Samuel Sevian, 9, is youngest US national chess master

Chess sets for the Jet Set

One of several terrific chess sets shown at the title link. This one uses the New York skyline as its inspiration.

Bobby Fischer Is Exhumed

"The remains of Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion, were exhumed Sunday night in the cemetery of Laugardaelir Church in Iceland, according to a report in The Reykjavik Grapevine.


The exhumation was ordered to see if Fischer is the father of nine-year-old Filipino girl as part of a fight over his estate."

Further details here.

Kasparov leads Karpov 3-1 in chess rematch

"Garry Kasparov stretched his lead over Anatoly Karpov to 3-1 Wednesday on the second day of an exhibition chess match commemorating the 25th anniversary of their marathon first title bout.



Karpov, 58, won his first game of the unofficial tournament, which is being played in the eastern city of Valencia after Kasparov abandoned the game. Kasparov, 46, rebounded to win the second game as Karpov ran out of time.
On Tuesday, Kasparov won the first two semi-rapid games as Karpov struggled to manage his time.

...The two men waged one of the sporting world's greatest rivalries when between 1984 and 1990 they met five times for the world championship and pretty much drew even: Kasparov won 21 games, Karpov took 19 and they drew 104 times.
The first title bout started in Sept. 1984 in Moscow and lasted nearly five months before it was halted with no winner declared on the grounds that both were exhausted.
Kasparov won a rematch in 1985 and captured his first world title, at age 22, becoming the world's youngest-ever champion.

Kasparov is considered by some to have been the best player in chess history. He retired from top-level professional play in 2005, after dominating the game for two decades."

Click the title bar to read the entire article.

Bobby Fishcher dead at age 64

The most complete coverage of Fischer's life and career will most likely be at Chessbase, here.

Here's an essay I wrote about Fischer back in 2004, entitled The Search Continues.

Mild London Makes For Slippery "Ice Chess"

"Chess is a challenging game at the best of times. But try playing it in Trafalgar Square, with huge pieces carved from ice — on a relatively balmy British day that threatened to turn pawns to puddles.



Organizers of London's Russian Winter Festival knew players in their ice chess match Thursday would be battling not only each other but the weather. But the match was completed and the sculptures survived, despite a drizzly day and temperatures that reached 55 degrees.

Wegg-Prosser said the pieces, which were carved to look like local landmarks — the king was the Gothic tower that houses Big Ben — were still intact at the end of the hour-long match, which began at 8 a.m.

"It takes at least three hours for them to melt," said Yulia Wegg-Prosser, the chess spokeswoman.

A second board was set up in Moscow — also experiencing warmer-than-usual temperatures — and the Russian team, led by former world champion Anatoly Karpov, offered a draw to the British squad, captained by grandmaster Nigel Short.

Players and spectators in both cities were connected by satellite link.

Even in January, temperatures rarely fall below freezing in London, so the melting of ice sculptures is not new to the Russian Winter Festival, said Lieran Stubbings, a festival organizer.

Last year, a sculpture of St. Basil's Cathedral in Trafalgar Square disappeared before the end of the event, confounding festival-goers.

"People were asking where the sculpture of St. Basil's was," Stubbings said. "We were just laughing and pointing to the nearest puddle."

All the right moves for chess in America

"Chess in America is having a crisis. There were no American contenders in the recent world chess championship tournament in San Luis, Argentina, which was limited to the world's top eight players. The closest American candidate for the tournament was Hikaru Nakamura -- a 17-year-old who is ranked 42nd in the world. But Nakamura -- who at 15 became the youngest American grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer's record -- says that he might give up pro chess because there is so little money in it. Losing Nakamura would be devastating for American chess.

How can American chess save itself? No doubt it would make purists protest, but chess should steal a few moves from poker. After all, in the past few years, poker has lured away many chess masters who realized that the analytical skills they've learned from chess would pay off in online card rooms.

And that's a shame. There are plenty of smart people playing poker (and I love playing it myself), but there's no denying that when it comes to developing mental acuity, chess wins hands down, so to speak. Dan Harrington, a former world poker champion who quit chess because there wasn't enough money in it, laments that poker is thin and ephemeral in comparison."

Click on the title to read more, with suggestions for improving the marketability of chess

Bobby Fischer Wants to Face Bulgaria's Topalov

"The legendary Bobby Fischer is willing to play against Bulgaria's chess master Vesselin Topalov, local Trud daily reported.

The newspaper cites an Australian reporter covering the World Chess Championship in San Luis. The reporter claims that Fischer is willing to face Topalov in a game of chess, but not the classical type of the game but a version invented by Fischer.

The Australian reporter has informed the manager of the Bulgarian chess master and says that he is preparing the game, Trud daily says."

Karpov ready to play against Fischer

"BUENOS AIRES, September 21 (RIA Novosti, Yury Nikolayev) - Multiple world chess champion Anatoly Karpov is ready to face Bobby Fischer, the Russian chess grandmaster told RIA Novosti Wednesday.



Karpov said the possibility of such a match depended solely on Fischer and getting sponsors. 'Fischer is hardly predictable. It depends on him, and of course, on the sponsors. Fischer is always interesting, but he wants to play his chess. That's no problem - we can play his chess.'

Karpov, who is currently the guest of honor at a chess festival in Argentina, said 'Fischer's chess' envisioned the initial position of the chess pieces defined by a computer. The pawns remain in their places, and a computer determines the other chess pieces' positions. "

ChessBase.com - Chess News - Judit Polgar � preparing one by one with both colours

"Judit Polgar, the only woman among seven men for this World Chess Championship San Luis 2005, spoke to the Press Office of the event. "It is going to be an extremely difficult and exhausting event from mental and physical point of view", she said, and that's why she is carrying on a very important physical training. "Every game can be extremely hard", she stated, revealing one of her training methods: "I am preparing against my opponents one by one with both colors".



Short biography of Judit Polgar

Grandmaster. She is one of the greatest attractions of the World Chess Championship: the strongest woman in chess history. She will be the only woman in a men’s environment, but she lives it as a normal situation and doesn’t care. She is the only woman who has defeated the great Garry Kasparov and also the only one to make it to the top ten (Elo: 2735). Polgar has achieved her success by abstaining from participating in tournaments where there is a sex based separation.

Source: Press Office of the WCC San Luis 2005"

See what her older sister has been doing, in the post below!

Susan Polgar breaks all records

"On August 1, 2005, Susan Polgar attempted to break the Guinness World Records by playing against 350 players simultaneously at the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.



After everything ended, the following four records were broken:

Most Simultaneous Games Played: official record against 326 players: 309 wins, 14 draws and 3 losses = 96.93% in 16 hours and 30 minutes (the previous record was 321 games, with 294 wins, 26 draws, 1 loss = 95.64%, by IM Andrew Martin, England).

Most games won: 309 (Andrew Martin: 294)

Highest percentage: 96.93% (Andrew Martin: 95.64%)

1,131 Consecutive Games Played: Overall statistics which included 551 opponents: 1,112 wins, 16 draws and 3 losses = 99.03% (previous record: 1102 games by WGM Anna-Maria Botsari, Greece)"

See my previous post about Susan here.

Bobby Fischer: A grandmaster finds a new home

"The atmosphere was tense at Reykjavik airport. Iceland was awaiting its newest citizen and the press corps was ready. Bobby Fischer had been in jail in Japan for almost eight months and resembled a barbarian when he stepped off the plane. He did not greet the large welcoming committee. Soon enough he appeared at a news conference, however, looking a bit more civilized but ranting about American and Jewish conspiracies. It is unlikely that anyone in the crowd agreed with him. So why on earth would the Icelanders invite somebody like that to be a citizen of their country?
The answer is simple: Chess. It is very popular in Iceland. From ancient times there are stories of people in Iceland playing chess and in 1931, world champion Aljekin was honored with the Order of the Falcon - the nation's highest form of recognition - when he came to Iceland. Fischer was a child prodigy in chess and Icelanders have followed his development since the late fifties. He first came to Iceland in 1960, at the age of 17. He returned in 1972 to beat Boris Spassky in the fight for the world championship. Although Fischer often made demands that seemed unreasonable, he was still very popular in Iceland, as was his competitor.

Since 1972 Fischer has only played one official match, a rematch with Spassky in the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately for him, the US was enforcing an embargo on "performing any contract in support of a commercial project in Yugoslavia, as well as from exporting services to Yugoslavia." A letter from the government to Fischer read, in part: "The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the performance of your agreement with a corporate sponsor in Yugoslavia to play chess is deemed to be in support of that sponsor's commercial activity.” To most Icelanders this seems far-fetched. At the moment no other individuals are being pursued for a similar violation of this act.

The Washington Post was critical of the Icelandic parliament for granting Fischer citizenship, publishing an editorial citing the “shame of Iceland.” The Post’s criticism focused on Fischer’s statements about the US, Israel and Jews. However, Icelanders take a different view of the issue. Helgi Ágústsson, Icelandic ambassador to the US, wrote to the editor of the Post: “While of course respecting the Post’s right to criticize the decision, the Embassy strongly disagrees with the underlying assumption that granting citizenship to Mr. Fischer somehow reflects Iceland’s support of his statements. On the contrary, Iceland is an old friend of both the US and Israel, and a country with a strong tradition of religious tolerance could not disagree more with his remarks. Humanitarian concern was at the heart of Iceland’s decision to accept Mr. Fischer’s request for citizenship. The Washington Post actually points out that Mr. Fischer can be considered the subject of pity, rather than hatred. This is the essence of his case and his circumstances.” In other words, most Icelanders feel that the greatest chess master of all time should not rot in jail simply for playing chess.

Meanwhile, Fischer seems to be adjusting well to life in Iceland. He frequently goes to an antiquarian bookstore and has been seen sipping beer at local bar. He has not played chess, but he did give a lecture on the world chess championships between Russian masters Kasparov and Karpov, which he claims were fixed. The audience did not embrace those claims, but grandmaster Jóhann Hjartarson, Iceland’s highest rated chess player said that it was interesting to meet the legend and to hear him speak about chess."

Chess player Susan Polgar is queen of her game

"It sounds like something out of a Frankenstein movie.

Laszlo Polgar, who has devoted his professional life to the study of the mind, boldly declares to the world that he can turn any healthy baby into a genius. He will test his theory with his firstborn child, a girl. She will not attend public school - Laszlo believes they are factories for mediocrity. Instead, he will home-school her in his modest apartment in communist Hungary.



He will teach her discipline, critical thinking, logic, math, science, English, literature, history. She will learn to speak seven languages fluently and, in time, will grow up to be a mental heavyweight. An Einstein in a skirt.

The end product of this experiment is sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Palm Beach Gardens. Laszlo's girl, Susan Polgar, now 36, a single mother of two boys, is wearing a delicately cut lavender jacket and smart black slacks. Her candy-apple-red toenails stick out from soft pink sandals. She is beautiful. But it is her brain that stuns all comers.

She is one of the smartest women - no, make that people - on the planet."

A fascinating profile of Susan, and to an extent her younger sister Judit (who has a real shot at becoming overall World Champion).

Wired News: Unorthodox Chess From an Odd Mind

"Two dozen programmers from around the world have signed up to compete in Germany next month in the first computer chess tournament devoted to Chess960, a game variant invented by fugitive chess genius Bobby Fischer that's slowly gaining rank among grandmasters.

The rules of Chess960 are mostly the same as orthodox chess -- but the setup incorporates something once considered anathema to the game: chance. Pawns begin where they always do. However, the pieces behind them on the white side are arranged at random, with the proviso that bishops must end up on opposite colors, and the king dwell somewhere between the two rooks. The black pieces are lined up to mirror the white.

That makes for 960 different starting positions in the game, instead of just one. The point of Chess960 is to free chess from the yoke of memorization.

The opening phase of a chess game as currently played has been subject to a hundred years of scholarship and play, and today players are hard pressed to find so much as a viable pawn push within the first 20 moves that hasn't been thoroughly analyzed."

Read more of this interesting article by clicking on the title link above.

IcelandReview - Fischer Considering Match

"Chess grand master and new Icelandic citizen Bobby Fischer is considering playing another chess match, according to the online edition of daily newspaper Morgunbla. The controversial player had vowed never to return to traditional versions of the sport which made him famous, and that he would only be willing to compete in matches of "random chess". A Fischer creation, random chess involves placing the pawns in the same positions as normal chess, but all the other pieces in random places behind them.

American-Russian businessman Alex Titomirov is behind the offer. He came to Iceland in late May with Boris Spassky, Fischer's opponent in the famous match of 1972, to discuss the idea with the reclusive Fischer.

Fischer will meet with his supporters in Iceland today to decide whether to accept the offer. If the contest goes ahead, it will probably take place within a year, against an as-yet unnamed foreign player. "

Josh Waitzkin, Subject of "Searching For Bobby Fischer," wins World Championship in Martial Arts. : Khalsa News Network- KNTimes.com

Khalsa News Network- KNTimes.com: "International Chess Master Josh Waitzkin defies odds winning the Middleweight World Championship Title in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands (Fixed Step), and becomes the Middleweight World Co-Champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands (Moving Step), after competing in the 7th Chung Hwa Cup International Tai Chi Chuan Championships in Taiwan December 5th. Waitzkin, who came to fame as the subject of the highly acclaimed book Searching For Bobby Fischer (written by his father, Fred Waitzkin), was immortalized in the Paramount film of the same name as a chess prodigy winning his first National Championship.

Waitzkin went on to dominate the scholastic chess circuit, winning 8 National Chess Championship titles before the age of 19. Waitzkin began studying Tai Chi Chuan with Grandmaster William CC Chen (NYC) in '98. He has since won an unprecedented total of 13 National Championship titles over the last five years in the Middleweight, Light Heavyweight, and Heavyweight divisions. He now adds two World Championship titles to his credit.

In November of '04 Waitzkin signed what is reported to be a $300,000 book deal with Simon and Schuster's Free Press (rep’d by Amanda Urban, ICM) for his second book, an autobiographical discussion of the learning process and performance psychology, scheduled for release in 2006."

Science secret of grand masters revealed

This 'secret' struck me as being rather self-evident to anyone that has played much chess, but an interesting article still.

Fischer Wants to Renounce Citizenship

Excite News

Chess Legend Fischer Faces Long Detention

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Fischer Appeals Japan Deportation Order

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