Bill Hook

I was somewhat shocked to open the latest issue of "Chess" and read that Bill Hook had passed away last month (10 May 2010). Bill Hook had represented the British Virgin Islands at almost every Olympiad since 1968, playing 229 games for his country.
I played Bill in his final Olympiad (Dresden 2008), winning the game, although this result annoyed my team mate Rupert Jones who considered Bill one of his chess heroes. Bill's best result at the Olympiad would have been in Malta 1980, where he won the Gold Medal for the best percentage on Board 1. The Birtish Virgin Islands even released a stamp to commemorate the feat.
Bill played plenty of strong players at the Olympiad, garnering the scalps of a number of titled opponents. He even got to play Bobby Fischer in the 1970 Olympiad, although Fischer collected the point with a brilliant win.

Fischer,Robert James - Hook,William [C18]
Siegen ol (Men) Siegen (5), 1970

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Qa5 7.Bd2 Qa4 8.Qg4 Kf8 9.Qd1 b6 10.h4 Ne7 11.h5 h6 12.Rh4 Ba6 13.Bxa6 Nxa6 14.Rf4 Qd7 15.Qf3 Nc6 16.Nh3 Rc8 17.g4 Qe8 18.g5 Ne7 19.gxh6 gxh6 20.Rf6 Nf5 21.Nf4 Ke7 (D)
22.Nxd5+ Kd8 23.Ne3 Nxe3 24.Bxe3 Rc7 25.dxc5 Nxc5 26.Rd1+ Ke7 27.Bxc5+ bxc5 28.Rxe6+ 1-0

A table of Odds

'Novelty' tournaments are one way for a chess club to provide a bit of variety to the regular calendar. On format used is the 'Handicap Tournament', where players either recieve a time or material handicap.
Time handicaps are fairly straight forward, where the time each player recieved is based on the ratings difference. One event I played 25 years ago had 30 minute games, where (IIRC) there was a 2 minute difference in time for every 100 rating point difference (with a minimum of 5 minutes for the stronger player). For example if there was difference of 200-299 points the clocks would start with 19-11 while a >1000 point difference would see 25-5 on the clocks. However I still think a stronger player can overcome the difference in time far more easily than a difference in material.
Much for common (in Canberra at least) is the material handicap tournament. As a rule of thumb the handicap is 1 pawn per 100 points difference. Of course you wouldn't give up 6 pawns for a 600 point difference, instead surrendering rook+pawn. Having run just such a tournament today here is a table of odds for the rating brackets we used. (NB This is based on 'traditional' odds, like Queen's rooks and f pawns, but I couldn't actually find a list on the internet, at least in the 5 or so minutes I spent searching)

• less than 100 - no odds
• 100-199 f pawn
• 200-299 Q Knight for stronger player, f pawn for weaker
• 300-399 Q Knight
• 400-499 Q Knight + f pawn
• 500-599 Q Rook
• 600-699 Q Rook + f pawn
• 700-799 Q Rook + Q Knight for stronger player, f pawn for weaker
• 800-899 Q Rook + Q Knight
• 900-999 Queen
• >999 Queen + f pawn

Fancy some homework?

Different coaches have different material and styles when working with students. I tend to use complete games as lessons, and my teaching style might best be described as "standing up and waving my arms around".
One approach I have seen work well from other coaches is a "Studies" based system. Using chess studies to get students to think harder about what moves to play, rather than just having them rely on memory and simple ideas, does lead to better results. The only drawback I see is that often studies are really, really hard (although I guess that is the whole point of them).
Here is a problem set as homework for a group of junior players here in Canberra, although they have been given 4 weeks to find the answer. It is a Helpmate in 2, which means that Black moves first, and helps White mate on his second move. So far I have got as far as assuming it relies on a double check from White, but I haven't been able to cut off all the escape squares for the Black king. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, and the answer lies in a different direction.

The power of two bishops

My most recent copy of "New in Chess" contains a number of tributes to Vasily Smyslov. Towards the back Jan Timman reminisces about the former world champion, having played against him on a number of occasions. In the article he shows a game played by Smyslov as a 14 year old, which eve though shows his ability to turn positional mastery into tactical dominance. The game is both a demonstration of the power of the two bishops, and the value of knowing what has gone before. As Timman says in his article, the final combination is a variation on Rotlewi - Rubenstein, 1907

Gerasimov,K - Smyslov [D05]
Moskou, 1935

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 c5 5.b3 Nc6 6.Bb2 Bd6 7.0-0 Qc7 8.a3 b6 9.c4 Bb7 10.Nc3 a6 11.Re1 cxd4 12.exd4 0-0 13.Na4 Bf4 14.Ne5 dxc4 15.bxc4 Nxe5 16.dxe5 Qc6 17.Bf1 Rfd8 18.Qb3 Ng4 19.h3 (D)
19. ... Rd3!! 20.Qxb6 Rxh3 21.Bd4 Bh2+ 22.Kh1 Bxe5+ 0-1

Monkey Chess

A few years ago the illusionist Derren Brown performed a 'stunt' where he played 13 chess players (IIRC) (amongst them a number of GM's and IM's) in a simul and achieved a plus score. The trick to this however was rather simple, and already well known in the chess community. You simply pair up games of alternate colours (ie 1 white game and 1 black game) and then take the move played on the first board and repeat it on the second (eg White plays 1.e4 on board 1 and you then play it as White on board 8. When Black replies on board 8 you then play the same move on board 1). This way the players are actually playing each other and you guarantee a 50% score on each of the paired boards. His added wrinkle was to add a weaker extra player who he could beat, ensuring a final result of +1.
Until now I didn't believe this trick had a name, but I have recently seen it called "Monkey Chess". It is so named because it takes no chess ability at all to perform, and could be carried out by a proverbial monkey.
Over at the International Correspondence Chess Federations bulletin board there is a current discussion on this issue. In OTB (over the board) chess it isn't much of a problem (in teams events for examples) as it is quite obvious when it takes place, and in fact there are procedures in place to deal with such situations in such events as the olympiad (The games are moved out of sight of each other). But in correspondence chess such occurrences are not so obvious and in fact may happen without players being aware of it. Nonetheless I am sure that once a tournament is finished, and the game scores become available, such tricks would soon be discovered, and I assume sanctions would be applied.

Meeting with FIDE

As mentioned in this post, a couple of FIDE officials, Geoffrey Borg and Ignatius Leong, were paying a visit to Australia and New Zealand to discuss chess development in Oceania. The other reason for the visit was to hold an arbiters seminar for prospective Australia arbiters (in conjunction with the ACF), but that seemed not to have happened.
Wearing my PNG hat I caught up with them over breakfast today, along with PNG team captain Brian Jones. It was fairly free-wheeling discussion but there were a number of points I felt important. Geoffrey Borg stressed the importance of good management practice in federations, which is hardly surprising given his background in business management. He stated it best when he said "Just because you are volunteer administrators, doesn't mean you can't be professional administrators". His other good point was that federations who take a mainly hands off approach to chess organisation do not reap the benefits of junior chess. While a federation need not be intrusive in what it does, it needs to provide enough extra levels of activity to capture the players when the move up from 'schools' chess.
Also look forward to a greater level of visibility from FIDE in the region, with a Oceania Development Officer being proposed as a way of building up chess in the existing federations, as well as encouraging new federations to be formed.
Of course this discussion took place with the upcoming FIDE elections in the background. While this was touched upon lightly, it wasn't a significant part of the meeting. But from a completely different source (ie NOT from todays meeting) comes a suggestion that a third candidate may enter the contest. Who that is not public, and at this stage completely unknown to me.

Some big improvers

Much excitement in the Press household with the release of June 2010 Australian Ratings. Not so much for me (as my rating went down) but for my son who is that stage of his career where ratings are really, really important. As his rating jumped by over 200 points he was quite pleased with the outcome.
And I suspect the next meeting of the ANU Chess Club will see a number of other pleased players, with 3 of the countries top improvers being club members (although in December 2009 the club had 6 of the biggest improvers). However the biggest improver of the lot wasn't on the official list (due to the sensible restriction against listing players with unreliable ratings, as huge jumps are possible at the start of your chess career). James Ashton went from 148? (ie unreliable) to 708, an increase of 560 points in 3 months.