A Chess Movie I'd Like To See

"Chess Movie" is about WFM Elizabeth Vicary & the gang at the IS-318 middle school pictured above. It looks like they'll be creating a documentary about this notoriously competitive team during this coming school year but they need to purchase a decent video camera to do so. It's definitely a movie I'd like to see, & it'll probably stand as both a valuable historical document & a practical model for years following. This kind of publicity would be a great boost to promoting chess in schools & beyond. The pledge drive goes through most of July, & that should be enough time to get the project rolling, so pledge what you can because this is really an important opportunity.

Chess on MTV

GM Var Akobian showed up on, of all places, that venerable bastion of contemporary intellectual accomplishments, MTV "True Life" in the "I'm A Genius" episode. For now you'll just have to trust me on this because even MTV hasn't posted the actual clip on their own official web site yet. (To be fair, the stars of the "I Have Acne" & "I'm a Southern Belle" episodes most likely were as claimed.)
There seems to be a considerable firestorm of controversy already concerning the use of the word "genius" in connection with the "5th best chess player in the US" (see link below) & his costar who looks to be a fairly bright high school senior (runner up at Teen Jeopardy, yadda, yadda, yadda...) though somewhat less deserving of the term by virtue of his NOT getting accepted at Stamford University.
While Akobian's published rating is 2659, his rating history graph shows him currently at his peak of 2695. He's also listed as #10 on the top US players' list (based 2659), which may or may not qualify him as a "genius" depending on your definition. I know that he's been playing very good chess in the US for some time now & he's making his presence felt in international arenas as well.
I'll add some of his notable games later.

Lots of Rhododendrons, No Bumble Bees

Apparently the worldwide Colony Collapse Disorder that's wiping out honey bees has affected other species as well. As far back as I can remember, every year the blooming rhododendrons have always been accompanied by hordes of bumble bees. That is until the spring of 2009. Maybe it's just some kind of regional cyclic die-off, but it's a little scary that it just so happens to be taking place at the exact same time as the global honey bee blight.
There doesn't seem to be anything particularly gradual about it either. Last year there were plenty of bees; this year so far, I've seen none!

Agenda For A New Economy: by David C. Korten

Agenda For A New Economy: From phantom wealth to real wealth
A Declaration of Independence from Wall Street

is a book by David Korten that seems to contain numerous examples of ideas who's time has come.

"There is no justification for opening the national purse strings to shower it's institutions with trillions of dollars to save them from the consequences of their own excess."

If you're in the mood for something random today, try TheOriginalRandomShitHomepage
or one of his (FatPie) subsidiaries:

Crooked Rot
"Liquid happiness? No, it tastes like burnt yogurt."
Dog Of Man

Have a random day!

Becerra - Robson "The end of the beginning"

Round 1 of this year's U.S. Championship in St.Louis was not without a few surprises, at least for me. Normally when players of such high caliber compete for a prestigious national title, the games are characterized by consistent high quality & high intensity. This particular one played on May 8th 2009 between (2672 rated) GM Julio Becerra Rivero as white & (2542 rated) IM Ray Robson as black contained all that & more.
After 24 moves each:
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. g4 e5 7. Bb5+ Bd7 8. Bxd7+ Qxd7 9. Nf5 h5 10. gxh5 Nxh5 11. Be3 Na6 12. Qf3 g6 13. Ng3 Nc7 14. O-O-O b6 15. Kb1 O-O-O 16. Rd2 Nf4 17. h4 Bh6 18. h5 Nxh5 19. Nxh5 gxh5 20. Rxh5 Bxe3 21. fxe3 Rxh5 22. Qxh5 Qe6 23. Qf3 Rh8 24. b3 Rh3,
the following position was reached with white to move:



Position after 24...Rh3 (White to move)

How should (2672 rated) white proceed?
OK, I'm not a GM, so I don't know either, but GM Becerra played 25. Kb2 (Probably not what I'd have done).
This deserves another diagram:

Position after 25. Kb2 (Black to move)
It looks like black's scary rook move worked. The white king has gone hiding.
How did (2542 rated) black proceed now?










If you guessed maybe capture something, you'd be wrong!
Don't feel too bad, I guessed wrong also; I was considering ...Rxf3 but I'm not an IM either.
IM Robson played 25... Qh6. Let's see what that looks like as it seems to be getting complicated:



Position after 25... Qh6 (White to move)

So what's black is threatening now...?
White could now take the pawn on f7, but clearly the e3 pawn hangs after the white queen moves off the third rank. I don't know what's going on here, so let's see what GM Julio (2672) actually did...






26. Rd3! (...surprised me too. )



Position after 26. Rd3 (Black to move)

Another surprise to me, but I'm not actually playing in the US Invitational Championship, nor am I rated over 2600, so I'll have to study this more when I get some time.
Obviously white is very concerned about holding on to his e3 pawn.
Black must now find some other way to attack it since the attempted rook skewer has failed to chase the white queen away. What do you suppose IM Robson did here?











If you thought he should play 26... Qg6, you're probably at least IM strength if not actually a titled player.



Position after 26... Qg6 (white to move)

Now black realigns his queen to attack white's isolated e4 pawn.
Even though it's currently protected by the knight on c3, black can easily maneuver his knight to c5 or f6 & relocate his rook to h4 whereupon the e4 pawn will be doomed since the white rook won't be able to defend the pawn fast enough.
How did white reshuffle his pieces to defend his e4 pawn without losing his e3 pawn? (White to move. [Hint: Nope, not Qxh3+.])













27. Qd1 of course, the beginning of a deep diabolical combination.
Now black black defends his weakness on d6 by playing 27... Rh6, then play continues... 28. Rd2 Qf6 29. a4 Rg6 30. Qe1 Qg7 31. Qf1 Rg1 32. Qc4 Qf6



Position after 32... Qf6 (White to move)

Without this move (32... Qf6) white's next would not be possible.
33. Qxc7+ winning the knight & the game. Another grandmaster triumph. 1-0
I double checked the game score with MonRoi, but it seems everyone gets their game scores from the same place, so without an actual hand-written paper trail, this will probably be the historical record for this game.
That wraps up round 1 & as Winston Churchill once said "This is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end; what it may be is the end of the beginning."

UPDATE: I guess it's not much of a spoiler now because it's on the official USChess.org website, but it looks like Hikaru Nakamura won the 2009 US Championship. Congratulations!

Proactive is one of my least favorite (non) words.

I was listening to All Things Considered on May 7th when I heard who I believe was Federal Reserve spokeswoman, Michelle Smith say, "With these stress tests, we want to act proactive reactively."
OK, I don't even like the pseudo-word "proactive" because it's almost always used to mean the exact same thing as "active" which is already a word. However this chowderhead takes it to an absurd extreme. If one were to believe her statement, she must mean that she wants to act proactive (whatever that means) as opposed to be proactive (which wouldn't be redundant), but then she wants to do this reactively. I'm guessing that means she's going to wait until something's happened so that she can react to it. What would her reaction to this something be? To act proactive of course! Brilliant, while we're all waiting to find out what the Fed's doing with the next few trillion dollars, she's going to wait for something to happen & then respond to it by appearing to have already done something in response. I don't think doubletalk quite covers it; this is at minimum tripletalk.

Shabalov - Wolff 1994

One of the coolest chess positions ever!

This position arose in the third round game of the 1994 Eastern Class Championship in Woburn, MA between GM Alexander Shabalov (white) & GM Patrick Wolff (black) after just 8 moves of a Vienna Game [C26]:
1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Bb4 4.f4 Nxe4 5.Qh5 O-O 6.fxe5 d5 7.Nxd5 Nc6 8.Nf3 Be6 ...
It's most likely all (well known) theory up to this point & the game was drawn after black's 43rd move, so chances are that neither player went horribly awry on the way, but it's one of the most complex tactical demonstrations I've ever seen, especially at such a high level of proficiency.
Sometime soon I'm going to try to analyze it, but every time I look at it I find something else lurking in the sub-variations. It's not the kind of thing I'd feel confident I could duplicate over the board just yet.
Here's the whole game without annotations for now:
[Event "Eastern Class Championships"]
[Site "Woburn, MA"]
[Date "1994.03.12"]
[EventDate "1994.03.11-13"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Alexander Shabalov"]
[Black "Patrick Wolff"]
[ECO "C26"]
[WhiteElo "2696->2706"]
[BlackElo "2659->2670"]
[PlyCount "86"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Bb4 4.f4 Nxe4 5.Qh5 O-O 6.fxe5 d5
7.Nxd5 Nc6 8.Nf3 Be6 9.Ne3 g6 10.Qh6 Nxe5 11.Nxe5 Bxd2+ 12.Ke2
Qf6 13.Bxe6 Qf2+ 14.Kd1 Rad8 15.Bd7 Rfe8 16.Nd3 Rxd7 17.Nxf2
Bxe3 18.Nd3 Nf2+ 19.Ke2 Bxc1 20.Kxf2 Bxh6 21.Rhe1 Rxe1 22.Rxe1
Kf8 23.Re4 Bg5 24.g4 Rd5 25.Rb4 b6 26.Ra4 a5 27.Rc4 c5 28.a4
f5 29.gxf5 gxf5 30.Ke2 Rd6 31.h4 Re6+ 32.Kf3 Re3+ 33.Kf2 Bh6
34.Nxc5 bxc5 35.Rxc5 f4 36.Rxa5 Rh3 37.Rc5 Rxh4 38.a5 Rh1
39.a6 Ra1 40.Rc6 Bg5 41.b4 Ra3 42.c3 Ke8 43.Kf3 Kd7 1/2-1/2