Tag: Chess

Anand Reclaims the World Title

Vishwanathan Anand is the World Chess Champion after the World Championship 2007 in Mexico City. He is the fourth grandmaster to have reclaimed the crown, after Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik and Anatoly Karpov. That is, however, granting that Garry Kasparov split from FIDE in 1993 and retired from active chess in 2005. Anand first won the FIDE crown in 2000.

The list of world champions according to FIDE’s is now updated with this development as follows:

Name Years Country
Wilhelm Steinitz 1886-1894 Austria / United States
Emanuel Lasker 1894–1921 Prussia/Germany
José Raúl Capablanca   1921–1927 Cuba
Alexander Alekhine 1927–1935 Soviet Union (Russia) / France
Max Euwe 1935–1937 Netherlands
Alexander Alekhine 1937–1946 France
Mikhail Botvinnik 1948–1957 Soviet Union (Russia)
Vasily Smyslov 1957–1958 Soviet Union (Russia)
Mikhail Botvinnik 1958–1960 Soviet Union (Russia)
Mikhail Tal 1960–1961 Soviet Union (Latvia)
Mikhail Botvinnik 1961–1963 Soviet Union (Russia)
Tigran Petrosian 1963–1969 Soviet Union (Armenia)
Boris Spassky 1969–1972 Soviet Union (Russia)
Robert J. Fischer 1972–1975 United States
Anatoly Karpov 1975–1985 Soviet Union (Russia)
Garry Kasparov 1985–1993 Soviet Union / Russia
Anatoly Karpov 1993–1999 Russia
Alexander Khalifman 1999–2000 Russia
Viswanathan Anand 2000–2002 India
Ruslan Ponomariov 2002–2004 Ukraine
Rustam Kasimdzhanov 2004–2005 Uzbekistan
Veselin Topalov 2005–2006 Bulgaria
Vladimir Kramnik 2006–2007 Russia
Viswanathan Anand 2007–present   India

Rows in italics represent the grey areas in the world chess history.

Viswanathan Anand became, for the first time, the undisputed World Chess Champion on September 29, 2007, after finishing the tournament with a score of 9/14, not losing a single game and a full point ahead of the second placer, Vladimir Kramnik.

To download the games in pgn and to view some pictures, visit chessbase.com.

Anand’s title, though, it appears, will be challenged again(!) next year sometime between May and September 2008 by no less than…. Vladimir Kramnik, in a best of 12 games one-on-one match. Why, read the wikipedia article.

For Kramnik’s part, I guess he’s better off playing a one-on-one match rather than playing in a round robin tournament. Just look at his 2000 match win agains Kasparov and the 2006 match against Topalov. Clear victories!

Deuts Top Stories 920

Iloilo City at Night A beautiful view of Iloilo City at night. Who would have thought this is Iloilo? Click image to view flickr page.
Trike Hinay hinay lang – according to the title. A picture of a fully loaded passenger tricycle in Dumangas, Iloilo.
UP Cheering The UP Pep Squad is the champion in the 2007 UAAP Cheerdancing Competition. More pictures are available at Mimi & Karl’s post.
Anand Viswanathan Anand takes the lead, together with Boris Gelfand, after 6 rounds at the World Championship in Mexico. My bet against Val this time is for the defending champion Vladimir Kramnik while he goes for Anand. The match is a double round robin, anyway, so still a long way to go!
Nikon to Canon Kari Post, a wildlife photographer, explains why he switched from Nikon digital camera and gear to Canon. What could be the compelling reasons to do so? Read here.

The FEN Standard

In my world wide web exploration, I just learned today how to read and interpret a fen standard or notation.

FEN stands for Forsyth-Edwards Notation. It is used to describe the particular position in a chess game. As compared against a PGN (Portable Game notation) file, a FEN describes the position at that particular point in time, while PGN describes how the game went on from the first move to the last. It’s weird that I was able to relate this two types of chess files to accounting and financial reporting. FEN is like the balance sheet, which presents the financial condition of an entity at a certain point in time. While, on the other hand, PGN is like the income statement, which presents how the operation went during a period of time.

fen-pgn

Usually, when using chess applications, the program has the ability to save fen files as well as read and show automatically what is described in the fen file. However, what if you have no chess program to analyze this series of codes? How do you set up the position in say an actual chessboard to analyze that particular position?

One might wonder, why do you still need a fen file when you can have a position illustrated by an image (i.e., jpg, gif, bmp, tif, png, etc. type of files)?

  1. You cannot import the image file into your chess program and play through the game to analyze the position
  2. An image alone lacked a lot of data

To illustrate, take a look at the diagram below:

Chess Position

In this illustration, what do you miss?

Answer:

  1. Active Color – which color is to move next
  2. Castling Availability – Is queenside or kingside castling (in-rook) still available to either black or white?
  3. En Passant Target Square – Can white/black make an en passant capture? In this specific example, how can you determine whether white can capture en passant at the pawn at d6?

This is where FEN comes into the picture. The following notation depicts the same position as above, with additional useful information to analyze the position:

r2qk2r/pp2ppp1/1n4n1/2ppP1Bp/1b1P2b1/P1N2N2/1PP1BPPP/R1Q1K2R w KQkq – 0 8

This notation is composed of six data fields. The first being:

r2qk2r/pp2ppp1/1n4n1/2ppP1Bp/1b1P2b1/P1N2N2/1PP1BPPP/R1Q1K2R

…which is the piece placement data. It corresponds directly to the board coordinates starting from the eighth rank, from left to right. The small letters represent black, while the capital ones are white (where q-queen, k-king, b-bishop, r-rook, n-knight, p-pawn). The numbers represent the number of blank squares between last and next pieces described.

The second field, “w”, describes the active color and tells that white is to move next.

Castling availability is the third field. “KQkq” enjoins that both colors can still castle queenside or kingside. Of course, without this field, how would you know if the white or black king or the rooks have already moved and back to prohibit castling on that side? Note that this pertains to the “potential” future castling availabilitty, regardless of if there are any other pieces that block the rook and king at the moment. Capital letters represent white, and small letters black. K/k=kingside, Q/q=queenside. Other possible combinations include: Kkq, Kq, kq, etc. White always precede black, and the kingside always precede the queenside. If there are no castling available a “-” is used.

The fourth field (“-” in this case)is the en passant target square. It is only given if the last move was a pawn advance of two squares. Otherwise, “-” is again used. If given, it should represent the coordinates of the square at which the active player can capture via en passant. Obviously, it should be one of the squares in the 3rd and 6th rank. Examples include: e3, e6, d3, f6, etc.

The fifth field (0 in this example) is the halfmove clock. It is the measure of the number of halfmoves since the last pawn advance or capturing move. This value is used for the fifty move draw rule.

The sixth and the last field (8 in this case) is the fullmove number. It is measured by adding 1 to the nth move by black.

So, in conclusion, it’s not always true that a picture paints a thousand words.

Wesley So, the Gifted Child

Indeed, Wesley So holds up to the expectation of him as Promil’s gifted child a long time ago. Now at the age of 13, he’s the Philippines’ youngest IM (besting even Mark Paragua), rated at 2519 in the April 2007 FIDE rankings, he grabbed the fourth spot in the countries best chess players trailing behind Grandmasters Antonio Rogelio Jr. (2539), Mark Paragua and Eugenio Torre (both 2532).

Wesley So(Photo courtesy of Rooty Hill Chess)

Wesley is well on the way to becoming the Philippines’ next grandmaster. He’s not going to be the youngest in history — that honour belongs to Sergey Karjakin, but already he’s a long way ahead of Bobby Fischer, who earned his title at 15 years and 6 months.
Source

Last November 2006, So already gained his first GM norm.

I haven’t gone through all the games of this kid over at chessgames.com, yet here’s one game that proves his brilliance.

Note: In any case that the Chess Publisher should break down, you can always refer to DEUTS.NET PGN VIEWER, courtesy of jspngviewer.

Visit DEUTS.NET PGN VIEWER NOW.

Update: No more DEUTS.NET PGN VIEWER.

Grand Master Chess Set

One of the items in my wishlist: price exclusive of shipping costs US$219.95

grand master chess set

Excalibur Electronics brings you an electronic chess masterpiece: the Grand Master! “Grand Master” is the highest title awarded to human players. Excalibur’s Grand Master earns its name by capturing the essence of top-level chess competition, not only in its powerful play, but in its look and feel. Its tournament-size vinyl playing surface shows off a meticulously crafted set of official pieces, weighted so they won’t tip over during a game. And Grand Master features some of the most technologically advanced chess features in the world. The result’s a highly sophisticated but easy-to-use competition chess computer that combines classic design with 21st century technology.

  • World’s first auto sensory board with actual vinyl surface used in tournament play.
  • Super strong chess program capable of beating over 99% of all chess players. Estimated rating of approximately 2100 master-strength.
  • 2 Large LCD Displays with Dual Chess Clocks and Countdown Timer shows your every move, hints, warnings, and scores 100 levels of play, plus 5 teach modes, 32 book opening trainers, and 32 great games.
  • 1 or 2-person mode with scoring, hints and analysis.
  • Saves game in memory for future use.
  • Powered by 4 “AA” batteries or optional A/C adapter.

Vladimir Kramnik

kramnikThe 13-year schism over the world chess crown has finally ended after 16 games of full-packed chess action in Elista, Kalmykia, during the World Chess Championship Match 2006 intended to unite the titles of classical champion Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) and FIDE champion Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria).

Report follows:

Friday, October 13, 2006 (Elista, Russia):

Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik won a match against Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov in a tiebreaker on Friday, becoming the first universally recognised world chess champion since 1993.

Kramnik won the tension-filled match by a score of 8.5-7.5 in a final day of quick, time-limited games.

Each of the 41-year-old players was to receive 500,000 dollar for taking part in the match, which was arranged to heal a 13-year-old schism in the chess world dating back to World Champion Garry Kasparov’s withdrawal from the World Chess Federation.

Kramnik secured his victory in the fourth game today, which Kramnik won with White. Today’s score was 2.5-1.5. (AP)

Well, the match being a “REUNIFICATION” match, was I think too short yet historic. It was a big event in the history of chess. You can even see and feel the struggle between the two players. The tie-break of 4 games even yielded only one draw. The rest were won one by Topalov, and two by Kramnik.

My observation in this match is brief: that it showed Kramnik can win a match against Topalov, even with 1 point odds. (duh!)

For me, it was a good thing that Kramnik won. It would be much easier for chess fans to accept the fact. Otherwise, the game 5 contoversy would be another gruelling deliberation that could unfortunately even lead to continued split in the world chess organization. At least, now we have a one and only legitimate world champion, and that is, in the person of Vladimir Kramnik!

rook

Download games in PGN, Chessbase, Official Website, FIDE

A Standoff After Eleven

After 10 games of pure battle plus a controversial game 5 forfeit in favor of Topalov (a total of 11 games), the match stands even at 5.5 points apiece. The 12th and final game is scheduled on Thursday (Kalmykia time).

What impressed me about this match is either players are resolved to win. Excluding the controversial game 5, which was never played anyway, there were 5 draws of the total 10 games, (only 50% draw instance). No one seems to settle for a draw.

It has got to be the spirit of a reunification fight. After 13 years of schism over the World Chess Crown, the two players are really giving us fans a great, big show! How I only wish that contestation over the game 5 forfeit didn’t happen. I hope FIDE and Kirsan Ilyumshinov will be able to resolve the matter so that the world can indeed recognize only one true master, one champion.

Go Topalov!

Summary of the match follows:
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Reunification of the World Chess Crown

After 13 years of schism in the world chess arena, they finally settled for a reunification of the two titles. FIDE champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria is staged to face PCA champ Vladimir Kramnik of Russia starting tomorrow, September 23, 2006, in a best-of-twelve series match in Elista, Kalmykia.

My bet goes to the current highest rated player, Topalov (after Kasparov retired from active chess in 2005).
topalov-kramnik

To Val De Guzman, prepare for your starbucks treat next year. LOL

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