Will not be Blogging for a week or so ......

Dear all readers, this is to inform that I will be unable to blog for more than week as I have to go overseas on a family emergency tomorrow. For juniors sending in their application for International events, continue sending them to my GMail. I will be collating the applications when I get back.

Kai Jensen speaks ......

After blogging about US junior chessplayer, FM Daniel Naroditsky, today, I had the realisation that most of my profile blogs are about overseas juniors. Why, I asked myself. I realised it was because they conduct more interviews and I am just picking up the interviews. I thought it is about time I do something about this sad state of affairs. Except for a Victorian chessplayer publishing interviews on ChessChat, there aren't really anything else going on. So standby for more on this front. I have already lined up a junior player and conducting an email interview. Wish me luck that everything works out. We will probably muddled through this but at least it may be a good learning experience.

In the meantime, reading about the 2005 Doeberl Cup controversy (very small one but significantly enough for those involved and I won't provide the links!) led me to this biog entry about a former very strong NZ junior player (3rd in NZ Champs!) who also played in the Australian Junior Champs. I found the story very interesting and here is the link: Kai Jensen. And Kai, thanks for sharing your story and I personally found it inspiring. Perhaps I will get you to write a bit for NSW juniors and maybe even give a talk. Just one excerpt:

I remembered what a beautiful, challenging game chess was, and felt that I’d been hasty in cutting it out of my life.

Sorry but can never resist preaching from the pulpit!

FM Daniel Naroditsky Speaks ......

From World Youth U12 Champion to world's youngest chess author — a tall order? But that is what 14-year old FM Daniel Naroditsky has done. Some Australian juniors and chess parents may remember Daniel from the 2007 World Youth in Turkey where Daniel won the U12 title. This year he has published a book called, Mastering Positional Chess, New In Chess (see here). As part of the promotional activities, Daniel did an interview with Jennifer Shahade (JS) for USCF Chess Life Online (see here for full interview). Excerpts:

JS: As an eighth grade 2400 player, what advice would you give to kids your age who are trying to balance chess and school?
DN: #1- Don't give up. Say you lose a game. I've seen many kids say I'm tired of this game, I lost and what's the point of playing anymore. They should take that loss and learn as much as possible from it.
#2- Enjoy the game and take every tourney as a chance to have fun. Even if you're worse always enjoy the game.
#3-Take lessons if you can. Many GMs are self-taught but it's much easier when there is a stronger player telling you what's good and what's bad.

JS: Which are some of your most memorable tournaments?
DN: The World Youth Championships! It's great playing around so many different players and nationalities. It is a test to your stamina to play 11 rounds over two weeks. The North American Open was also a big success for me (where he defeated GM Shabalov and broke 2400.)

I also love the genre of European chess tournaments because there is one round a day and I can prepare.

JS: What do you see as your biggest milestone in chess?
DN: Winning the gold medal at the World Youth Championship (Boys Under 12 in 2007) was probably my biggest milestone so far. Becoming a Grandmaster is definitely a future goal. But it's important to me to play for enjoyment and not force myself. I love chess and even if I don't become a GM, I'll still always play it.

JS: How has writing Mastering Positional Chess affected your play?
DN: I improved a whole lot by writing it. There are so many ideas that I learned, so many games that I saw afresh. It inspired me to play for a win against stronger players. I felt like I could play a GM in a positional game and not get outplayed. As I was finishing the book, I won my first game against a GM, Yury Vovk in July 2009.

Before I used brute force calculation in most positions. Now if the position is getting closed, I use more verbal explanation asking myself things like, How do I stop this regroup, Where can I maneuver my worst pieces to, What is my opponent doing, or trying to do?

All that said, it's important not to downplay tactics, especially when it's do or lose.

JS: What are your favorite books?
DN: I really like Mihail Marin's books especially Learn From the Legends. It's packed with so many great ideas. It has an overview of every World Champion and near Champion, and he analyzes a trait, like how Fischer uses a bishop. The quality of the analysis is great.

Another writer I love is Garry Kasparov especially the Great Predecessors series. The way he puts ideas into words is absolutely great. He holds a biannual session for talented American juniors in New York and I've attended six times. It's absolutely wonderful needless to say.

JS: What are some over-rated positional concepts?
DN: Analyzing different pawn structures. I don't know about other players but for me, during the game, regardless of the pawn structure, I look at the general ideas of the position. I don't think the main ideas depend on the pawn structure. The exception is the isolated queen pawn structure, which you should spend more time studying.

JS: What about an under-rated positional concept?
DN: I'd say positional sacrifice, because I haven't seen it covered in many other books. If you look at Grandmaster games, often the unnoticed small pawn sack is the key to the whole game. For instance in Petrosian-Romanishin, the knight sack on d5 was the key to victory.

Spend more time on positional sacks and once you have more confidence in that area, you can sack a pawn without fear.

You can find out more about Daniel from his blog and his biog (here).

In Australia we also have a World Youth U12 champion. Hmmmmm! I wonder if we are going to see a youngest Australian chess book author as well ......

IGM Gawain Jones speaks ......

From the folks at Chessvibes (see here) comes an interview with English GM Gawain Jones, a regular feature in Australian and New Zealand chess scene in recent years. GM Jones' latest outing in Australia was the Australian Championship in January in Sydney. Excerpts:

3. How did you develop your chess talent as a kid?
I played! I had a couple coaches when I was starting out which were very useful for the basics but since I moved to Italy when I was 13 I didn’t receive any coaching. However I played lots of tournaments and lots of blitz chess online which made me pretty sharp. I used to be really lazy when it came to learning theory outside tournaments or reading books but I’ve tried to remedy that recently.

4. Who had a profound influence on your chess development?
I remember, when I had just started school, the Kasparov-Short match being shown on tv which got me really interested in chess. Kasparov’s style really appealed to me and I guess I’ve tried to emulate it. On a slightly different note, I have to thank my first ever chess coach, Stuart Morgan, who took me as a kid who only knew how the pieces moved, and put me on the right path.

6. What would be your advice for young people?
To play and to look over the games of the top players, particularly in the openings you play. Don’t worry too much about move order nuances and memorising lines, it’s far more important to know how to play the sort of middlegame which arises than get a theoretical advantage out of the opening.

10. What question do you miss and what would be your answer?
“How did you know that chess was for you?” No other job ever interested me. I had a place at university but took a gap year first and then deferred the course again as I was enjoying myself too much. It seems a great lifestyle so far, being able to travel and live anywhere in the world (so far I’ve lived in England, Italy, Ireland, Northern Ireland and New Zealand, with a few months in Australia). Of course the money tends not to be great but chess gives its own rewards, it’s very satisfying after playing a well played game.

For those who are interested, especially chess parents, GM Jones' mother, Tanya Jones b(see here), wrote a book (with annotated games, annotations by GM Jones) about being a chess parent in the UK (see here, and here for a review) and a more recent book on learning how to play chess (see here).

2010 Australian and International Junior Calendar

[New event added]

March 31
Deadline for applications for Australian international junior representation in 2010.

April 1-5
Doeberl Cup
Canberra
http://www.doeberlcup.com.au/

April 7-11
Sydney International Open
Sydney
http://www.chessaustralia.com.au/index.cfm?site=open

April 12-16
WA Junior Championships
Perth
http://www.cawa.org.au/

April 15-16
City of Adelaide Junior
Adelaide, SA
http://www.sachess.org/

May 9-19
Commonwealth Championships (including age groups)
New Delhi, India
http://www.delhichess.com/

June 4–13
Asean+ Age Group Championships
Subic Bay, Phillipines

NEW!
June 5 (Saturday)
Perth Johns-Putra JETS mini-Training Camp
10am-4pm at Legacy House
(This is the day before the Foundation Day weekender)

June 14-24
Asian Junior U/20 Championships
Chennai,India
http://www.indianchessfed.org/tournamentcalendar.asp

June 26-July 1
Vic. Junior Ch.
Melbourne
http://chessvictoria.netfirms.com/10...mpionships.htm

June 28
JETS Mini-squad meeting
Gold Coast

June 28-July 3
QLD Junior Ch.
Gold Coast
http://www.gardinerchess.com/

July 5-10
JETS Camp
Sydney

July 8-18
Asian Youth Chess Championships
Beijing, China

July 11-16
NSW Junior Ch.
Sydney
http://www.nswjcl.org.au/

July 15-16
SA Junior Championships
Adelaide, SA
http://www.sachess.org/

July 24-Aug 1
World Youth U/16 Chess Olympiad
Turkey,Antalya

July 25 –Aug 2
World Schools Individual Championship
Turkey

Aug 2-17
World Junior (U/20) Open Ch.and Girls Ch.
Chotowa Czarna, Poland
http://www.wjcc2010.pl/en

September 1-8
Malaysian Open
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Oct 19-31
World Youth Championships
Haikidiki, Greece

December 4-5
Australian Schools Championship
Perth, WA
http://www.cawa.org.au/

Dec 16-23
Asian Schools Chess Festival
Colombo, Sri Lanka

11th ASEAN+ Age Group Chess Championships

11th ASEAN+ Age Group Chess Championships

Subic, Philippines – 4th to 13th June 2010

The President/Secretary
All ASEAN National Chess Federations

Dear Colleagues

Following the string of successful Asian chess championships in Subic,
the ASEAN Championships will be held in Subic Freeport, Olongapo City,
Philippines from 4th to 13th June 2010. Participants may compete in
the U-8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 20 Age-Groups for Girls and Open. In
addition, Seniors (aged 50 and above) will be held.

Subic is a well known resort which has played host to many World and
Asian sports festivals. It is an ideal venue for youth events enclosed
in a well guarded enclave with a number of recreational attractions
for children. Many Asian chess championships have been successfully
held in Subic which is about 2-1/2 hours from Manila or one hour from
Clark air base.

The ASEAN+ Age Group Championships have grown in popularity and shall
accept direct individual registrations as well as those from countries
and territories around Asia.

Please kindly email your registration to us as soon as possible in
order to ascertain the number of rooms required in the official hotel.

We look forward to welcoming you to Subic Freeport, Philippines!

PROSPERO A. PICHAY, JR.
President
National Chess Federation of the Philippines

Calling All Girlz ...... The Chess Diva is ON!

In Australia, chess parents, administrators and coaches constantly fret about the low numbers of girls playing chess. And of the girls playing, the retention rate is even lower than for boys. Girls need the encouragement and the belief that they can DO IT! As my positive encouragement to all GIRLZ out there, have a look at what is POSSIBLE! Look at Chess Diva blog here and their Chess Diva video index here. This is their first Chess Diva video:

Chess Diva videos are also to be found on Vodpod and Youtube.

Episode 1: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-454702284578216068#; http://vodpod.com/watch/576473-chess-diva-episode-1?pod=danob021957; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otRKcuVVyx4
Episode 2: http://vodpod.com/watch/2480290-chessdivaepisode2-mov?pod=danob021957; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7288867978401790776&ei=ba2iS4jmPJKYwgOlovm2CA&q=chess+diva&hl=en#
Episode 3: (full-length version) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4515232102645305747&hl=en#; (10 mins version) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzRK3g3SW0; http://vodpod.com/watch/2480295-chess-diva-3;
Episode 4: http://vodpod.com/watch/2480299-chess-diva-4; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7419244392874056308&hl=en#
Episode 5: http://vodpod.com/watch/2480301-chess-diva-5; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7536287736959108645&ei=ba2iS4jmPJKYwgOlovm2CA&q=chess+diva&hl=en#
Episode 6: http://vodpod.com/watch/2480303-chessdiva6-mov?pod=danob021957; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9059009167204973755&ei=ba2iS4jmPJKYwgOlovm2CA&q=chess+diva&hl=en#
Episode 7: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5593445422228858189&hl=en#
Episode 8: http://vimeo.com/6615701

13-year old US Junior earns IM norm

Some of the readers of this blog may remember an US junior by the name of Darwin Yang from the various World Youth campaigns. Well, 13-year old Darwin has just secured his first IM norm at the Spring SPICE Cup at Texas Tech University. He has 4/7. He began in style with 3/4 but then hit a roadblock and lost the next two games. Showing great maturity, Darwin bounced back with a win (with Black!) over GM Jesse Kraai in Rd 7. If he defeats GM Ben Finegold and IM Irina Krush in his last two games, Darwin will get a GM norm. Tall order but ......

Story here and here. Short video interview of Darwin here. It is interesting to note that his aim is to become a chess GM in 2 years and that is a goal in itself. He does not intend to pursue further chess "glory" post-GM title (perhaps?). It seems the US chess world will lose another talented chess player to Wall Street. But I like his parting shot: "I like to have some fun. I am just a kid."

If you are interested in Darwin's career statistics thus far, see here. You can also see the number of tournaments he has played in the last few years on his way to breaking USCF 2400 barrier.

The Spring SPICE Cup is an invitational 10-player Round Robin with GM and IM norm opportunities held at the beautiful campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. For more on the Spring SPICE Cup see GM Ben Finegold's blog (here).

The Spring SPICE Cup is organised by former Women World Champion, GM Susan Polgar. (SPICE = Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.) Chess is highly regarded at Texas Tech U and every year, chess scholarships are available for talented chess players. More information here.Presently one of the scholarship holder is NZ GM-hopeful, Wang Pu-Chen.

A main SPICE Cup International Invitational is also held each year and in 2010 will happen from 19th-28th September. It is the main event in the Texas Tech’s annual SPICE Cup Festival.

If you happen to be in Lubbock, Texas in the next week, do check out the 3rd Annual Lubbock Open Chess Championship on Saturday, 27th March 2010. It is a 4 Round Swiss System Tournament (Game/30 ) (more info here).

2010 AusJCL Johns-Putra JETS

I am pleased to announce the list of successful juniors who have been chosen for the 2010 AusJCL Johns-Putra JETS. They are (in alphabetical order):

Joshua Behar
Vincent Chen
Kashish Christian
Ari Dale
Ethan Derwent
Alastair Dyer
Callum Gray
Sean Gu
Shirley Gu
Theresa Gu
Emma Guo
Martin Jack
Abbie Kanagarajah
Punala Jayath Kiripitige
Cedric Koh
Clarise Koh
Zachary Loh
Stuart Mason
Joanne Mason
Savithri Narenthran
Andrew Pan
Pasan Perera
Jana Pretorius
Harry Ruan
Jack Ruan
Caroline Shan
Leteisha Simmonds
Dylan Siow-Lee
Anton Smirnov
Oscar Wang

The Johns-Putra JETS will happen this year from 5-10th July in Sydney.

Reserves List (in alphabetical order):

Lachlan Cameron
Nicholas Deen-Cowell
Enoch Fan
Jaime-Lee Guo
Harry Hughes
Stuart Nicholls
Matthew Pyper
Aston Taminsyah
Jenny Yum

Addendum: AusJCL is also planning to run mini-training camps in other major Australian capital cities throughout the year, probably in conjunction with the 2010 Yulgilbar-Think Big Australian Grand Prix events. All unsuccessful applicants will be invited to apply for these training camps. More information will be forthcoming.

Magnus Carlsen branching out? Moonlighting? Auditioning?

The next Spock?

IGM Loek van Wely speaks ......

IM Merijn van Delft does occasional pieces for Chessvibes. He and a few others (including his father) have also published a book on coaching and training chess juniors called Developing Chess Talent. He recently conducted a brief interview with Dutch IGM Loek van Wely which can be found here.

The setting:

We formulated ten questions related to Developing Chess Talent and every Monday we’ll ask them to an interesting personality in the chess world. In the book you can find the interview we had with Loek in 1996, let’s see how his views developed fourteen years ahead.

3. How did you develop your chess talent as a kid?
Very simple: playing everywhere I could and reading any chess book I could get my hands on. Always analysing my games (also with my opponent). To be able to spend more time with my trainer wouldn’t have hurt either…

4. Who had a profound influence on your chess development?
Definitely Gary Kasparov, although Fischer was a legend, and Timman was our national chess icon, Kasparov stood for ambition, passion, energy, aggression and willpower.

6. What would be your advice for young people?
Be in good shape both mentally and physically. And not to follow the current trend: working with Fritz 99 to prepare your openings, and then trying to remember it… That’s not chess and that’s is no life!

10. What question do you miss and what would be your answer?
Did you get the maximum out of your talent or were you lazy, had other interests? Maybe yes, but ok, who cares, “what if” doesn’t count. Only the first place counts, please no more excuses!

You can find more information about the book here and here (which is a reprint of the free excerpt from the book on chess autism).

The Magnus Carlsen speaks ......

Chessbase has translated an interview which Magnus did with the German weekly news magazine, Der Spiegel, three opages long which is rare for chess but good for us "fans" of the Magnus. Terrible first question put to Magnus, "What is your IQ?". D'oh! But Magnus turned the question rather adroitly and made a nice point using English GM John Nunn as example.

The interview in translation is here. Excerpts:

Carlsen: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that.

SPIEGEL: How that?

Carlsen: At the age of 15, Nunn started studying mathematics in Oxford; he was the youngest student in the last 500 years, and at 23 he did a PhD in algebraic topology. He has so incredibly much in his head. Simply too much. His enormous powers of understanding and his constant thirst for knowledge distracted him from chess.

SPIEGEL: Things are different in your case?

Carlsen: Right. I am a totally normal guy. My father is considerably more intelligent than I am.

SPIEGEL: You became a grandmaster at the age of 13 years, four months and 27 days; and there has never been a younger number one than you before. What is that due to, if not to your intelligence?

Carlsen: I’m not saying that I am totally stupid. But my success mainly has to do with the fact that I had the opportunity to learn more, more quickly. It has become easier to get hold of information. The players from the Soviet Union used to be at a huge advantage; in Moscow they had access to vast archives, with countless games carefully recorded on index cards. Nowadays anyone can buy this data on DVD for 150 euros; one disk holds 4.5 million games. There are also more books than there used to be. And then of course I started working with a computer earlier than Vladimir Kramnik or Viswanathan Anand.

SPIEGEL: When exactly?

Carlsen: I was eleven or twelve. I used the computer to prepare for tournaments, and I played on the Internet. Nowadays, children start using a computer at an even earlier age; they are already learning the rules on screen. In that sense I am already old-fashioned. Technological progress leads to younger and younger top players, everywhere in the world.

SPIEGEL: Is being young an advantage in modern chess?

Carlsen: As a young player you have a lot of energy, a lot of strength, you are very motivated. But young players are often not good at defending a position; they cannot cope well when fate turns against them. The fact is simply that experience is a central issue. One of the most important things in chess is pattern recognition: the ability to recognise typical themes and images on the board, characteristics of a position and their consequences. To a certain degree you can learn that while training, but there is nothing like playing routine. I have always made sure to get that. I am only 19, but I have certainly already played a thousand games in the classic style.

SPIEGEL: Where did this enthusiasm for chess come from all of a sudden?

Carlsen: I don’t know. No more than I can tell you why I wanted to do 50-piece jigsaw puzzles when I was not even two years old. Why did I want to know all the common car makes at the age of two and a half? Why did I read books about geography at the age of five? I don’t know why I learnt all the countries of the world off by heart, including their capitals and populations. Chess was probably just another pastime.

SPIEGEL: When did you start playing tournaments?

Carlsen: A little later. My father said, if I trained a bit more I could perhaps take part in the Norwegian championships of the under 11s. I thought to myself: Oh, that might be fun. My result was okay. I won the tournament the following year.

SPIEGEL: Your father is an ambitious club player. When did you first defeat him?

Carlsen: Just before my ninth birthday, in a game of lightning chess.

SPIEGEL: In your chess class, were you trained as systematically as the former Russian child prodigies?

Carlsen: No. I’m not a disciplined thinker. Organisation is not my thing; I am chaotic and tend to be lazy. My trainer recognised that and as a rule allowed me to practise whatever I felt like at the time.

SPIEGEL: You are a sloppy genius?

Carlsen: I’m not a genius. Sloppy? Perhaps. It’s like this: When I am feeling good, I train a lot. When I feel bad, I don’t bother. I don’t enjoy working to a timetable. Systematic learning would kill me.

SPIEGEL: How were you able to stand maths lessons then?

Carlsen: When I was 13, my parents took me out of school for a year. They travelled around the world with me and my sisters, and on the way they taught us. That was fantastic, much more effective than sitting in school. I do understand that it is a problem for a teacher having to look after 30 pupils. But the slow speed was quite frustrating for me. I didn’t miss school at all.

SPIEGEL: For a long time you were the hunter in chess; now that you are the number one, you are the hunted. Do you notice that?

Carlsen: Certainly. The pressure has increased, everyone wants to beat me. I also notice a growing responsibility for having to structure the game, because my opponents refuse to do so. They are more cautious than they were just a year ago.

SPIEGEL: How do you deal with that?

Carlsen: Without any problems so far. I still sleep soundly and long. I feel sorry for players who are always lying awake at night, brooding over their games. Some colleagues literally become depressive during a long tournament. I enjoy playing squash or tennis to switch off; I watch television series on DVD.

SPIEGEL: During tournaments you sometimes stay in a bleak hotel for weeks. You are 19 years old – you don`t have the impression to miss your youth?

Carlsen: No.

SPIEGEL: Do you go out for a drink at night too sometimes?

Carlsen: Rarely. I prefer to chat with friends on the Internet or play poker online.

SPIEGEL: For money?

Carlsen: Of course. For what else?

SPIEGEL: Do you win?

Carlsen: If I take a game seriously, I do. If not, I sometimes lose. But that doesn’t matter. What is important is that I have a life beyond chess.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Carlsen: Chess should not become an obsession. Otherwise there’s a danger that you will slide off into a parallel world, that you lose your sense of reality, get lost in the infinite cosmos of the game. You become crazy. I make sure that I have enough time between tournaments to go home in order to do other things. I like hiking and skiing, and I play football in a club.

SPIEGEL: Many football players use music to get in the mood before a game. Do you do that too before sitting down in front of the board?

Carlsen: Oh, yes. If I am feeling gloomy before a game, I listen to gloomy music.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Carlsen: You probably won’t know it, a song by Lil Jon. A silly rap song, but it does me good, I loosen up. I listen to music on the Internet, but don`t download any songs. It’s all totally legal. Many people may find that boring, but I think it is important.

You have to read the entire interview to find out the following:
1) What is Magnus' favourite football club?
2) Does Magnus have a girlfriend? Who "advised" him to get a girlfriend (knowing of course that there is an unwritten rule that a chessplayer's ratings drop 200 points when he/she has a "special" friend)?
3) What is Magnus' favourite TV series?

Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournament 2010 (Nice FRA)

Here is an interesting game from this morning's Amber Blindfold game between World No 1, Magnus Carlsen and World No 5 Levon Aronian:

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

Here are Magnus' notes:

Already before the tournament Carlsen had prepared the King’s Indian and his ambition to steer for a highly complicated struggle worked out beyond expectation. To begin with he got the chance to implement an idea he had seen in a game Eljanov-Radjabov; a quick counter-push on the queenside to undermine White’s centre followed by a piece sacrifice (20…Nxd5) to break up that same centre. The tactical complications that ensued demanded a lot from both players and it was soon clear that Carlsen felt more at ease. Aronian missed the push 22…e4, a seemingly contradictory move that seems to contribute little to Black’s wish to open up lines and files, but which in fact is the right move to keep his initiative going. White could still have put up some resistance with 25.Bg5 (instead of 25.Nxf2), but Aronian had also missed 25…Qh4, which in case of 26.Be1 is followed by the deadly 26…Be5. Three moves later Aronian threw the towel.

The Challenge ...... White to Play to Win ...... Are you up to it?

The Challenge: You are White and have reached this position in your game, the last to finish in a team competition consisting of 8 x 8 boards. White needs to win to ensure your team draws the match. The crowd gathers and murmurs in the background, your teammates whispers encouragement and/or prays silently, the pressure mounts, the clock is ticking down, and ...... (answer posted next week).

On GM Wesley So

GM Wesley So is one of the youngest GMs presently in the world and according to the latest Chessbase table (see here), he was the 8th youngest junior to become a GM. He is very popular amongst the Philippine chess players, always attracting loyal fans on bulletin boards, chat rooms. Here is an early report on Wesley by Rooty Hill Chess Club when the promise was already very much visible (see here).

When browsing today, I came across a fan website dedicated to Wesley So (see here). Two things caught my eye.

1) A trivia about Wesley (fascinating trivia page here):

According to his father William So, because of Wesley So's rigid chess studies in pursuit for GM title, Wesley has not watched television in the last six years!

Wow!!! Again, this is in line with what I have discovered about success in chess as well as any other endeavour, the single-minded pursuit, the passion (sometimes bordering on obsession), the dedication and perseverance, and the willingness to sacrifice immediate gratification ......

On the theme of sacrifices (very familiar to Australian chess parents who accompany their offspring to all sorts and manner of chess tournaments), here are a couple of stories about the Torre family and Torre himself:

1969 World Junior Championship in Stockholm Sweden: Financial problems almost prevented Eugenio Torre from participating, but his eldest brother Jess believed in his younger brother's potential and sold all his tricycles so that they would have enough money to pay their plane tickets. In the third game in the semi-final, Eugene drew his game versus Anatoly Karpov.

In 1983, GM Eugenio Torre in financial trouble, had to sell his chess clocks to prepare for his Candidate's match against Hungarian Zoltan Ribli in Alicante, Spain.

On dedication:

Filipino GM Rogelio Antonio was a former chess addict, learned chess from his cousin at age 13, survived the separation of his parents, and once worked in a carton factory. In 1983, he hustled with odds in Luneta Chess Plaza and earned 50-75 pesos daily. His favorite player is Anatoly Karpov, studied photo-copied Chess Informants and Karpov's books "Chess is My Life" and "Karpov's Selected Games" by Kevin O'Connell.

And finally a nice anecdote to warm the heart and remind us that Fide's motto is "Gens Una Sumus" (We are one family):

Most of the Chinese players keep to themselves and do not freely mix with the "foreigners". A nice exception is GM Zhang Zhong who is very approachable and friendly. Engineer Ric Paragua (father of GM Mark Paragua) told Mr. Bobby Ang that during the Ubeda 2001 Open Tournament, Mark did not do particularly well, and they ran out of funds. GM Zhang Zhong, one of the prize winners there, immediately offered to loan them $500 to tide them over, and pay when able. How many people would do that?

2) The second news item to pique my interest was the announcement that Philippines chess players will receive government stipends as well as special training as Philippine Sports Commission elite athletes in their buildup for the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China in November.(see here). The list of chess players receiving stipends (in varying amounts) (but not necessary training and exposure) are GM Joey Antonio, GMDarwin Laylo, GM Wesley So, GM John Paul Gomez, GM Eugene Torre, GM Mark Paragua, GM Jayson Gonzales, IM Richard Bitoon, Cheradine Camacho, Sherily Cua, Shercila Cua, Catherine Perena, and Beverly Mendoza.

The money would be nice but whether 1) chess is a sport; 2) whether there should be tax-payer subsidy of chess players ...... food for thought!

Computers and Junior Chessplayers_II

I did promise more on this subject and I hope to deliver. University has started and I am a bit pushed for time. Hence the delay in blogging.

However, I was "reminded" of an book review by Garry Kasparov in the New York Review of Books "The Chess Master and the Computer" which is a review of Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, translated from the Spanish by Deborah Klosky
MIT Press, 205 pp., $24.95. The review to me is very well written and pays being read in full. The link is here. Some excerpts which pertain mainly to learning chess as well as computers and juniors:

There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of needing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

The availability of millions of games at one's fingertips in a database is also making the game's best players younger and younger. Absorbing the thousands of essential patterns and opening moves used to take many years, a process indicative of Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours to become an expert" theory as expounded in his recent book Outliers. (Gladwell's earlier book, Blink, rehashed, if more creatively, much of the cognitive psychology material that is re-rehashed in Chess Metaphors.) Today's teens, and increasingly pre-teens, can accelerate this process by plugging into a digitized archive of chess information and making full use of the superiority of the young mind to retain it all. In the pre-computer era, teenage grandmasters were rarities and almost always destined to play for the world championship. Bobby Fischer's 1958 record of attaining the grandmaster title at fifteen was broken only in 1991. It has been broken twenty times since then, with the current record holder, Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, having claimed the highest title at the nearly absurd age of twelve in 2002. Now twenty, Karjakin is among the world's best, but like most of his modern wunderkind peers he's no Fischer, who stood out head and shoulders above his peers—and soon enough above the rest of the chess world as well.

The "freestyle"*** result, though startling, fits with my belief that talent is a misused term and a misunderstood concept. The moment I became the youngest world chess champion in history at the age of twenty-two in 1985, I began receiving endless questions about the secret of my success and the nature of my talent. Instead of asking about Sicilian Defenses, journalists wanted to know about my diet, my personal life, how many moves ahead I saw, and how many games I held in my memory.

I soon realized that my answers were disappointing. I didn't eat anything special. I worked hard because my mother had taught me to. My memory was good, but hardly photographic. As for how many moves ahead a grandmaster sees, Russkin-Gutman makes much of the answer attributed to the great Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca, among others: "Just one, the best one." This answer is as good or bad as any other, a pithy way of disposing with an attempt by an outsider to ask something insightful and failing to do so. It's the equivalent of asking Lance Armstrong how many times he shifts gears during the Tour de France.

The only real answer, "It depends on the position and how much time I have," is unsatisfying. In what may have been my best tournament game at the 1999 Hoogovens tournament in the Netherlands, I visualized the winning position a full fifteen moves ahead—an unusual feat. I sacrificed a great deal of material for an attack, burning my bridges; if my calculations were faulty I would be dead lost. Although my intuition was correct and my opponent, Topalov again, failed to find the best defense under pressure, subsequent analysis showed that despite my Herculean effort I had missed a shorter route to victory. Capablanca's sarcasm aside, correctly evaluating a small handful of moves is far more important in human chess, and human decision-making in general, than the systematically deeper and deeper search for better moves—the number of moves "seen ahead"—that computers rely on.

There is little doubt that different people are blessed with different amounts of cognitive gifts such as long-term memory and the visuospatial skills chess players are said to employ. One of the reasons chess is an "unparalleled laboratory" and a "unique nexus" is that it demands high performance from so many of the brain's functions. Where so many of these investigations fail on a practical level is by not recognizing the importance of the process of learning and playing chess. The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent. Programming yourself by analyzing your decision-making outcomes and processes can improve results much the way that a smarter chess algorithm will play better than another running on the same computer. We might not be able to change our hardware, but we can definitely upgrade our software.

*** This refers to the chess competitions where humans are partnered with chess engines to compete. Read the article to learn of Kasparov's "experimental
game with Topalov.

More support for my point that we need to ensure that chess juniors in Australia are properly equipped and trained to use chess engines and databases. And if Norway can produce a Magnus Carlsen, China can produce Hou YiFan, England a David Howell, Hungary a Richard Rapport, Ukraine a Illya Nyzhnyk, and USA a Ray Robson, surely Australia can produce a world top ten junior chess player? Yes, before I forget and get flamed by Victorians, yes, we have a World U12 champion. Now (without meaning to put him under pressure), lets work to support his efforts to become a GM and the World Junior title?

Another 13-year old GM ......Richard Rapport

This time it is Hungarian Richard Rapport ((born 25th March 1996). He completed his 3rd GM norm at the recent "Gotth Art Kupa" tournament (see here) finishing in joint 2nd with chess legend GM Lajos Portisch. Going into the final round, Richard was leading the tournament half-point ahead of GM Alexander Beliavsky. It seems that Beliavsky is Richard's coach. However, Richard lost to Portisch in the last round. See here for results and games and here for the GM report.

And finally you can find out all about him from the blog on Richard here. It seems he scored his 2nd GM norm at a First Saturday GM tournament in February 2010.

Update (Sat 6th March 2010): Chessbase (see here) also has a report and some additional information on Richard Rapport especially on the issue of coaches (see comments below). Also Chessbase maintains the table of the youngest juniors to achieve the title of Grandmaster.

More GM Advice ...... from a legend of chess

Living chess legend, Danish GM Bent Larsen celebrates his 75th birthday (see here and here for reports). In a much earlier interview in 1988, he had this to say:

What helped you to get so close to the top of chess pyramid?

Persistence and strong will. Perhaps, I worked a lot! When you achieve a success in something you always want to get more in future. After all, you can’t do without being self-confident…

How did you achieve such a great success?

I am a self-made man. I didn’t have an instructor, and I wasn’t engrossed in chess manuals except the books of Nimzovitch, I just worked a lot playing chess.

Was it your talent or your capacity for work that helped you to make a success?

Generally, I don’t know. Probably, it was a combination of the former and the latter.

How did you become a candidate for the championship title?

Everything comes with experience. At some moment, you understand your advantages and disadvantages in chess and make a qualitative leap. Provided that I didn’t play in the strongest tournaments, I could experiment with my style. In two different tournaments I could play in two different ways. I became more experienced and I wasn’t afraid of making a mistake. On the contrary, I have spent a lot of time correcting my mistakes. Besides, I trained myself to become a real fighter…

You said that Nimzovitch, a positional chess player, was your teacher and, at the same time, you usually played very sharp chess. Did you look for the golden mean?

Yes, I did. Sometimes, in the beginning of a game I had to choose either to play the King’s Gambit or the Catalan System! It’s the Nimzovitch style – your play can be too complicated or too easy, but the main thing is that your opponent won’t discover your intentions!

Larsen also had to deal with disappointment, especially when he lost the 1971 semifinals Candidates Match to Bobby Fischer 0-6! Of course as everyone knows, Fischer went on to defeat Boris Spassky for the World Championship in 1972. You can read Larsen's response to questions on this sensitive issue here.

It is interesting to compare this with David Bronstein's 1951 World Championship Match with Mikhail Botvinnik. Bronstein was leading by a point going into the 23rd game (a total of 24 games was to be played). He lost the 23rd game and went on to draw the 24th game. The match was tied 12-12 but based on the then prevailing rules, Botvinnik retained his title. Needing only a win ( or two draws) in the last two games, there has been speculation whether he was asked to throw the 23rd game. Bronstein is on record as saying he was subjected to "strong psychological pressure" but ultimately he had the choice whether to succumb or not. However, he also went on to say that he was not keen on becoming the world champion because of the expectations placed on the world champion. Hmmm! not sure whether this is a post-facto justification.

Johns-Putra (AusJCL) JETS 2010_Update

I have updated ratings with March 2010 ACF and Fide ratings.

Good news! Five juniors have been shortlisted.

Not so good news! That is 5 out of possible 30 ...... sigh! But the long list is coming in from the selectors.