but no harm in trying.
Actual decisions won't be made until November, but I will probably make my own suggestions fairly soon.
PWM Signals on a PXA270 Chip
NB Clearly this is a non-chess post
Trap for young players trying to get a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) signal off a PXA270 chip using the Colibri board. As a power saving feature, the 13Mhz clock used to control the signal is switched OFF by default, and must be enabled before anything can happen. To do this you need to set either bits 0 or 1 in the CKEN (Clock Enable) register which is mapped to memory location 0x4130_0004.
Trap for young players trying to get a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) signal off a PXA270 chip using the Colibri board. As a power saving feature, the 13Mhz clock used to control the signal is switched OFF by default, and must be enabled before anything can happen. To do this you need to set either bits 0 or 1 in the CKEN (Clock Enable) register which is mapped to memory location 0x4130_0004.
Sunday, 11 March 2007
GM Sergei Shipov Lecture & Simul
GM Sergei Shipov will be in Canberra to give a lecture and simul on the 1st of April.
The details, courtesy of Jenni Oliver are
GM Sergei Shipov will be conducting a lecture and simul in Canberra.
Date 1 April 2007 (no this is not an April Fool’s joke :) )
Register 11:15
Venue ACTJCL centre at Campbell High, Treloar Crescent, Campbell.
Lecture 12 noon for ½ hour
Simul Starts 1pm
Cost $15
Please register your interest by emailing jenni@stratagemcc.com.au . You may also register on the day, if space is available.
GM Sergei Shipov is the top seed in the Sydney International Open to be held in Parramatta after Easter. He has been in the top 100 players in the world list for many years and still has a world rank of 163. As a comparison Australia’s 2 GM’s have world ranks of 525 and 1,196 respectively.
He is also a master Blitz player and believes Blitz is very democratic, as it allows a more level playing field. He studied Physics at University and turned professional after gaining an Engineering degree.
This is a fantastic opportunity for Canberra players to attend a short lecture and then pit their skills against him!
GM Shipov is sponsored by Stratagem Computer Contractors P/L
The details, courtesy of Jenni Oliver are
GM Sergei Shipov will be conducting a lecture and simul in Canberra.
Date 1 April 2007 (no this is not an April Fool’s joke :) )
Register 11:15
Venue ACTJCL centre at Campbell High, Treloar Crescent, Campbell.
Lecture 12 noon for ½ hour
Simul Starts 1pm
Cost $15
Please register your interest by emailing jenni@stratagemcc.com.au . You may also register on the day, if space is available.
GM Sergei Shipov is the top seed in the Sydney International Open to be held in Parramatta after Easter. He has been in the top 100 players in the world list for many years and still has a world rank of 163. As a comparison Australia’s 2 GM’s have world ranks of 525 and 1,196 respectively.
He is also a master Blitz player and believes Blitz is very democratic, as it allows a more level playing field. He studied Physics at University and turned professional after gaining an Engineering degree.
This is a fantastic opportunity for Canberra players to attend a short lecture and then pit their skills against him!
GM Shipov is sponsored by Stratagem Computer Contractors P/L
Saturday, 10 March 2007
More Shopping
Spent some of this morning looking for chess related bargains in the various bookshops, computer shops and games shops in Canberra City. Bargains were fairly hard to come by, although there are plenty of chess books on the shelves in a couple of bookshops.
Apart from Academic Remainders (which I referred to in a previous post), the new Borders bookshop in the Canberra Centre has a wide variety of titles. The only drawback is that would regard them as slightly pricey (although to me anything over $20 is pricey). I did get The Reassess Your Chess Workbook by IM Jermey Silman for $44 a couple of weeks back, and they still have copies in stock. I am also tempted by Secrets of Russian Chess Volumes 1&2 by Parr and Alburt but have so far been able to resist the urge to buy. There are plenty of other chess books there if you are interested.
A couple of people have asked me where the best place to get a chess set is. If you want a cheap and cheerful set where you can't tell the difference between the King and the Queen, and the pawns are in danger of being carried off by large ants, then I guess you can try the toy section in any department store. If instead you want a proper tournament set, then your options are somewhat limited. The Mind Games store in the City are selling proper sets for $20 (and slightly improper ones for $15), but I wasn't able to find a price for boards. They also sell chess clocks if you are interested, but you would be better off getting those from Australian Chess Enterprises in Sydney.
In the end the only bargain I did find was in the area of software. ChessMaster 10th Edition has now been released by Ubisoft under its "That's Hot!" range. This means it is retailing at $19.95, and is probably available in most computer games shops. Having installed and given it a preliminary run through, it looks pretty good. A full review will follow at some stage.
Usual disclaimer: I have no financial relationship with any of the retailers listed, with the exception of Australian Chess Enterprises, who pay me for articles I write for their magazine Australian Chess.
Apart from Academic Remainders (which I referred to in a previous post), the new Borders bookshop in the Canberra Centre has a wide variety of titles. The only drawback is that would regard them as slightly pricey (although to me anything over $20 is pricey). I did get The Reassess Your Chess Workbook by IM Jermey Silman for $44 a couple of weeks back, and they still have copies in stock. I am also tempted by Secrets of Russian Chess Volumes 1&2 by Parr and Alburt but have so far been able to resist the urge to buy. There are plenty of other chess books there if you are interested.
A couple of people have asked me where the best place to get a chess set is. If you want a cheap and cheerful set where you can't tell the difference between the King and the Queen, and the pawns are in danger of being carried off by large ants, then I guess you can try the toy section in any department store. If instead you want a proper tournament set, then your options are somewhat limited. The Mind Games store in the City are selling proper sets for $20 (and slightly improper ones for $15), but I wasn't able to find a price for boards. They also sell chess clocks if you are interested, but you would be better off getting those from Australian Chess Enterprises in Sydney.
In the end the only bargain I did find was in the area of software. ChessMaster 10th Edition has now been released by Ubisoft under its "That's Hot!" range. This means it is retailing at $19.95, and is probably available in most computer games shops. Having installed and given it a preliminary run through, it looks pretty good. A full review will follow at some stage.
Usual disclaimer: I have no financial relationship with any of the retailers listed, with the exception of Australian Chess Enterprises, who pay me for articles I write for their magazine Australian Chess.
Friday, 9 March 2007
Happy Birthday, Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer turns 64 years old today, and I thought I'd wish him a happy birthday. I'm not sure that he would care that I'm wishing him a happy birthday, as we have never met. Although I have met his real estate agent.
There is one thing you can do to see how close you are to arguably the greatest player ever. Visit the I Beat Garry website and see how far you are from beating Fischer (or Kasparov, Tal etc). Using various games collections the site will attempt to connect you to another chess player via a chain of victorious opponents.
For example my Fischer number is 5, as I once beat Rory Obrien, who once beat Phil Viner, who once beat Werner Ziltener, who once beat Ludek Pachman, who once beat Bobby Fischer.
The direct link to finding your Fischer number is here.
There is one thing you can do to see how close you are to arguably the greatest player ever. Visit the I Beat Garry website and see how far you are from beating Fischer (or Kasparov, Tal etc). Using various games collections the site will attempt to connect you to another chess player via a chain of victorious opponents.
For example my Fischer number is 5, as I once beat Rory Obrien, who once beat Phil Viner, who once beat Werner Ziltener, who once beat Ludek Pachman, who once beat Bobby Fischer.
The direct link to finding your Fischer number is here.
Thursday, 8 March 2007
Draw of the Year
With many tournaments introducing regulations concerning the offering draws before move X it is worth looking at an example of when the rules are no help at all.
The following game was reported to me by Stewart Rueben from the Gibraltar Masters (which had a No Draw Offers before move 40 rule) earlier this year.
Kuzubov v Sokolov
1 d4 d5 2 c4 dxc4 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 e3 Be6!? 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Ng5 Bg4 7 Bc4 Bxd1 8 Bxf7+ Kd7 9 Be6+ Ke8 10 Bf7+ Draw.
Rueben then wonders whether the arbiters should have ordered Kuzubov to choose a different 10th move.
In this case it appears that Kuzubov wanted the draw, while Sokolov wanted to play on, but not to the extent of being worse after 7 ... e6 8.f3.
To me this raises the question of whether attempts to make chess more "exciting" create a whole new set of problems for players, arbiters, and organisers. My initial belief is that it will, but maybe someone will come up with a problem free way of making such regulations work.
The following game was reported to me by Stewart Rueben from the Gibraltar Masters (which had a No Draw Offers before move 40 rule) earlier this year.
Kuzubov v Sokolov
1 d4 d5 2 c4 dxc4 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 e3 Be6!? 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Ng5 Bg4 7 Bc4 Bxd1 8 Bxf7+ Kd7 9 Be6+ Ke8 10 Bf7+ Draw.
Rueben then wonders whether the arbiters should have ordered Kuzubov to choose a different 10th move.
In this case it appears that Kuzubov wanted the draw, while Sokolov wanted to play on, but not to the extent of being worse after 7 ... e6 8.f3.
To me this raises the question of whether attempts to make chess more "exciting" create a whole new set of problems for players, arbiters, and organisers. My initial belief is that it will, but maybe someone will come up with a problem free way of making such regulations work.
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