McCann wins chess tournament

ADA — Samuel McCann, an eighth grade student at Ada Junior High, finished in first place in the 6-12th grade Under 1,100 section at the Norman Scholastic Chess Open Jan. 12.McCann was the only representative from Ada Junior High. He finished with 4.5 points out of 5, including a win over the highest rated player in his section, and one loss. (Points are scored 1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for a loss.)Neil Jorgensen, a sixth grade student at Willard School tied for 10th place, out of 66 players, in the K – 6th grade Under 700 section. Neil received a medal for scoring 3.5 points out of 5. Kai Jorgensen, also of Willard School, finished with 2 points out of 5. There were 210 players in six sections. McCann, Neil Jorgensen and Kai Jorgensen are coached by David McCann, a United States Chess Federation correspondence chess expert, through the Ada Chess Club, which meets weekly on Mondays at 6 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church, 301 E. Kings Road.The next scholastic tournament, open to all students grades K–12, will be held in Jenks on Saturday, Feb. 2.

VULGAR CHESS MESS
January 21, 2008 -- In a classic example of brainy people behaving badly, a bizarre, epithet-filled dispute is rocking the staid world of chess. On one side of the fight is Samuel Sloan, 63, of The Bronx, a former securities trader, ex-con, former cabdriver and would-be Republican congressional candidate from Brooklyn. He served a year as a member of the executive board of the United States Chess Federation, the nation's leading such group. In a $20 million suit filed in Manhattan federal court in October, Sloan claims he wasn't re-elected because Paul Truong and wife Susan Polgar, who were elected to the board in July, posted more than 2,000 scurrilous remarks under his name on chess bulletin boards. One of the potty-mouthed postings was, "I will convert that bull dyke [name withheld] with my 41/4-inch power tool." Another accused Sloan of performing oral sex on a 12-year-old girl and being a purveyor of kiddie porn. A woman who answered the phone at the Truong-Polgar home had no comment

Cyrus Pereira - Goa’s latest chess star
Panaji, Jan 20 Cyrus Pereira dazzled in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to become first time U-11 Asian schools champ on December 9. He will go down in the Goan sports history as the first Goan boy to win a gold medal at a FIDE-recognised international championship. Undoubtedly, a stupendous achievement. Cyrus rewrote Goan chess history, which has been heavily dominated so far by Ivana Maria Furtado at the world and Asian level and Bhakti Kulkarni at Commonwealth and Asian levels. You meet with Cyrus and you come refreshed, reinvigorated. The entire family - Dr Justin, a renowned gynecologist based in Mapusa and originally from Salvador do Mundo; Dr Carmen, a senior faculty in Medicine at Goa Medical College, Bambolim, hailing from Taleigao and Jessica, a Std X student at Rosary’s Mira Mar - disarm you with a humility and tranquility seldom seen in a house of an Asian champ. It is modesty to the core. Cyrus’ smile is attractive and as such contagious. Bubbling with enthusisam and a high confidence level, he does not hide the fact that he knew that the precious gold would be his, even when he was seeded second at 3rd Asian School Chess Championship held in Kandy from January 3. He tallied 6 and half points, the same as the other gold medal winner (both were declared joint champs) the top seeded S Mirjead of Iran. It was the last round (8th), against the highly rated Mirjead, that was the toughest and consequently it ended in a draw so that both were on equal footing in all respects. Cyrus unwinds himself with ease and one is awe-struck at the intelligence he displays. That only confirms that the extraodinary marks that he has been obtaining at Rosary HS, Mira Mar all these years (Std V now) are a true assessment of his high IQ. Scoring above 96 per cent is certainly a mark of brilliance. No wonder he feels confident that one day he will be a detective with Scotland Yard. Devoting about 2 and half to 3 hours regularly and 4 to 5 hours just before a competitive event, Cyrus is unsure whether he will pursue the sport as a career. His parents, Dr Justin as well as Dr Carmen, who by now has almost exhausted all her leave after doubling as his manager, feel that the game forces one to make a compromise with academics, besides taking away their precious time since one of them is duty bound to accompany him during the events. It’s a full time job, they stressed and added that as of now they found it pretty difficult to think of chess as a career. It all began as a hobby during the school holidays as his cousin and sister Jessica would spend their time profitably playing a game of chess. And, since his mother was happy that the children were indoors in a congenial environment, Cyrus took an extraordinary liking to the game. Sometimes travelling with his mother to GMC College during the holidays, Cyrus was introduced to the Swami duo who ran the Bambolim Chess Club and it is here that the Std Vth lad got his baptism in coaching. That was in 2004. Two years later, Cyrus emerged as National U-10 champ. That was in May 2006 when he gained 1.5 rating points at 1st Ranjit Patkar memorial international rating chess in Karwar. Three months later, he completed his FIDE rating at Hirabai Salgaocar FIDE rated chess and another three months saw him taking top honours at U-9 boys and girls championship in Sangli. He wound up his engagements in 2006 taking the 5th place at national U-9 in Solapur. It was at National U-11 in Calicut that Cyrus increased his ELO rating to 1870 as he gained 25 points finishing 14th in October 2007. Now under the tutelage of Nagpur-based Akash Thakur, mostly through the internet, Cyrus narrowly missed playing in Asian Youth event in Dubai last year due some visa problem. He has no regrets, though, as he feels that chess has improved his concentration power. “I can focus better,” the lad stresses even as he discloses that his love for piano has not diminished a bit. He even excelled at the first Trinity College of London examination. Having won the pride of place at the state U-9 and U-11 championships, and several other prizes at various all-Goa levels, Cyrus’ penchant for sports earned him the coveted blue belt in karate, which he had to sacrifice for the love of chess. Drawing is another extra-curricular activity which he loves to indulge in his spare time. yrus, who has been an admirer of late Bobby Fischer, once dubbed the ‘Mozart of Chess’ and arguably the greatest natural chess genius the world has seen, and draws inspiration from Larry Christiansen and Jose Raul Capablanca, was confidence personified as he is planning and preparing for the forthcoming U-11 Nationals and World Schools event in which he qualified by virtue of his gold medal performance in Sri Lanka.The bright, well-mannered Guirim-based Red Rosary student (Mira Mar) is in no hurry to plunge fully into chess, and so also his parents. As of today, chess has been a challenging and enjoyable hobby for him and in the absence of a pragmatic sports policy, it will perhaps continue to be so in the years to come until the SSC examination when most children are forced to give up sports since a professional career in sports entails a heavy burden on finances besides mostly jeopardising academic careers. It’s here that the parents find themselves in a dilemma as the onus on the future of their children is their main responsibility.Meanwhile, Cyrus would now be looked at as an inspiration for Goan chess players in the boys category at age-group levels. A role model has ultimately arrived

Delegates at chess congress defy TRO, elect Pichay & Co.

TAGAYTAY CITY -- The National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) Sunday defied a court’s temporary restraining order by unanimously electing former Surigao del Sur Representative Prospero Pichay and 14 others to a new four-year term. All 175 members gave their nod to Pichay during the NCFP national congress Saturday night at the Tagaytay International Convention Center. NCFP secretary general Samuel Estimo and seven other board members had earlier obtained from the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 90 a TRO stopping Pichay’s group from holding elections on Jan. 19. Quezon City Rep. Mat Defensor and former Benguet governor Raul Molintas, reportedly part of Estimo’s group, were reelected. FIDE honorary president Florencio Campomanes attended the congress.

Chess selection tournament
IMPHAL, Jan 21: Top seed H Manisan won the U-16, 2nd North East Chess Championship selection tournament organised by the Moirangleima Memorial Trust at the Chingamakha High School.In the final round, K Manisana defeated K Poireikhomba. At the end of the final round, Manisana had 5 points whereas Poireikhomba had 4 points.On the basis of their performance in the tournament, H Manisana, K Poireikhomba, L Romicha , Th Merangamba, Ng Nonganbi Chanu, Ng Nongdrenkhomba, T Bharatngamba, S Delta, Ksh Nanao amd M Pradeep have been selected to represent Manipur in the 2nd north East Chess Cahmpionship to be held at Agartala from March 20, 2008.In the open category, N Brojen (30th seed) led the table with 4.5 points at the end of the 5th round. Broejn defeated the 3rd seed Kh Bhubon in today`s match

Kids get life lesson from chess
ORANGE – The 35th Annual Morrison Scholastic Chess Tournament was held last weekend at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. Dewain Barber, the organizer of the event, is passionate about chess. And he's even more passionate about getting kids involved in it: "I am maintaining Bernard Morrison's dream of seeing kids play chess." The late Bernard Morrison, a Stanton resident, started working with kids and chess in 1974. He traveled to Orange County elementary schools and held free chess tutorials, Barber said. "It seemed appropriate to name this tournament after him," said Barber. The 102 participants in Saturday's free event did more than play chess. According to Barber, "Chess teaches consequences. When you make a bad move, you deal with the consequences." The next tournament will be Nov. 22.For more information, contact Barber at his Anaheim chess shop at 714-998-5508 or visit the American Chess Equipment website at amchesseq.com.

Chess: Remember Bobby Fisher

Bobby Fisher (1943-2008) died last week. In his later years his crazed rants and his prosecution for not paying taxes for a 1992 chess match eclipsed his fame as a chess genius. But it is for his chess genius that he will be remembered. Fisher won the U.S. Open at the age of 14. Also at 14 he became the youngest person ever to become an international master. He quickly became one of the world's elite players. In becoming world champion fifteen years later he slew the Soviet block, like St. George slaying the dragon. He is widely considered one of the best, if the not the best, chess players of all time. At the height of his powers in 1975 he declined to defend his title, as his mental illness began to outplay his better self. Even so, he still made significant contributions to chess after his self-imposed exile, as he improved the chess clock and invented Fisher Random Chess. This week’s position is from what has been deemed “The Game of the Century.” Here, 13-year-old Fisher defeats veteran chess player Donald Byrne. Fisher, who is black, made a spectacular winning move. Please try and find the move that Fisher played. In chess notation, the board is a grid: the vertical columns are numbered “1” through “8;” the horizontal rows, “a” through “h.” Each square on the board is identified by a specific letter and number. For example, if the white knight at c3 were to move to e2, checking black, the notation would be ne2+ Fisher’s queen and knight are both under attack. He ignores these threats and re-positions his bishop at g4 to e6. Byrne then wins black’s queen. Fisher responds by having the bishop at e6 take white's bishop at c4, checking white. From here, black’s active pieces overwhelm white. The knight at c3 and the c4 bishop initiate a series of checks that soon result in a dynamic bishop pair. White’s material edge is not enough to stop black’s active pieces. Fisher mated Byrne 20 moves later. White’s rooks seize the “a” and “b” files by first moving the rook at c1 to a1, attacking the queen. The only safe square for the queen is b2 after the queen takes the white pawn at b2. White’s other rook at f1 now slides over to b1 (rfb1), again attacking the queen.

Schoolboy Blackman beats chess master
JUSTIN BLACKMAN of Queen's College yesterday turned the Silver Pieces section of the second Karl Sealy Memorial Chess Tournament upside down, when he beat top seeds FIDE master Bengt Hammar of Sweden and Shamel Howell of the University of the West Indies in the opening rounds of the tournament. Named after one of Karl Sealy's internationally acclaimed short stories, Silver Pieces is being played as a four- player, double round-robin and includes Hammer and Roberto Castillo of Cuba with top juniors Blackman and Howell. Hammer opened the tournament with a win against Castillo, while Blackman took advantage of a late arrival by Howell to post the first upset of the tournament. Round two created quite a stir as Blackman, rated 1990, defended stubbornly against the Swedish master to take a win after Hammar, rated 2360, blundered unexpectedly. The Howell-Castillo match was also an upset as Howell rated 2038 fell to the Cuban who is rated 1958. Blackman leads with two points, followed by Hammar and Castillo on one point, while Howell, yet to trouble the scorers, brings up the rear on zero. In the Chess Club section three players, Anthony Francis-Worrell and Craig Clermond of UWI, and Akeem Cox of Combermere, share the lead on two points. Francis-Worrell's wins came against fellow UWI student Kyle Walkes and Yutien Poon of St. Angela's, who at eight-years-old, is the youngest player in the tournament. Cox earned his points with wins against Matthew St. Bernard of UWI and Emmerson Hurley of Garrison Secondary, while Clermond collected his points by defeating UWI's Andre Stoute and Daryl Headley of Coleridge & Parry. Veteran Othneil Harewood shares fourth place on 1 1/2 points with Defending champion Dwayne Gilkes and UWI's Amilton Wilson. Play continues today at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. at the Bridgetown Chess Centre in Bridge House, Cavans Lane. (AH)

Mariana tops QC chess tourney

Peter Lim and Vic Neil Villanueva powered Mariana to a 2.5-1.5 win over Sto. Nino in the seventh and final round Sunday to emerge over-all topnotcher in the Quezon City Inter Barangay Chess Team Tournament at the Amoranto Sports SB Gym in Quezon City. Lim demolished Gerry Avila on board one while Villanueva trounced Santy Pacia on board four. Samson Lim drew with Gracito Guarino on board three while Obet Labonera shocked former Philippine junior champion Reinier Ternura on board three. Mariana finished with 22.5 points to cop the District IV title and gain the finals slated this year along with Old Capitol Site (20.5 points), Santol, Tatalon and Dona Aurora.

Chess moves captured students on Martin Luther King Day

NORMAL -- More than 300 area students spent their day off from school Monday focused on intellectual pursuit.But most said the draw to one of the Twin Cities oldest chess tournaments was simply for a good time, and to meet new friends.“It’s all about having fun. You get to stay here all day and play games,” said Blake Rodgers, a fifth-grader from Oakdale Elementary School. He’d just finished his fifth match of the day.Kindergarten through eighth-grade students attended the 21st annual Martin Luther King Day Chess Tournament, organized by the Bloomington-Normal Area Scholastic Chess organization. Nearly all area elementary schools and junior high schools sent teams, and some Peoria and Champaign teams also took part.Nathaniel Smith and Yash Thacker, third- and fifth-grade students respectively from Sugar Creek Elementary School in Normal, both said facing new players gave them a chance to learn new chess moves and strategies. And Nathaniel, who’d previously attended another Unit 5 school, relished seeing his old friends.To make the crowd at home, the Kingsley Junior High School in Normal was transformed into a chess-centered universe. Chess master and Peoria native Pete Karagianis of Des Moines, Iowa, shared tips and gave demonstrations.The halls were lined with sheets listing the latest pairings for competitions; its cafeteria and a spare gym were filled children playing informal games. Its main gym was lined with tables set for formal competitions.More than 100 matches were going on at any given time throughout the roughly seven-hour tournament, said lead organizer Mark Nibblen.Colley Kitson, owner of Colley’s Chess Club in downtown Bloomington, said the Twin Cities is one of the highest per capita chess-playing communities in the country.“Think about it. They say only about 30 percent of each school’s chess players are here – and we’ve got more than 300 here today,” said Kitson.He attributes the high interest to three things: Bloomington-Normal’s white-collar professions, namely the universities and the insurance industry; a large population from India, where the game is believed to have originated; and the perseverance of Garrett Scott.A retired Bloomington educator, Scott started the Twin Cities Chess Club in 1967. He went on to build school chess clubs throughout the community, following his initial success at Oakdale Elementary.Two years ago, Scott – who coaches at Bloomington and Parkside junior high school — turned the reins of the Jan. 21st event to Nibblen. He teaches chess to Metcalf students, and co-organized this year’s event with Kingsley chess coach Peter Stroyan, a former Scott student.They were helped by 10 directors and hundreds of parent volunteers.Val Walker, whose Prairieland Elementary first-grader Jordan Walker was playing, said he liked the multicultural feel of the event. “Really, it brings all races together. Look around,” said Walker, who teachers science at Normal Community West High School. “And how fitting this event is on the King holiday — this was Dr. King’s vision.”

Play Chess Online Against Computer Programs

Most chess players do not have the benefit of being able to refine their game by playing against chess masters, or at least having the benefit of their personal teachings. Luckily, advancements in computer hardware and software has now given chess players a unique opportunity. We can now refine our skills by playing chess against computer chess programs. you are going to be playing chess against computers, there are a few things you should know. One of the greatest chess players to have ever played the game, Garry Kasparov, has had a profound influence in the field of computer chess. He’s participated in many tournaments and was even beaten in a chess match vs Deep Blue. He’s also very popular with the online community, and gave a once in a life time opportunity to thousands of chess players around the world by participating in the first ever Kasparov vs the World chess game.

Chess master Bobby Fischer buried

Reclusive chess genius Bobby Fischer has been buried in a private ceremony at a churchyard in southern Iceland, a television station has reported. Fischer, who died of kidney failure on Thursday at the age of 64, was interred at Laugardalur church outside the town of Selfoss, parish priest the Rev Kristinn Agust Fridfinnsson said. The funeral was attended by only a handful of people, including Fischer's companion, Miyoko Watai, and his Icelandic friend and spokesman Gardar Sverrisson. A troubled chess genius, Fischer gained global fame in 1972 when he defeated the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik for the world championship. The showdown, played out at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers. Fischer lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, spending time in Hungary and the Philippines and emerging occasionally to make outspoken and often outrageous comments, sometimes attacking the US. Fischer, born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, was arrested in Japan in 2004 and threatened with extradition to the US to face charges that he broke international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by going there to play a chess match in 1992. Fischer renounced his US citizenship and spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland, a chess-mad nation of 300,000, granted him citizenship.

Brody, Wright join musical Chess club
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Adrien Brody will play Chess Records founder Leonard Chess in "Cadillac Records," a musical biopic that follows the turbulent lives of such bluesmen as Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf. Additionally, Jeffrey Wright will play Waters in the tale of sex, violence, race and rock 'n' roll in 1950s Chicago. Writer/director Darnell Martin will start shooting the Sony BMG Film project in early March in New Jersey and Mississippi. Matt Dillon had been attached to play Chess, but had to drop out because of a scheduling conflict. The Chess Records roster included not only Waters, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf, but also the likes of Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and Etta James. It proved hugely influential on such acts as the Rolling Stones, who recorded at the Chicago studio in the early '60s and even recorded an instrumental named after its street address. Also newly cast in the film are Columbus Short, Cedric the Entertainer, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Tammy Blanchard. Brody recently wrapped the indie film "The Brothers Bloom," while Wright is filming the new James Bond movie in London.Cedric the Entertainment co-stars in the comedy "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," which opens February 8. Short is filming the thriller "Armored" with Dillon and recently wrapped the horror film "Quarantined." Chriqui's credits include HBO's "Entourage" and the indie film "Tortured." Blanchard recently finished production on the independent romance comedy "The Ramen Girl."

Computer analysis of World Chess Champions

Abstract. Who is the best chess player of all time? Chess players are often interested in this question that has never been answered author- itatively, because it requires comparison between chess players of dif- ferent eras who never met across the board. In this paper, we attempt such a comparison based on the evaluation with a chess playing program of games played by the world chess champions in their championship matches. We slightly adapted the program Crafty for this purpose. Our analysis also takes into account the di®erences in players' styles to ac- count for the fact that calm positional players have in their typical games less chance to commit gross tactical errors than aggressive tactical play- ers. To this end, we designed a method to assess the di±culty of positions. Some of the results of this computer analysis might appear quite surpris-ing. Overall, the results can be nicely interpreted by a chess expert.

Introduction
Who was the best chess player of all time? This is a frequent and interesting question, to which there is no well founded, objective answer, because it requires comparison between chess players of di®erent eras who never met across the board. With the emergence of high quality chess programs a possibility of such an objective comparison arises. Despite this fact, computers were so far mostly used as a tool for statistical analysis of players' results. However, such statistical
analyses often do not re°ect true strengths of the players, nor do they re°ect their quality of play. It is common that chess players play against opponents of di®erent strengths and also that the quality of play changes in time. Furthermore, in chess a single bad move can decisively in°uence the ¯nal outcome of a game, even if all the rest of the moves are excellent. Therefore, the same result can be achieved through play of completely di®erent quality. The most complete and resounding attempt made to determine the best chess player in history has recently been put forward by Je® Sonas, who has become a leading authority in the ¯eld of statistical analysis in chess during past years. Sonas devised a specialized rating scheme, based on tournament results from 1840 to the present . The rating is calculated for each month separately, with
player's activity taken into account. A player's rating, therefore, starts declining when he is no longer active, which di®ers from the classic FIDE rating.

Chess Books and Prerequisites
One of the principal ways in which a chess player picks up knowledge is through reading chess books, or via other chess media (software, videos, etc.). It is often debated as to which are the most instructive, good for beginners, most unique, etc. So it is important to understand how this dynamically growing set of material can be comprehended, especially which material either requires (or is better understood) by learning other material first. This knowledge is similar to
understanding prerequisites for high school or college courses. Just because a book contains lots of information that you don’t know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be extremely helpful in making you better at this point in your chess development. As an analogy, take a student from Spanish I and put him in Spanish IV, or a middle school student studying social studies and put him in graduate school microeconomics. In both cases it is easy to see that the student is now
in an environment where there is lots of unknown information, but it will not be very helpful to him. Much more subtle is the case of chess books, because any intelligent adult can pick up a well written chess book and both understand the material and see that it contains information he does not currently know. The problem is that, unlike Spanish IV, he may not be able to
tell that the material, while understandable, is not the right kind of information that will help take him to the next level. This information may even be somewhat counterproductive if the student misperceives that it IS helpful For example let’s consider Jeremy Silman’s excellent book How to Reassess Your Chess. In my opinion, this book is slightly more advanced than his other similar great work, The Amateur’s Mind. Both deal with fairly advanced positional and planning subjects – certainly not advanced to a Grandmaster, but advanced for beginning adults - in the sense that these players are still making basic tactical mistakes and will get diminishing returns for studying positional and planning niceties. It would not be possible to fully use these books without having (mis-)absorbed some of the basic positional ideas and thinking guidelines they intend to correct. So, for example, you might first read a text like Pachman’s Modern Chess Strategy or even Nimzovich’s classic My System to learn about positional ideas before you read TheAmateur’s Mind to see how beginning and intermediate players often

Baron von Heydebrand und der Lasa

It is not clear if he should be considered a “forgotten” master, but several
people have told me independently that they would like to know more about
Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa (1818-1899). It may seem strange, but
von der Lasa manages to be both an underrated and an overrated player from
chess history.
Von der Lasa was one of the “Pleiades,” the group of Berlin players and
analysts that included Bledow and Bilguer. Then, as now, strong chess players
seem to come in two flavors: educated, cultured people for whom chess is one
of several intellectual activities, and others who essentially live for chess, and may seem quite coarse away from the chessboard. Von der Lasa was very clearly of the first type, a highly successful and influential diplomat, extremely well read and an excellent writer, and rather wealthy. Every chess player seemed to like and respect von der Lasa, both as a player and a person. However, because of his diplomatic career, which involved a lot of travel and
attention to work, he was unable to play nearly as often as the other great players of his time. Thus, von der Lasa did not play at London 1851 (though his absence was noted with great regret by Staunton, who emphasized that Anderssen was the second-best player in Germany), nor in any other tournament, despite a lifelong interest in chess extending well into the period
when tournaments became more common. His reputation is based largely on match play, but these were not glamorous showdowns played in front of a crowd; some were even played in private at his home. Since von der Lasa did not have famous tournament or high-profile match
wins, he was largely forgotten as a player after his death, though his writings (especially the Handbuch des Schachspiels, which he edited for the first four editions, and his work on chess history) remained very influential. For many years, von der Lasa was considered a minor figure in chess history, when compared to the likes of Saint Amant, Staunton, Anderssen, Morphy and
others who grabbed the attention of the world, even the attention of those who knew little of chess. The closest von der Lasa came to international chess celebrity was during the Morphy craze, when a rumor went about that he would return from Brazil to challenge Morphy, and that Morphy would delay his return to the U.S. for this match. Lasa telegraphed that this rumor was
completely unfounded, and some people viewed him as Morphy’s last potential challenger, given that the match with Staunton seemed to have fallen through. For many years, accounts of the romantic period were unlikely to mention von der Lasa at all. Already by the time of his death, his status as one of the real leading players was largely forgotten; his London Times obituary says that in his day he met all the old masters of the past generation, including Staunton,
Mayet, Anderssen, von Bilguer, Buckle, Cunningham, Jänisch, and others, ith many of whom he could hold his own pretty well in practical play (The Times, Aug 22, 1899). This is actually quite an understatement of his ability. Von der Lasa’s reputation in chess history has more recently become much greater, because, in my opinion, of two distinct important sources. One was a
1985 article by Nathan Divinsky in the British Chess Magazine, “The Mighty Baron.” You can see important points from this article summarized in a Diggle article here. Divinsky looked at games of von der Lasa against top players (30 games from the Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess Games, 40 from Bachmann’s Aus Vergangenen Zeiten Volume 2, and 9 from various other sources), and found that he had a remarkably good score against the top masters of his time. Later, Divinsky had access to Lasa’s entire chess library (perhaps the best in the world for its time, and still kept intact); he no doubt found many other forgotten von der Lasa games, but did not complete a
planned biography on the subject before his death. The second boost to von der Lasa’s reputation has come from the statistical rankings applied to game databases, especially Jeff Sonas’ Chessmetrics, where von der Lasa comes out as top player in the world for an extended
period, enough for people to really take notice and place him in the top rank of players. Before that, Dr. Arpad Elo’s The Rating of Chessplayers Past and Present (1978) rated nearly 200 players who died too soon to receive an official FIDE rating. Of these, there are about 35 or 40, born circa 1800-1840, who could reasonably be called “Lasa and his contemporaries.” Among them, the highest rated are Morphy (2690), Steinitz (2650), Anderssen and, yes, von
der Lasa (both 2600).

Chess Café.com

We are pleased to present our newest columnist, Jerry Spinrad. We will let Jerry’s own words tell you about himself – and his new column at ChessCafe.com. I am a professor at Vanderbilt University, where I teach theoretical computer science. My specific research area is graph algorithms, and I have been an author of two books on that subject. I have been playing tournament chess since my high school years during the Fischer boom. For many years, I have been either a high class A player or a low expert. My most impressive sounding achievement in chess is that I am 3-time quick chess champion of Tennessee; actually, the only time I
beat out strong masters for the title, I was helped by a ridiculously favorable pairing in the last round and a great deal of luck in the tiebreak system. I have coached my daughters' school chess teams since they started school, and once had a team win the state championship. When I started my investigations into chess history, I first considered writing an ambitious and scholarly review of a particular period of chess history. Although I might still like to write such a book, I found myself increasingly interested in the fascinating personalities of chess players in the time period, and these stories are the result. Introduction There have been many developments in chess history in recent years. Game scores of major tournaments, which once could only be found in old books, are now easily available on the Internet. Old chess journals have been reprinted, allowing anyone to own what once existed only in a small number of chess libraries. Some wonderful biographies of chess players have been published, as well as comprehensive game collections. This has been an exciting time for serious chess historians. Unfortunately, there are relatively few serious chess historians. There are, on the other hand, many chess players who have some interest in chess history. These players enjoy the stories of the bizarre, larger-than-life individuals who have always made the world of chess a fascinating place. We have not seen so many advances aimed at those who have a casual interest in chess history. There has been some work in this direction. There have always been many sloppy authors who repeat false stories, but we now have a zealot, Edward Winter, who is willing to separate fact from fiction and
embarrass the peddlers of tired old myths. Instead of looking at the same old stories, this column attempts to use the newly available sources to find new stories, which are both entertaining and
true, about old chess players. Some are actually much more interesting than the false stories, and this is a celebration of chess culture in all of its glorious strangeness. These columns will fall into several categories, each really a separate investigation into chess history. There are sections dealing with serious chess players who have been forgotten, and others dealing with bizarre incidents only tenuously connected to chess, but which I feel are very entertaining. Some stories will be of interest to non-players, others to all chess players, and still others primarily to chess history buffs. Some deal with individual figures from chess (and occasionally non-chess) history, some with groups of chess players, while others are organized around general themes rather than studies of a particular player or type of player. I hope that readers will come to realize that chess culture is much more than variations of obscure opening lines, and will thus have even more fun with the game. I hope non-playing readers will understand that chess is full of wild,
wacky characters, and thus may even be lured into playing and becoming part of our eccentric world. Chess historians, I hope you will forgive my occasional lack of academic rigor. My hope is that some readers will become intrigued and come to enjoy your scholarly work as much as I do.

James Mortimer
This article recalls a forgotten chess player of the past, James Mortimer. Born in 1833 in Richmond, Virginia, USA, Mortimer lived to 1911, and had a life full of great triumphs and great failures. It was the failures at the chess board that first brought Mortimer to my attention. To explain how he first caught my eye, I must make a small digression. I have wanted to get my hands on Gaige’s four-volume set of tournament crosstables for a long time, and finally was able to obtain them through interlibrary loan. Or at least, to obtain all of them except the one I wanted most, volume 1, which covers the years from 1851 to 1900. Frustrated, I hit upon a scheme of “reverse engineering” Gaige’s tables from Anders Thulin’s index to the tables, which is available on the net. During a month-long trip by my wife, I logged on late at night and managed to get the standings for the tournaments in Gaige’s book constructed; I am still in the process of
determining the players’ actual scores for as many tournaments as I can find. The process described above is long and tedious, and you may feel free to question my sanity. However, there are a few advantages of entering every score by hand as opposed to buying a book: you end up looking at all the data, and noticing oddities which cry out for further inspection. For example, there have been a number of unknowns who did extraordinarily well in some particular tournament, never to be heard of again. Sometimes the player simply was lucky, but there often is a compelling story: some players died young, some were forced into exile, some gave up chess for business, and inat least one case (which I will discuss in a different article) the player was
accused of cheating and was ostracized by the chess community.Mortimer stands out in a different way. Mortimer had a reverse clean score in an 1887 London tournament, going 0-9 against top-flight competition. This type of wipe-out is fairly rare, but Mortimer’s case is not the worst. Famously, Colonel Moreau went 0-26 at Monte Carlo 1903. Moreau’s case is very
different from Mortimer’s, however. Moreau agreed to be a last-minutesubstitute in a top-flight tournament; he does not appear anywhere else in Gaige’s books. Mortimer, however, continued to be invited regularly to topleveltournaments, almost always getting very low scores. These invitations seem odd because even when Mortimer played in non-master tournaments, he
was not winning them.

Topalov in the new World Chess Championship cycle

In connection with setting-up the new system, the Presidential Board was determined to close matters related to the previous and recent WCCh cycles. Regarding one of the most critical issues in the world chess community, the Presidential Board received the delegation of the Bulgarian Chess Federation including Ms. Vessela Letcheva, Minister of Sport, Mr. S. Sergiev, President of the Federation and Mr. S. Danailov, manager of GM V. Topalov. After presenting its evaluation of the situation that former world champion GM Veselin Topalov was unable to participate in the ongoing WCCh cycle anymore and may lose such an opportunity for two years, the Bulgarian delegation accepted the proposal of the FIDE Presidential Board. In accordance with the decision, GM Topalov will have an eight-game Challenger Match against the winner of the 2007 World Cup in the year 2008 as part of the new WCCh cycle. The winner of that Challenger Match can play against the winner of the 2008 Universal Event Promotion match (UEP) in 2009 for the World Chess Championship title (as can be seen in the diagram). The minimum prize fund for the Challenger Match is set at 150 000 USD. The Bulgarian Chess Federation has expressed its wish to organize the Challenger Match. According to the regulations if GM Kramnik wins the WCCh tournament in Mexico City 2007, a match between GM Kramnik and GM Topalov, the current and the previous world champions, will take place in 2008. In that case, the winner of the Kramnik- Topalov match will play against the winner of the 2007 World Cup.

The New York City Schools Chess Program Report

The New York City Schools Chess Program Report is impressive, here is what Chrisine Palm writes in 1990. In its four-year existence, NYCHESS has proven that: a. Chess instills in young players a sense of self-confidence and self-worth; b. Chess dramatically improves a child's ability to think rationally; c. Chess increases cognitive skills; d. Chess improves children's communication skills and aptitude in recognizing patterns, e. Chess results in higher grades, especially in English and Math studies, f. Chess builds a sense of team spirit while emphasizing the ability of the individual, g. Chess teaches the value of hard work, concentration and commitment; h. Chess makes a child realize that he or she is responsible for his or her own actions and must accept their consequences;
i. Chess teaches children to try their best to win, while accepting defeat with grace, j. Chess provides an intellectual, comparative forum through which children can assert hostility i.e. "let off steam" in an acceptable way;
k. Chess can become a child's most eagerly awaited school activity, dramatically improving attendance; l. Chess allows girls to compete with boys on a non-threatening, socially acceptable plane; m. Chess helps children make friends more easily because it provides an easy, safe forum for gathering and discussion; n. Chess allows students and teachers to view each other in a more sympathetic way; o. Chess, through competition, gives kids a palpable sign of their accomplishments, and finally; p. Chess provides children with a concrete, inexpensive and compelling way to rise above the deprivation and self-doubt which are so much a part of their lives. Most people naively believe that any child who becomes proficient at chess must be an extremely rare prodigy (probably with grand masters as parents). On the contrary, particular chess coaches consistently roduce strong players, year after year, even though specific children move on. While the child's individual talent is important, the training a child receives appears to be equally important. In fact Coaches like myself often say that given a few months of training, any motivated and bright 10 year old can become a proficient player. Skills acquired by playing chess are not just for the select few extremely gifted children, they are trainable skills for all. Chess educators have argued that chess is beneficial, not just for the intellectually gifted, but also for the learning disabled and hyperactive children.

Real Chess,Time Management and Care:

“Your game is only as good as your worst move.” – Dan H. 2001I commonly run across the sad case of a student who wants to show me a game containing a new idea they found after careful study on the 9th move of some variation of the Sicilian, but later lost because they moved too quickly and overlooked the loss of a piece to a simple double attack. In the non-chess world this misplaced priority is called “penny wise and pound foolish.”
When I suggest reviewing the thought process that caused him to lose the piece, he often brushes it off with a statement such as, “Oh, I just moved too fast” or “Yeah, I just overlooked his check.” They are much more interested in my opinion of their new 9th move. I try to politely say “But you don’t get it! The reason you are 1200 and not 1600 has MUCH more to do with the carelessness or bad time management that caused you to lose the piece than it does from your lack of knowledge of the Sicilian.” Want proof? Take a 1600 player
and make him play an opening he never has before in his life – he still plays close to 1600; take a 1200 and let him play his favorite opening and he still usually plays like a 1200.While it is true that most players under 1400 don’t know a great deal about openings, endgames, or positional play, a great majority of their games are (or could have been!) lost not because of some opening trap, bad plan, endgame subtlety, or complex combination, but because of some basic tactical oversight. That is why the repetitious practice of basic tactical motifs, in all their guises, is by far the most important thing you can do when first studying chess. Learning new patterns is necessary for improvement, but not the only

New World Chess Championship cycle
(Press Release)
FIDE Presidential Board has approved the introduction of a new Grand Prix series initiated by Global Chess as part of the new World Championship Cycle. The Grand Prix series will span a period of two years with one tournament every year in America, Asia and Europe.Following initial research carried out with a number of countries and sponsors, there is ahigh degree of interest in the introduction of such a series of tournaments, traditionally referred to as a Grand Prix series, whereby players acquire ranking points and the player with the highest cumulative points is proclaimed GP Winner at the end of a season. In the new cycle, the winner of the Grand Prix would challenge the winner of the World Cup in an eight game match and the eventual winner of this match would then face the World Champion in a twelve game match for the world title. Global Chess will be
responsible for locating sponsors and together with FIDE finding organising cities, who would be interested in any respective parts of the Grand Prix.FIDE and Global Chess will draft detailed regulations for the Grand Prix starting in 2008 for the next Presidential Board in Mexico City. The regulations for the forthcoming World
Cup were approved by the Presidential Board in Tallinn.he chart below details the new cycle and long term intentions of the new World Championship cycle.