Sunday 30 November 2008

Futility in the desert

A FIDE-official is taking part in a tournament. He is rather late for the first round, and he knows as good as any what THAT means. Just when he is about to enter the playing hall, his cell phone rings. At the display he can see it is from Kirsan, so anyway he answers the call.
"Hello, Kirsan. It is a bit inconvenient just now. Can you call back later?"
Kirsan agrees and the FIDE-official hurries to the playing hall - so much that he forgets to switch off the cell phone.
After some twenty minutes play his phone rings again. He knows what THAT means, nothing to do about that, so he stops the clock and shakes hands with his opponent. Then he answers the call.
"Hello, it is Kirsan. I just want to tell you that the Presidental Board has postponed the new rules about forfeiting if you are too late for the round."

And now a difficult case for the future chess jurisdiction: Just at the beginning of a playing session a players cell phone rings. It is his opponent calling, telling him that he is too late and therefore resigns the game, which is anyway lost. Will they both be given a zero?

A FIDE-official is walking around in the Sahara Desert, wearing Bermuda-shirts, sunglasses and sunhat. A beduine comes riding by on a chamel.
"Excuse me, sir", says the FIDE-official". "Can you tell me how far it is to the beach?"
"Well, sir, about 1000 kilometres", the beduine answers.
"Ok, then I think I will stay on the beach."

Chess in Greenland?


Well, Greenland is not completely new to me. I was also working as a teacher from 2003 to 2006 in the town Upernavik in the North-Western part of the country, situated at the 73. latitude. And I did try to teach the kids some chess.

We purchased some chess sets (some very poor and cheap ones) and they were very happy for the opportunity to play "skakki", as they say. And then they sat up the pieces for...draughts! - and played on with great entusiasm. As the good teacher I finally took the lead and was in fact able, step by step, to teach them the rules of the real "skakki", NOT "tammorneq" as draughts is called in greenlandic.

One proof is the picture above, taken on a lovely, sunny day in june 2004. The big chess set we found somewhere at the school. Another teachers seemed to have tried to introduce chess some years before me. To what use the set was in that connection, I have no idea. Well, as a trained eye may deduce from the photo, I never got to teach them some openning theory...

Greenland has a population a little less than 60.000 inhabitants, scattered in small towns all over this vast territory. There are very few chess clubs, I guess 3-4 in all. But there are some chess entusiast among the genuine greenlanders. And then there is me and a few other danes with chess interest living in the country. So - who knows? - maybe we can get something up and running, maybe even a national chess organisation. But it will for sure take some years before we can put up an olympic team.

A chess study of mine

White to move and win
Yes, I am also very keen on chess problems, especially endgame studies. I have composed a few my self and one you see above. I submitted it for this years Corus Study Competition, but it did not take a price - would you believe it? Ok, this competition was one of the rare of its kind with VERY good prices in cool cash, so it attracted some of the very best composers from all over the world.
A good problem is, in my opinion, distinguished by a comparatively short solution with a surprising, nontrivial finish showing the essential idea. I believe mine lives up to that, but judge for your self.
Try to solve it, it is not that hard, when you all of a sudden get the right idea. And if you give up, you can ask your little helper, I mean your chessengine, for some help. Any way, I will give the solution later on.
For the diagram I have made good use of the service at www.chessup.net. You should try it!

Saturday 29 November 2008

Steinitz matters (1)

What did Wilhelm Steinitz matter to chess? As a boy I read in some of my very first chess books, that Steinitz was the "founder" of modern chess. That he was the one to come up with the theory of "the balance of the position", and something about that you should only attack when you have the "advantage". Later on I read something similar in writings by distinguished authors like Reti, Euwe, Saidy, Golombek amo.. Some of them even wrote that Steinitz "formulated" his theories, especially in his columns in "The Field" from 1873-83.
As a more mature chess addict I, by som instance, got curious. Why was it that I, who had read a quite huge amount of chess litterature, had never come about and read any passages, where the man explicitly "formulated" these "theories"?
I got a copy of "Modern Chess Instructor", Steinitz´s chess manual from his later years. Here was quite interesting insights into "modern chess" compared to, first and foremost, Morphy, but nothing about "theories". But, any how, a great manual, compaired to its time. I also read Hannaks Steinitz-biography from 1936: "...the Michelangelo of chess". Very nice, almost nutty-nutty and halleluja to the great man and his life, which indeed was very special and interesting too, but nothing about "theories".
Then I -and THAT was a mistake! - bought ChessBase´s CD on Steinitz, published in a series of world champion monographs. It contained some short texts covering Steinitz chess career and a database-jump with his games - and not much more. It seems that this Chessbase-company think they can get away with publishing - and selling! - almost any rubbish. I claim that I could produce such a CD in less than two weeks. Do not buy these monographs, I recommend you!
But then I found out that ChessCafé was selling a Steinitz-CD edited by Sidd Pikard. Wise from experience I cheked the content thoroughly and then purchased it. I was not disappointed. Here you will have a lot of games commented by Steinitz him self in CB-formate. And a lot of texts from the great man, even some scanned in from the original sources. And much more. A true gem for Steinitz-freaks, even though it is quite expensive. You can only complan about the title: "Complete works of Steinitz", which it is not, more it is "Selected works..."
But...even here, nothing resembling an explicit "fórmulation" of theories.
So here I am, still more bewildered. Soon I will get Landsbergers quite recent biography. And I am also at the look out for Purdys much-referred-to article "The great Steinitz Hoax", published in the end-70es.
But...I have found another track to follow. The man did comment on a enourmous amount of games, both in "The Field" and his "International Chess Magazine", and otherwhere (fi. the tournament book on New York, 1889). And these comments did have some distinctions, he was obvíously after finding the inner logic in each game, and there by in chess in general. An approach which was not at all common at that time. And as you may suppose he was widely read, he must have had some impact on other chess commentors, at least.
So the searching goes on, and I by this time am trying to locate different prominent chess writers from 1870es, 80es and 90es. Question: Can you detect some influence from Steinitz in their chess thoughts and comments?