Quality Chess Blog

The debate on cheating in chess was quite interesting. I played devil’s advocate a few times, though I personally do not have strong feelings on this issue. I have had 2-3 experiences where people were cheating against me the last ten years, mainly where their friends helped them. Luckily their friends (respectable GMs) got busy with their own games and the cheaters were left to their own devices, completely void of self-respect and self-esteem. I scored fine in those games and was happy to not get involved in the thinking about cheating.

Your votes show how divisive this issue is. I fear it will only get worse over the years. This week’s question is a standard one. In recent times we had the two oldest players playing for the title in the last 100 years and the oldest World Champion since Botvinnik. In 2012 everyone told me that the match should be Aronian–Carlsen. Even Topalov! And today Topalov is no. 2 in the World rankings, Anand is close and Aronian is rated not much more than Gelfand… I am not even go into how Anand was not the rightful challenger last year and how Caruana deserved the match on the strength of one good tournament.

New players will always come through, and not evenly. When Anand, Shirov, Kramnik, Kamsky and Topalov broke through, the top 10 were young. Kamsky and Shirov have lost the hunger, but the three others are still possible contenders for the crown – unless you want to write Kramnik off after ONE bad year????

But everyone has his own opinion and it will be interesting to see what the general consensus will be.

A few things to consider:

A friend pointed out that a Grandmaster’s three norms were evident results of cheating. He showed me the games and I was rather convinced I have to say. But who should make the complaint? Neither my friend nor I wanted to be involved in this issue. Especially I could see no upside in being involved in what was someone else’s life and livelihood. Is it double standards and selfishness not wanting to be involved in making other people’s life difficult, even if they have done something I consider abhorrent?

Another case. I was training a young man around 2100 and he was really doing the work needed. After a few months he went to a weekend tournament and scored 5/5 against 2200s as the lowest seed. His games were clearly not computer games. We had changed his style to a more technical style and his openings were more in line with his quiet character. He ground people down in tense struggles. At the end of the tournament everyone agreed that he was cheating and there were boos when he collected his prize.

Read more…

Last week’s poll was on draw by mutual agreement. It seems that a very considerable minority thinks that draw offers should not be a part of chess at all. This actually surprised me, I thought people would have been more ambivalent about it.

Here are the results:

It was big news recently that Fabiano Caruana decided to change back to the US. The rumoured transfer sum was $200,000 – and then there is the €50,000 to FIDE and an undeclared compensation to Italy. I am not sure we have heard the last thing in that saga.

But a separate question is if we want it to be possible to change country in this way? I will leave the debate to you guys, as I am an obvious hypocrite in this connection. In 2006 I changed to represent Scotland (with proof of address). I paid the FIDE transfer fee myself. But in 2010 I changed back to Denmark, still living at the same address (proving nationality with passport) and I will not rule out changing again in the future, though it is really not something I am planning to do…

But then it was not a business transaction for me. For Caruana and especially Naiditsch it certainly looks that way…

This week’s hot question in the poll is about draw by mutual consent. Is this something we would have if we were to create chess now? Andrew Greet asked. But of course the game comes with baggage and traditions… It will be interesting to hear your views. In general we will work a bit more as moderator in the discussions of poll topics in the future than hardliners for a point of view.

Last week’s poll was about the anticipation of the Fischer-film PAWN SACRIFICE:

Personally I am sold. Definitely going and forcing my girlfriend to come…

I have always known that my dislike of increments puts me in a minority. But I was quite pleased to see how big that minority was!

I was part of a ridiculous game on Saturday. Let me tell you the story just to amuse you.

I played really poorly against Keti Arakhamia-Grant with Black and was quickly dead lost. For some reason she spent a lot of time and when we passed move 30 she was down to maybe 20 seconds. At move 34 she was down to 6 seconds for the last six moves. When I hit the clock here, something bizarre happened. The clock reset itself. The arbiter fumbled with the clock, taking about three minutes to set it back to where we were, only to realise he had reversed the times. Another minute and the clock was set correctly.

At this moment, my phone, which I had handed over to the arbiter, started ringing! I thought I had turned it off, but chances are that I didn’t.

The whole thing was bizarre and I asked if we could have a chat. Keti, myself and the two arbiters went to an adjacent room and talk it through. Keti had calmed down and it seemed to me that basically all of my chances had evaporated with this. Unfair as it was, my chances had dropped from maybe 15% to 1.5% or so.

One of the arbiters suggested that I had just lost, because my phone went off. I disagreed. The game was not ongoing at the time and the phone was not in my possession. What if it had rang at home? Yes, everyone heard it, but what if it had rang in my car and a window had been open? I see the arguments the other way, but I did not find it as clear cut as he indicated at first.

I realised that there was no good solution to the situation. Except one. I resigned on the merits of my position.

We lost the match 5-3. If I had won on time, we would have won the championship, but as our only win was on time in an equal position against Keti’s husband, this would certainly have been rather ridiculous. The best team won.

The discussion

This evening I was chatting to a friend, an old GM like myself. He was telling me about games where he had been tied to the board for hours, living on 30 second increments for thirty, forty, fifty moves. He was contemplating ending a long career – because of the time control.

When I talked to Keti after the game, she complained about the time control (2 hours for 40 moves) and said that increments were much better.

I disagree. I think that it is her own fault that she could not organise her time consumption better. This is a sport after all. Maybe we have fewer ridiculous blunders with increments, but I do not want to protect anyone against their own inadequacy. What is next? Blunder check?

I see increments as something that has mainly been good for the arbiters. They do not risk having to make decisions in complicated circumstances.

What is your opinion? I will leave this open for discussion for a few days and then we will have a vote.

It seems that some people are even getting optimistic on Anand’s behalf! 37.57% average estimate. Well, crowds are assumed to hold a collected intelligence, but still. That much?!

I personally do not think Anand has a real chance against Carlsen. What does this mean? I voted for 10%. People overall voted for 32.7%. Generally the masses are quite clever, so I shall not second guess.