Quick Observations From King's Tournament

After following the games on the King's Tournament, I noted a few observations:

1. Magnus Carlsen is the man to beat when it comes to the Candidates Final next year - he can play all positions and almost all openings equally well.

2. No opponent should ever play 1.d4 against Teimour Radjabov again unless they are totally prepared to face his King's Indian Defense.

3. For a 40+ year old guy, Gelfand still has some fuel left in his tank and can teach those young whippersnappers a thing or two.

The Death Knell For Correspondence Chess?

ChessCafe's CC Chronlicles

http://www.chesscafe.com/chronicles/chronicles.htm



"To be truly competitive in today's CC (top twenty percent and higher), I recommend that you use the latest versions. Though the great leaps in performance between generations are over, so you may not need to have the latest and greatest. It is often more important to learn how your present software works and how to get the most out of it." - CC GM Bo Bredenhof, June 23, 2010

Seriously? I didn't know people could use computer chess engines in CC and I cannot believe that ICCF turns a blind eye to this open admission of computer "cheating" by a reknown CC GM. I've thought they were strictly forbidden. But then I'm not in the elite 20%. Such a disclosure is pretty damning about the current status of correspondence chess.

Then of course, we get into that huge debate on opening theory. So when does book theory stop and unaided analysis begins? Someone with Rybka 4's opening book can run well into over 30 moves without the player having to make one of his own.

I think computers have pretty much killed correspondence chess.

As Hudson says it in the movies Aliens, "Game over, man, game over."

Book Prices In Australia

One of my main pet peeves of living in Australia is the extremely high prices of books.

I'm not kidding.

For example, here a copy of Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors costs A$65.95 (and this is a discounted online price) from Borders Australia while Book Depository UK (yes, the UK) sells it for A$31.70 (including shipping).
That is more than halve the price of what is essentially for the same book.

As much as I would like to support the local book retailers here, such a high markup makes reading close to unaffordable if you're an avid reader like me. This is why I turn towards my local libraries for books.

This is because Australia has a ridiculous parallel importation restriction on books. A report last year by the Productivity Commission found that in general, books here are currently 27 per cent more expensive than in the US and 13 per cent more expensive than in Britain.

War Of The Machines - Rybka v Ippolitch in TalkChess

For a week now, I've been monitoring the ongoing war that has been literally taking place in cyberspace.

The Venue:
TalkChess.com

The Issue:
Moderation And Censorship

The Summary:
It all started when Vas Rajlich accused the makers of Ippolitch that it was a clone of Rybka. Subsequently, the forum owners ICD, asked Graham Banks to censor any mention of Ippolitch despite the fact Ippolitch has never been proven to be a clone of Rybka. Vas Rajlich himself, has never put forward any proof to his allegations.

Make no joke, Ippolitch is an extremely strong chess engine (since superseded by Firebird). In the software world, the strongest chess engine has the potential to reap millions of dollars in sales. It's a dog-eat-dog world.

Graham Banks sought fit to remove all mentions of Ippolitch on the forum without informing the forum moderators. As a result, Jeremy Bernstein, a long time forum moderator resigned as a form of protest and has opened up a new forum at Open Chess.

For people who are interested in the Rybka controversy, I would suggest Wikipedia.

Curious note: Rybka v1 was thoroughly analysed and was pronounced a "clone" of Fruit (an open source engine) in spite of Vas Rajlich's denials to the contrary.

Chessvibes also did an article once on this chess engine controversy.

At The Request Of V Smirnov

Since Vladimir proposed this, so I'm making a special blog post. This is for you. :)

The picture on the right is NSW Chess President Bill Gletsos (right) shaking hands with Cassettari (who was awarded the Koshnitsky Medal).

PS: Bill is going to kill me for this.