Gens Una Sumus!
Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club Newsletter #639
August 14, 2013
The rule which states that a player with more space should avoid exchanges’, for example, is so riddled with exceptions as to have lost its usefulness.
—John Watson, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy
This Saturday and Sunday the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club will be holding the Bernardo Smith Amateur, open to all USCF members rated under 1800.
1) Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club News
The Neil Falconer Tuesday Night Marathon is turning out to be one of the stronger TNMs, with one IM, three FMs and three NMs in the 77-player field. There are also 12 Experts competing, with the rating cutoff for the top half of the field just over 1800.
The Mechanics’ entry for the 2013 US Chess League season starts play on Tuesday August 27th against the Los Angeles Vibe.
The MI roster will emphasize youth, with 6 of the 10 players (numbers 3-4 and 7-10) under 18.
The first rating is from the January 2013 USCF rating list and is used for legal lineup calculations (the four player in each match can average no more than 2400.75). The second (in parenthesis) is their current USCF rating.
1. GM Jesse Kraai 2567 (2567)
2. GM Vinay Bhat 2555 (2555)
3. GM-elect Daniel Naroditsky 2553 (2590)
4. FM Yian Liou 2432 (2491)
5. IM David Pruess 2431 (2431)
6. FM Andy Lee 2294 (2316)
7. FM Cameron Wheeler 2276 (2276)
8. NM Kesav Viswanadha 2213 (2261)
9. NM Vignesh Panchanatham 2192 (2278)
10. Siddarth Bannik 2033 (2151)
Daniel Naroditsky has been on a roll this summer, and in Riga in early August he made his third consecutive GM norm by tying for third place in a strong event (Daniel was seeded #23 at 2503 FIDE).
Here is a convincing win over a quality opponent, who was in trouble right out of the opening.
Sicilian Rossolimo B31
GM-elect Daniel Naroditsky (2503)–GM A. Vovk (2581)
Riga 2013
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6 4.0–0 Bg7 5.c3 e5 6.Na3 Nge7 7.Nc4 Qc7 8.d4 cxd4 9.cxd4 Nxd4 10.Nxd4 exd4 11.Qf3 0–0 12.Bf4 Qd8 13.Nd6 Nc6 14.Qa3 a6 15.Bc4 Ra7 16.Rac1 Qe7 17.Rfe1 b5 18.Bd5 b4 19.Qg3 d3 20.e5 Rc7 21.Nf5 Qe8 22.Nxg7 Kxg7 23.Qxd3 Nxe5 24.Qe3 Rxc1 25.Bxe5+ f6 26.Bxf6+ Kxf6 27.Qxc1 Qd8 28.Qh6 d6 29.Qh4+ Kf5 30.g4+ 1–0
The 17-year-old Foster City youth, who starts his senior year of high school in a few weeks, now has six GM norms, and his title confirmation should be a formality.
Daniel will be giving a simul on Thursday, August 22nd, at the Kolty Chess Club.
Location: United Campbell Methodist Church, Fellowship Hall (basketball court)
1675 Winchester Blvd.
Campbell CA 95008
Start time will be 7:30
Contact: Fred Leffingwell [email protected] (best) or 408-827-1303
2) Alla Kushnir 1941-2013
Older Mechanics’ members will remember Alla Kushnir, who gave a simul at the MI in 1975 after a fine performance at Lone Pine, where she beat GMs Larry Evans and Istvan Bilek en route to a fifty-percent score against a quality field.
The following obituary recently appeared in GM Alexander Baburin’s excellent electronic daily publication Chess Today - http://www.chesstoday.net/.
Sad news has come from Israel: the three-time world championship challenger WGM Alla Kushnir-Stein has passed away at the age of 71. Kushnir was the 1970 USSR women’s champion, and won the Women’s Chess Olympiads in 1969 and 1972 with the Soviet team, and in 1976 with the Israeli team.
She actively competed for the world championship in the 1960s-1970s, but lost three title matches to Nona Gaprindashvili: in 1965, 1969 and 1972. In the world championship cycles, she won the 1964 Women’s Candidates Tournament (with Lazarevic and Zatulovskaya, winning the playoff tournament afterwards), the 1967 Women’s Candidates Tournament, the 1976 Women’s Interzonal (with Akhmilovskaya) and (in various years) Women’s Candidates Matches against Zatulovskaya, Alexandria, Levitina, and Fatalibekova.
Her last serious competition was the 1978 Candidates final against Maia Chiburdanidze which Kushir lost by a narrow margin, 7½-8½.
Afterwards, she made a career as an archaeologist, and was a professor at Tel Aviv University.
3) Sinquefield Cup offers unparalleled spectator experience
Will feature 3 GM commentary teams and free autograph session with players
SAINT LOUIS (August 13, 2013) -- The 2013 Sinquefield Cup will offer live spectators a bevy of options come September.
The tournament, which features GMs Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian (top two in the World) and GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky (top two in the U.S.) takes place September 9-15 at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis).
There also will be a special meet-and-greet autograph session on Sunday, September 8, from Noon to 1:30 p.m., where spectators will have the opportunity to get autographs from and take pictures with the players. This event is free, and fans will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis.
Round one of the tournament begins at 1 p.m. CT on September 9.
Three different grandmaster commentary teams will be on site to offer live play-by-play and analysis of each round of this historic tournament.
Following their groundbreaking live commentary of the 2013 U.S. Championships, GMs Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley will once again join WGM Jennifer Shahade on a closed set that will broadcast to thousands of viewers online via www.uschesschamps.com.
Two other teams (comprised of GMs Varuzhan Akobian, Ben Finegold, Ronen Har-Zvi and one additional commentator TBD) also will be conducting commentary for live audiences at Lester’s Restaurant (connected to the CCSCSL) and the World Chess Hall of Fame (across the street from the CCSCSL).
Tony Rich, the executive director of the CCSCSL, said additional commentary teams will create a dynamic and engaging spectator experience.
“We wanted to offer a variety of options to ensure a positive experience for club members and visitors alike,” he said.
Event spectators will have the option to observe the players in the tournament playing hall, listen to the live streaming online commentary in a special viewing area at the Chess Club, or sit in on either of the live audience broadcasts. Tickets for individual rounds cost just $15 and also include food and beverage.
In addition, the World Chess Hall of Fame will present a preview of their exhibition “Jacqueline Piatigorsky: Patron, Player, Pioneer” http://www.worldchesshof.org/exhibitions/project/piatigorsky-exhibition-preview/ on the first floor gallery alongside the live GM commentary. The exhibition will be on view from September 4-15 and will include artifacts related to the 1963 and 1966 Piatigorsky Cup tournaments, two of the strongest chess competitions to be held in the U.S. These events attracted top grandmasters from around the world, including Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, Tigran Petrosian and Paul Keres.
4) FIDE Launches Online Playing Program
The following announcement, signed by the FIDE president, has been published at FIDE.com:
FIDE Online Arena
I am proud to announce today’s launch of the limited test version of FIDE online arena, FIDE’s official Internet playing platform developed in cooperation with CNC. In October 2013, after the Executive Board meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, the fully operational version of FIDE online arena will be in service and available all over the world.
FIDE firmly believes that online chess offers enormous opportunities for millions of chess lovers who are unable to regularly participate in over-the board events for a variety of reasons: professional and family commitments, problems reaching tournaments and other difficulties, etc.
Now FIDE makes the virtual real with an online arena that allows players to compete in top class tournaments with official FIDE ratings. The attractiveness and ease of online chess will also draw millions of new players - in particular the young. FIDE online arena will be an important step in achieving my goal of 1 billion chess players’ throughout the world.
As you know, there are many chess playing platforms. However, FIDE online arena has a unique feature that completely sets it apart: a highly sophisticated chess anti-cheating system, AceGuard. Until now, it has been impossible to award official ratings for online chess because of the difficulty in preventing cheating. Now AceGuard will be an invaluable tool in Fide’s fight against cheaters and we would like to praise the PremiumChess company for developing this revolutionary technology and to congratulate CNC for bringing this service to FIDE.
When the full version of FIDE online arena starts in October, every move of every game played by full arena members will be monitored and extensively analyzed by the anti-cheating system and a special team of experts, creating a fair playing venue for all. While it is not possible to prevent some players from cheating, this constant highly detailed monitoring guarantees that they can be successfully identified and appropriate action taken. Every member’s playing history is evaluated with a Fairness Index rating, allowing you to see quickly if an opponent is reliable or not.
In addition, FIDE online arena offers a complete chess experience online: challenge games and tournaments, master challenge matches and simuls, free master lessons and lectures, full statistical analysis, broadcasts of major FIDE events, chat, game files, multilingual interface and much more – all from the comfort of your home or anywhere elsewhere you happen to be.
So now you can enjoy all the features that FIDE online arena has to offer and very soon play in official FIDE events night or day, seven days a week.
Enjoy it! http://www.arena.myfide.net
Gens Una Sumus
Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov
5) Here and There
After the end of the Dortmund tournament, the top of the unofficial live rating list at http://2700chess.com/ looks as follows:
1. Carlsen - 2862
2. Aronian - 2813
3. Kramnik - 2794
4. Grischuk - 2785
5. Caruana - 2779.3
6. Mamedyarov - 2775
7. Anand - 2775
8. Karjakin - 2772
9. Nakamura - 2772
10. Topalov - 2769
11. Gelfand - 2764
12. Adams - 2760
A total of 2,049 ballots were received for the USCF Executive Board election, of which 2,046 were qualified.
The vote counts for each candidate are
Ruth Haring 1,722
Mike Atkins 1,667
Randy Bauer 1,646
Charles D. Unruh 1,556
Beatriz Marinello 478
Tim Redman 450
Additionally, a total of 107 votes were cast for write-in candidates, with no write-in candidate receiving more than five votes.
Ruth Haring and Mike Atkins have been elected to three-year terms, and Randy Bauer and Charles D. Unruh have been elected to two-year terms.
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