Chess News for week ending May 21

[Jack Rabbit]

Topalov wins in Sofia

FIDE World champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria won his last four games in a row to win the international tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria today.

Toplaov defeated French grandmaster Etienne Bacrot to finish with 6½ points out of a possible 10, a half point ahead of Russian-born American Gata Kamsky; Viswanathan Anand of India finshed third with 5½ points. Topalov won five, lost two and had three draws. Kamsky had four wins, two losses and four draws. Anand had three wins, two losses and five draws.

Anand drew with Ukrainian grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov today while Kamsky, who was in first place for most of the tournament, drew his final game against Russia's Peter Svidler, who finished fourth with 5 points.

The critical game came in the ninth round between Kamsky and Topalov. The Round began with Kamsky leading the tournament with 5½ points and Topalov with 4½ points tied for second with Anand of India.



Dramatic game in Round 9: Topalov (facing camera) defeats Kamsky

White (Kamsky) opened with his King's Pawn and Topalov, as he almost always does when playing Black against the King's Pawn, responded with the Sicilian Defense (1 e4 c5). The players then spun the game into the Najdorf Variation (2 Nf4 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6), long the favorite defense of Bobby Fischer. Black tried a novelty with 14 -- e5, striking at White's center; the usual move here has been 14 -- a5, initiating a plan to grab space on the Queen's wing. Analyst Mark Crowther for ChessCenter.com deems White's 16 Kb1 as a dubious move, but doesn't suggest an alternative. A possibility would be 16 Bb5 Bc6 (not 16 -- a5? and White wins a piece after 17 Bxf6 Bxf6 18 Bxd7+ Qxd7 19 Qxd7+ Kxd7; also dropping a piece is 16 -- 0-0? 17 Bxd7 Qxd7 18 Qxd7 Nxd7 19 Bxe7) 17 Bxc6 Qxc6 18 Bxf6 Nxf6 19 fxe5 dxe5 20 Qd3 a4 21 Na1 0-0 22 Nc4 and White appears to stand better. Crowther, again without suggesting an alternate move, brands White's 19 Ng3 as a blunder and the immediate 19 Nc4 defending against Black's building Queenside attack, appears to be the better move. Black drives his advantage home and gains time by sacrificing the exchange on move 26. after which Black's pieces invade White's King's position. Kamsky resigned on his thirtieth move.

Meanwhile, Anand drew his game with Svidler, setting up a showdown in the last round with a bare half-point separating the top three contestants. Since they were playing three separate games in the last round, any one of them could have finished first.

Three tie for first in Sarajevo

Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu of Romania, Russia's Vladimir Malakhov and Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, at 15 the world's youngest grandmaster, shared first place in the annual Sarajevo chess tournament that ended Tuesday.

Each player scored 5½ points out of 10. Nisipeanu and Malakhov each had two wins, one loss an seven draws while Carlsen scored one win and nine draws without a loss.

Nisipeanu was given first prize base on the the Sonneborn-Berger tie-break score.

Nisipeanu and Malakhov met each other in the final round for what would have been a first place battle, but the two agreed to a draw after only a dozen moves. Meanwhile, Carlsen had to fight for his share of first place against the second youngest player in the six-man field, 19-year-old Borki Predojevic of Bosnia. Carlsen had to scramble to hang on to a draw in 88 moves. Predojevic finished in fourth place with an even score of 5 out of 10 (2 wins, 2 losses and six draws).

In the only other last round game, Indian grandmaster Krisnan Sisikiran and Latvian-born Arkady Naiditsch of Germany drew in 44 moves. Sisikiran finished with 4½ points and Naiditsch with 4.

A "B" tournament of a ten player field, four grandmasters and six international masters, took place at the same time as the main event.



International Master Alojzije Jankovic of Croatia took first prize clear in Sarajevo "B"

Alojzije Jankovic, an international master from Croatia, took a clear first place with 6 points out of a possible 9. The score appears good enough to gain Jankovic a grandmaster norm.

Finishing tied for second, a half point behind Jankovic, were grandmasters Bojan Kurakica of Bosnia and Adrian Mihaljcisin of Slovenia.


Torino Olympiad begins today

The 37th Chess Olympiad begins today in Torino in the Italian Alps.

One hundred forty-nine teams are competing in the men's division and 108 in the women's. Teams from the former Soviet Union are expected to dominate, especially both the Russian and Ukrainian men's and women's teams, the Armenian men's team, and the women's team from Georgia. Other teams expected to compete for high honors are the women's team from China and the men's team from India. The United States will be fielding a stronger team than usual and may surprise many. Both US teams are made up entirely of players born overseas, all but one in the former Soviet Union.

In the first round, the United States men's team will play New Zealand while the American women will play Bangladesh.

Games will begin at 15:00 Italian time (6 am PDT). The event concludes June 4.

Also in Torino, the FIDE conference will take place beginning May 27. During the course of the conference, FIDE delegates will select officers to lead the world chess federation for the next four years. Leading candidates are a slate headed by incumbant FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of Russia, who is also the president of the Autonomous Russian Republic of Kalmykia, and another headed by Belgian businessman Bessel Kok. The main issues of the campaign have centered around financing and the ability to attract corporate sponsors.

Official Olympic Website.

Radjabov to play title match against Topalov-Kramnik winner

Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan has signed a memorandum to play a match for the world title against the winner of this Autumn's match between FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov and Russia's Vladimir Kramnik, the classical world champion.



Teimour Radjabov

The match will take place in April 2007 in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

Last December, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced that any grandmaster with an Elo rating over 2700 would be able to challenge for the title if he could come up with $1 million in prize money. With the financial backing of the Azerbaijan Ministry of Sport, Radjabov has met those conditions. With an Elo rating of 2720, Radjabov is currently the 13th rank player in the world.

Radjabov will be 20 years old on March 12, 2007. Should the match be held, he will be the youngest person ever to play a match for the world chess championship. Mikhail Tal was 23 when he won the world title in 1960; Anatoly Karpov was also 23 when he was awarded the world title by default in 1975 when then-champion Bobby Fischer refused to play a match under FIDE's conditions.

Editorial Comment: The Implications of the Radjabov Match on the World Championship

The proposed Radjabov match is a step backwards for FIDE. This match is not a good idea.

The history of the world championship usually begins with the Steinitz-Zukertort match, held in three American cities in 1886. The match was the first to be advertised as being for the world chess championship; most observers then and since agree that in 1886, Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort were the two strongest players in the world. The match was won by Steinitz, a Prague-born vagabond who had lived in Vienna and London and had settled in New York and had become an American citizen; Zukertort, in ill health, died about two years later at the age of 45.

The classical world championship, from that day forward, had a golden bough mystique. Like the ancient Mediterranean warrior kings of Frazier's research, the champion stood as champion until a challenger cut him down. The only question was whether there was a way to choose a worthy challenger.

Steinitz was a good champion by all accounts, defending his title often against those recognized as worthy competition. He finally lost his title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894 and died in poverty in 1900.

There was no formal chess federation at the time. Lasker, determined not to die in poverty as did Steinitz, insisted that his challengers make some finicial guarantees before he would agree to a challlenge match. This assured that a world title match would be worthwhile, but it didn't always assure Lasker the strongest possible opponent. Many believe that Siegbert Tarrasch, a German physician, might have played a better match against Lasker had he been given the opportunity earlier; by the time a match with Dr. Tarrasch could be arranged in 1908, Tarrasch's powers were waning and Lasker won the match with 8 victories against 3 for Tarrasch and five draws. Lasker's other opponents, Frank Marshall (1907), David Janowski (1909 and 1910) and Karl Schlechter (1910) were great players in there own right but not of calibur of Lasker, who is regarded as one of the truly great players of all time. Janowski, it might be noted, was able to challenge Lasker because he had a wealthy patron, Leo Nardus, willing to put up the money for the match. Lasker won the first match against Janowski, played in Paris, with seven wins against one for Janowski and two draws, and the second, played in Berlin, with eight victories, no losses and three draws.

Lasker's critics fault him for the fact that he never played title matches against other strong players, such as Hugarian engineer Geza Maroczy (negotiations for a match collapsed over financing in 1903) and Akiba Rubinstein, a Russian-Pole professional chess player who won a string of strong tournaments between 1909 and 1912 and defeated Lasker in a remarkable game at the St. Petersburg tournament of 1909, in which the two shared first prize. Lasker finally lost his title in 1921 to José Capablanca of Cuba, whom almost all observers including Lasker himself thought worthy of being Lasker's successor.



David Janowski and Efim Bogolyubov

Capablanca did not defend his tilte for six years and lost it in his first defense to Alexander Alekhine, a Russian emigrant living in Paris. Alekhine was soon recognized as the greatest player up to his time, but it appeared that he had no intention of surrendering his title. He refused Capablanca a rematch, although Capablanca certainly would have been his strongest opponent. Instead, Alekhine played two title matches against another Russian emigre, Efim Bogolyubov, a player who hat his best could win games with beautiful combinations but was clearly not in the same class with Alekhine or Capablanca. Alekhine lost his title in 1935 to the Dutch amateur champion, Dr. Max Euwe, a mathematics professor and a true sportsman who immediately good faith began negotiations with Alekhine for a rematch, which was held in 1937 with Alekhine reclaiming his title.

The world chess federation, FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs) was founded at this time to attempt to bring order to international chess. The organization, with the help of the Dutch broadcasting corporation, AVRO, sponsored a super tournament of the eight strongest players in the world, including Alkehine, Capablanca and Euwe, held in held in several Dutch cities in 1938 with the idea that the winner or the player who finished second should Alekhine win would challenge Alkhine for the title. The youngest player in the tournament, Paul Keres of Estonia, won the tournament, but Alekhine had already announced that he did not recognize FIDE's authority and the match was never arranged. Keres continued to play good chess for decades and, along with Akiba Rubinstein and Viktor Korchnoi, is usually recognized as one of the three gratest players never to become world champion.

FIDE's opportunity take control of chess organiztion came after the war. Alekhine, accused of collaborating with the Nazis in France and now living in Lisbon, was in a weakened position. He accepted terms for a match against Mikhail Botvinnik of the Soviet Union, who was made the favorite to win. However, while preparing for the match, Alekhine died of a heart attack in March 1946 at the age if 53. Capablanca had also died during the war and Keres, also suspected of Nazi collaboration, was nearly executed by the Soviets after the war but spared when Botvinnik, a loyal Communist, persuaded the Stalinist state that Keres, who was now a resident of the Soviet Union by the absorbtion of Estonia, would be useful in promoting the Soviet Union as a chess powerhouse. Keres agreed to drop his claim to the challenge match against Alekhine in favor of Botvinnik and to play chess under the Soviet banner, which he did until his death in 1975.

After Alekhine's death, FIDE was able to arrange a tournament for the world championship held in The Hague and Moscow in 1948. The tournament was origninally to consist of six players -- five of the six players still suriving who played in the AVRO tournament with Vasily Smyslov, a young Soviet grandmaster who star had risen during the war years, replacing Salo Flohr, a Czech national who took refuge in the Soviet Union during the war whose star had fallen noticibly. One of the surviving AVRO grandmasters, Reuben Fine of the United States, was no longer interested in competing in professional chess. Miguel Najdorf, a Polish national who became a citizen of Argentina during the war, was suggested as a substitue for Fine, but FIDE decided to go with five players: Botvinnik, Keres, Euwe, Smyslov and the American Samuel Reshevsky. The tournament was easily won by Botvinnik.

FIDE was able to impose an orderly world championship cycle on ornaized chess. A series of tournaments would determine the official challenger to the title. Later, this was changed to a combination of tournaments and matches.

FIDE had succeeded in getting personal financing out of the world championship, although faced a new problem with the effects of Soviet internal politics on chess. The Soviet Union was accused of arranging draws and even persuading one of their own to take a dive to allow a Soviet player, especially one in favor of the Communist Party, to advance. Some resistence to Soviet favoritism was put up from anti-establishment players like Keres and David Bronstein, whose father spent eight years in Stalin's salt mines and who never joined or forgave the Communist Party for his father's suffering. Soviet favoritism toward more politically correct players, like Karpov, was the major reason for Viktor Korchnoi's defection to the West in 1976. Later, FIDE would even be accused of acquiescing to the Soviet establishment. This was the root of Garry Kasparov's disenchantment with FIDE. Nevertheless, FIDE did take some steps to alleviate the effects of Soviet hegemony in chess. The Soviet were going to be dominating chess with or without FIDE and some FIDE's actions, while not always seen as fair, kept non-Soviet players from being shut out of the world championship cycle altogether.

Now, with FIDE's blessing, the personal financing is back as a factor in the world championship. Teimour Radjabov is an excellent player in his own right, but so were Janowski and Bogolyubov. He may someday earn the right to challenge for the world title. Right now, it isn't likely that he could defeat Veselin Topalov in a match and, if Vladimir Kramnik provs healthy enough to defeat Toplaov this fall, then he's healthy enough to defeat Radjabov, too. Let Radjabov earn his right to play for the title the same way Kasparov did, the same way Fischer did, the same way Tal did. Let him earn it, not let wealthy patrons or his his government buy it for him.

Photo credits for this week:

Gata Kamsky and Veselin Topalov from the official website of Mtel Masters' 2006, Sofia
Alojzije Jankovic from the official website of the Bosna Sarajevo 2006 tournament
Teimour Radjabov from a French website
David Janowski from a German website
Efim Bogolyubov from Bidmonfa.com

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Update: Kramnik Returns to Chess in Torino

Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, the classical world champion, returned to chess Tuesday afternoon after an absence of five months in order to be treated for spinal arthritis.

Kramnik played top board for the Russian men's team in its third round match against Germany in the Chess Olympiad in the city of Torino in the Italian Alps. Kramnik's opponent was Latvian-born Arkady Naiditsch, who is now a citizen of Germany.



Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik (right) playing against Arkady Naiditsch in Torino Tuesday

Kramnik, playing White, won the game in 33 moves. It was his first game since participating in the Russian national championships last December.

Kramnik is scheduled to play in the Sparkassen in Dortmund, Germany, in July. In September, he is slated to play a 14-game match in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia, against FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in order to reunite the world championship for the first time since a schism broke out between FIDE and then-champion Garry Kasparov in 1993. Karmanik's claim to the title is based on his defeat of Kasparov in a 16-game match held in London in October 2000. In September, 2004, Kramnik retained his right to the classical title by drawing a 14-game match in Switzerland against Peter Leko of Hungary.

Photograph by Frits Agterdenbos in ChessVista.com.