rvrw

T h e fi nal pages o n l y u nderm i ne further one ' s con fidence

that S c h u l t z ' s

perceptions are consonant with reality. O f current FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov he says: "I liked what I saw. He wasn't an intimidating know-it-all trying to impose his will on how FIDE ought to be run." One wonders if Schultz actually met an impostor masquerading as Ilyumzhinov. CHESSDON is a vanity project masquerading as a book, a collection of ineptly told anecdotes , mediocre games , questionable finger-pointing and self extenuation. It may interest those mentioned in it, some of whom may pass it on to their lawyers, but the great majority of chess readers are advised not to waste their time or money. (November 1 999)

Fischer's Fury
Edward Winter
"It's a great book without a doubt, and can go straight on the shelf alongside Alekhine and Tarrasch and fear no comparisons." That was the opinion of W. H. Cozens in a review (December 1 969 BCM, pages 370-37 1 ) of Bobby Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, published over 30 years ago by Simon & Schuster in the United States and by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom. The book continued to receive the highest plaudits from chess enthusiasts of all levels throughout the world, but then came disaster; in 1995 B. T. Batsford Ltd. produced an algebraic edition. At first, nothing seemed amiss. Page 1 88 of the April 1 995 BCM, for example, gave a hearty, if brief, welcome to "this great classic" and concluded "The best chess book ever written?". Everybody was glad that new generations of players unreceptive to the descriptive notation could enjoy Fischer's work, and nobody realized what Batsford had done to it. Nobody, that is, until June 1 996, when Fischer gave a searing press conference in Buenos Aires. He denounced the Batsford edition as forged and unauthorized and accused the company of having intentionally included many changes to it, in an attempt to make him look foolish. His salvos were reported in detail on pages 6- 1 2 of issue 432 of the Spanish magazine Jaque (September 1996), whose front cover sported a photograph of Fischer holding up a copy of the offending book. The magazine also reprinted a conversation some ten days later between Fischer and Juan S. Morgado in a Buenos Aires bookshop. Fischer declared that the Batsford team were "criminals" and "conspirators" and added: "They changed everything in my book, the notation, the format, the pages, the analysis ... and without paying royalties." Batsford swiftly issued a statement, professing itself "appalled" by Fischer's remarks. It said that it had purchased the right to publish the book from Faber
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Reviews and Faber, and t hat th i s "included the power to make alterations to make the book suitable for the British market." It was thus converted to the algebraic notation and, Batsford added, "our intention was to produce an edition that was accurate and faithful to the original. There was no addition or subtraction of intellectual material." John Nunn, the book's typesetter, adopted a similar line of argument in an e mail message to Larry Evans. It was quoted by the latter on page 8 of Inside Chess, 23 December 1 996: "So far as I can see there have been no changes to the intellectual content of the book, either by subtraction or addition. Only one piece of analysis was changed, because a mate in four had been overlooked in the original book. Quite honestly, I can't see any grounds at all for complaint." Batsford said in its statement that it had written to Fischer enquiring where royalty payments should be sent and asking whether he wished to be involved in the new edition. ''The only reply took the form of a letter from Bobby Fischer's lawyers, querying our right to publish the book. We can only presume that the response satisfied them, since they have not come back to us in the year and a half since then." B atsford concluded: "Thus we really don't see any grounds for complaint, and continue to wait for Bobby Fischer to provide an address to which royalties should be sent." It would be pointless to speculate on these contractual details or letters, but the affirmation that the book's content was not changed can be called, loud and clear, a falsehood. Fischer 's book had not only been changed, it had been butchered - deliberately, wantonly and more or less systematically. First, the case mentioned by Nunn to Evans, where the B atsford edition sought to correct some analysis in which Fischer had allegedly missed a mate in four. In fact, it was Batsford's own blunder:

In this position, arising from a note at Black's 35th move in Fischer v Bolbochan, Stockholm 1 962 (game 35), Fischer wrote that 40 xfl leads to a win, but Batsford changed this to "40 h7+ f8 41 h8+ g8 42 h6+ g7 43
349

'f.1Kg7 mute." The on l y pmh l em of course. is that 4 2 "(;'rh6+ is i l lega l , because 4 l . . .l!l'gH has gi ven chec k
. .

The November 1 996 CHESS (pages 26-29) set out Fi scher 's grievances (including the Bolbochan episode), whilst leaving in abeyance the question of how many changes Batsford had made. The January 1 997 issue devoted nine pages to the controversy. First, there was a one-page account by John Nunn. He stated that he had been the book's typesetter, not its editor, and objected to the claims by CHESS along the lines of "Nunn has added . . . ". He commented, "After such a time, it is impossible even for those who worked on the book to say exactly who changed what." Nunn also said that there was only one change to Fischer's analysis (i.e. in the Bolbochan game, now acknowledged not to be Fischer's error after all) . Next, Nunn disputed the claim by CHESS that Fischer had taken great care over his book. "If he was so careful, then it is hard to explain why there were over 200 notational errors and ambiguities in the original edition of Fischer's book. In game 52, for example, there were seven such . . . It seems a poor reward to correct 200 errors and ambiguities but overlook one, and then be attacked for my involvement in the book." Most of Nunn's other comments were in reply to CHESS's criticism of the new book's typesetting and presentation (i.e. double columns, the use of italics, etc.). These issues are not of direct relevance here, although they offer another example of the unfortunate desire to force Fischer's masterpiece into the Batsford sausage machine. Next up at the stand was Graham Burgess, then the "Managing Editor" of Batsford's chess list. He too stressed B atsford's correction of "literally hundreds of errors and ambiguities in the original notation" but added "nevertheless, it is indeed highly unfortunate that we introduced one error, the mate-in-four-which isn't in the notes to Fischer-Bolbochan, Stockholm 1 962. This was the only change to the chess content of the book." Burgess gave a gaffe-by-gaffe account of how misunderstandings between Nunn and him had resulted in the illegal mate being published, and on the general question of textual changes he declared: "It is worth mentioning that it is standard in the typesetting process to make minor adjustments in the wording to improve the appearance of the text on the page in terms of spacing, line breaks, column breaks and page breaks." The reply by CHESS in the same issue addressed the above points head-on. The magazine admitted that when Fischer 's book had been issued it had given it merely "a quick glance," on the assumption that "John Nunn, custodian of chess quality, had at least produced an accurate version of the 1 969 original." Concerning Nunn ' s point that the original descriptive edition had many
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Review.
t y pograph ical e rrors ( part icu l ar ly i n th e moves), CHESS quoted Fischer 's acknowledgement that there had been "millions" of typos, as well as his comment, "I don't need them Li.e. Batsford] to correct anything for me, even with the help of computers. Of course the book has mistakes, but I can correct them myself. They changed my things on purpose ". CHESS added that Fischer had taken great care with the book's analysis.
...

The magazine then discussed the various statements by Nunn and Burgess as to who had done, or not done, what. For the record, it may simply be observed here that the copyright page of the Batsford book lists five people: a three-man "Editorial Panel" (Mark Dvoretsky, John Nunn and Jon Speelman), a "General Adviser" (Raymond Keene) and a "Managing Editor" (Graham Burgess). In addition, Nunn is referred to as the book's typesetter. He receives a further mention on the back cover: "Reset by John Nunn into modem algebraic notation, with many extra diagrams." As regards that typesetting, or resetting, CHESS noted that "Nunn had before him the task of neatly accommodating 384 generously laid out single column pages of the original book into 240 packed double column pages for the Batsford edition and ran into all sorts of problems. Rewording in order to shorten or lengthen text became the norm, diagrams frequently had to be placed out of sequence from related moves and text, losing impact, and, worst of all, in a few desperate cases, whole lines of text were actually eliminated. Sacrilege !" Yet as noted above Burgess had claimed that nothing untoward or unusual had been done on the typesetting front. Jeremy Silman was later to comment acidly in his Inside Chess Online review of My 60 Memorable Games:
"Mr. Burgess, I don't know where you learned this 'standard' typesetting law, but any major publishing house in the United States would instantly fire any typesetter doing this kind of thing. A typesetter who butchers an author's work to make his own job easier should find a new vocation.

" . . . Burgess seems to be saying that the typesetter is the one responsible for all the textual changes (and then he says that this is perfectly all right). Nunn says that he didn't really make any errors, and that his only job was to typeset the book ! Dr. Nunn, are you responsible for all the textual changes? Is Burgess? Who is? Do you think that such changes are justified? Can you honestly say that you wouldn't mind if I made hundreds of textual changes to one of your books someday? "Quite frankly, I am tired of Mr. Burgess, Dr. Nunn and Batsford pointing out the errors they corrected . . . while simultaneously excusing themselves for the mess they made of everything else. Why not take a mature stand and simply admit that bad judgment was used and, hopefully, that it won't happen again?
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ReviewR We arc not deal i ng with a gov e rn m ent conspiracy here, gentlemen. lsn 't it time to come clean and put this nonsense behind you?"
By that time, though, Batsford was disinclined to comment further, whether mendaciously or otherwise, and the shutters were put up. On many previous occasions the company had resorted to a similar policy of tactical silence, most notably on matters concerning the misconduct of Raymond Keene, where a hope it-blows-over approach was the only chance. In the face of Fischer's denunciation of Batsford and the latter's refusal to admit wrong-doing, CHESS had engaged me to make an assessment of the extent of the textual changes made. It was apparent that a mere spot-check would not suffice, and I thus compared line-by-line the Faber and Faber edition and the new Batsford version. This verification work showed that over 570 changes had been made by Batsford, and a range of examples was presented on pages 45-48 of the January 1 997 CHESS. I found that entire notes of Fischer's had been omitted, individual words had been deleted, other words had been added and the most frequent occurrence - Fischer's wording had simply been changed without justification. Inconsistency had been introduced, a number of misspellings in the original had been left uncorrected, and many fresh mistakes had been added by Batsford. In fact, the bad news started as early as the Contents page, Batsford's carelessness being such that it reproduced the list of games from the original edition without changing the page numbers, which were thus all wrong. At the other end of the book, the headings for Fischer's tournament and match results listings were incorrectly tabulated. In short, the care and attention accorded to Fischer's magnum opus were no greater than what had been offered, over many years, to the seemingly endless stream of Batsford disposables which had inundated the chess book market. With Fischer's prose Batsford simply did whatever it wanted. Where Fischer had "Black's better," Batsford wrote "Black has secured an advantage." Where Fischer said that a move was "murderous," Batsford put "deadly." Where Fischer used the term "accelerated Dragon," Batsford preferred "the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon." On page 48, Batsford altered the spelling of a player's name - but wrongly, turning a Russian into a non-existent Yugoslav. After White's 39th move in Game 60, Fischer wrote a twelve-word note which B atsford just dropped. In Game 50, eight notes in a row contained modifications of the American's writing. Another example of pointless chopping and changing is Game 52, and the note to B lack ' s 1 2th move in Fischer v Rossolim o , United States Championship, 1 965-66. In the original edition Fischer wrote: "Better is the natural 1 2 . . . Q-R4 (if 12 . . . P-KN4; 1 3 Q-B6 ! , QxQ; 14 PxQ, P N5 ; 15 N-KS, PxP; 16 PxP, NxP; 17 P-KR3 with a better ending); 13 QR-Nl (if
352

Review. 1 3 KR-N I , P-N 3 ; 1 4 P-QR4, B-R3 ; 1 5 B -N5, QR-B l ; 1 6 Px P, PxP; 1 7 BxN+, RxB; 1 8 R-N8+, R-B I holds), P-N3; 14 PxP, QxBP; 15 N - Q4 NxN; 16 PxN, Q - R4+ with equality."
,

Batsford took it upon itself to redraft the note as follows: "Instead, 1 2 . . . g5 1 3 'l!i'f6! xf6 14 exf6 g4 1 5 e5 cxd4 16 cxd4 xd4 17 h3 gives White a better ending, but the natural 1 2 . :/tta 5 is better, e.g. 1 3 .ab1 (after 1 3 .hb1 b6 14 a4 Aa6 1 5 .llb 5 . c8 16 dxc5 bxc5 17 .ll x c6+ . xc6 18 .b8+ . c8 Black holds) 1 3 . . . b6 1 4 dxc5 'i!1'xc5 1 5 d4 xd4 16 cxd4 'i!1'a5+ with an equal position."
.

Batsford was obviously making itself a laughing-stock. The Summer 1 997 issue of Kingpin (page 68) carried a spoof Batsford advertisement featuring "My 60 Unforgettable Games" ("Fischer 's masterwork, totally rewritten but with no changes to the original text"). Also listed was the fictitious work "The Concise Botsford Book of Chess Quotations," which included a Tarrasch observation: "Chess, in common with amorousness and musical compositions, has the ability to give contentment to people." It should not, however, be imagined that the revelations about Batsford's behaviour provoked outrage in all quarters. In the letters section of the February 1 997 CHESS, for example, Julian Hardinge of Glasgow was accorded about 70 lines to react to my verification of Fischer's book. He spent most of his space attacking me personally, since he saw nothing wrong in what Batsford had done. "Examination reveals almost all of these differences to be entirely devoid of significance," he wrote, without bothering to wonder why, in that case, Batsford had made the changes in the first place. Question: who is J. Hardinge? Answer: an associate of Raymond Keene, and the co-publisher of that appalling Keene/ Divinsky book Warriors of the Mind. In fairness to CHESS, it should be added that in a subsequent issue it offered me an apology for having published such personal attacks. B atsford found itself one other defender, though, again, it was hardly an impressive one. On page 4 1 of the January 1 997 CHESS Graham Burgess wrote: ''The comments of Larry Evans, in his Evans on Chess column from August 2, 1 996, are worth quoting. Evans assisted Fischer in assembling the book, and wrote the introductions to the games. Having compared the two editions, he wrote of the Batsford book: 'As Fischer 's collaborator on the original, I can attest that this edition is better ! ' Larry was also delighted to see some old typos corrected, e.g. 50 . . . Kc7 instead of the faulty 50 . . . B-R8 in Game 1 7 ."

Indeed, on page 42 of the same issue of CHESS, Evans went further still, claiming that the above-mentioned change in Game 1 7 "goes a long way toward
353

su perseding a l l the ot her ohject ions put togethe r ! " Despite stiff opposition, that remark is perhap s the most foolish that Evans has ever made. Jeremy Silman later commented: "I was outraged when Larry Evans wrote that the correction

of one obvious typo outweighed all the errors and changes." Even Hans Ree, who showed on page 95 of the 311 999 New in Chess that he has yet to come to grips with the extent of the Evans problem, acknowledged that, at least in this case, "Larry Evans really played a silly role." It even turned out that, contrary to his earlier claim, Evans had not bothered to compare the descriptive and algebraic versions of Fischer's book. His CHESS article had concluded, "The outrage over this edition seems like a tempest in a teapot," and he used those last five words, followed by a question mark, as the title of an article published on page 8 of the 23 December 1 996 issue of Inside Chess. There he claimed that Batsford had acquired the rights from Simon & Schuster (no, from Faber and Faber) and that the December 1 996 CHESS had defended Fischer and found "some 600 changes" (no, my article mentioned a total of around 570 and it was not published until the January 1 997 issue). This caught Evans out. His own article had appeared before then, yet in it he gave the false impression that he had already seen the CHESS evidence regarding the extent to which Batsford had defiled the book. In Inside Chess Evans concluded: "Yes, sloppy mistakes were made; yes, Bobby's prose was disrespected; but I see nothing 'malicious' in Nunn's emendations, as Bobby claims. Since Batsford pledged to fix its next printing, the outrage over this one seems like a tempest in a teapot." On pages 3-4 of the 31 March 1 997 Inside Chess I drew attention to an assortment of deficiencies in Evans' position, but his replies showed him to be unrepentant and hopelessly out of his depth on what was, after all, an issue of principle, ethics and common sense. (Changing an author's book without his permission is simply wrong.) Inside Chess decided to leave the matter there, on the grounds that my published exchanges with Evans had already "made him look a fool." As mentioned earlier, I counted over 570 textual changes, but in 1 999 there came a curious twist to the story, with Fischer's fury now directed at me. In a radio interview on 1 0 March 1 999 he called me a "bastard" on the grounds that I had grossly underestimated the number of alterations made by Batsford; he asserted that there were ''thousands upon thousands and thousands and thousands of changes." In a subsequent radio interview (27 June 1 999) he let fly again, even suggesting that I had given an artificially low total because I was "working for the Jews." Since my figure was correct, in Chess Notes (items 2268 and 2298) I felt obliged to deal with Fischer 's substantive arguments, but in a sense this is a side issue. If Batsford had made a mere dozen textual changes to Fischer's book, that would have been twelve too many.
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Reviews Nor is there much point in spending time on Fischer's dislike of my comment, adjudged far too weak, in the 3 1 March 1 997 Inside Chess that he had been treated "scandalously" by Batsford. Fischer argued in his radio interview on 27 June 1 999 that it was far worse than that: it had been a criminal act. A similar view, as it happens, was expressed by Hans Ree on page 95 of the 3/1 999 New
in

Chess:

"In the Netherlands such changes constitute a criminal offense that could theoretically lead to a prison sentence. I hope the same goes for Britain. Anyway, Fischer had been quite right in his anger." The idea of anyone from Batsford being slammed into the cooler is implausible, whatever attractions it may hold for some. Messrs Nunn and Burgess left Batsford shortly after the expose in CHESS. An apology from them over the Fischer affair is still awaited. Evans, for his part, continues his deceptive attempts to play down what B atsford did, an additional instance being in the August 1 999 Chess Life (page 1 3), where he merely said that the book was "not entirely faithful to the original." (He also described it as "revised by John Nunn.") The corrected edition of My 60 Memorable Games "pledged" by Batsford has never appeared, and it may be quite a wait for a proper algebraic edition, i.e. for Fischer's own book without any arrogant attempts by others to improve it or fit it into a predetermined amount of space. It is hard to imagine that Fischer would ever become a Batsford author of his own free will, and the contractual situation for his book must be murkier now than it was in the mid- 1 990s. But even if the rights to My 60 Memorable Games were on offer on the open market, where is the publishing house that Fischer could trust to bring out an algebraic edition with no changes other than those he himself wants to make? (August 1999)

An Original and Singular Talent

Taylor Kingston
The King, by J. H. Donner (translated by Richard De Weger), 1 997 New In Chess, Hardcover, 385 pp., $65 .00.
To be frank, Jan Rein Donner is not someone to whom this reviewer (along probably with most Americans) paid much attention or attached much significance during his life ( 1 927 - 1 988). Winning Dutch championships in 1 954, 1 957 and 1958, and gaining the GM title in 1 959, Donner had a few good international results in the early to mid- 1960s (notably 1 st at Beverwijk 1 963 ahead of Bronstein, and at Venice 1 967 ahead of Petrosian), but he was never a FIDE Candidate nor reckoned among the real heavyweights of his time. At his only chance to make a strong impression in the U.S.A., the 2nd Piatigorsky Cup
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at Santa Monica, I 966, he finished last of I 0, and photos in the tournament book show him looking downright unkempt and unhealthy, almost dissipated. Mainly he occupied a vague space in my memory as one of the best Holland could produce in a relatively unexciting period between the retirement of Euwe and the rise of Timman.
However, Donner worked not only at the chess board, but also at the typewriter. And in Holland, where chess gets as much press as, say, baseball in the U.S.A., he did plenty of work. In the course of over 30 years he produced thousands of columns and articles, for a variety of Dutch publications including daily newspapers such as De 1ijd and De V olkskrant, general interest periodicals such as Elseviers Weekblad, and the purely chess-oriented Schaakbulletin. For The King (subtitled Chess Pieces), Donner's friends Tim Krabbe and Max Pam have chosen 1 3 3 examples from that large body of work, to represent the best of Donner's writings. It was first published in Holland in 1 987, but now a limited edition English translation has been produced. If Donner the player failed to impress on this side of the Atlantic, the same is no longer true of Donner the writer. The King hits with such a variety of impacts that I am hard put to describe them. Like a fresh cold breeze? Like a stiff cup of black coffee? Like a selection of redolently ripe Dutch cheeses? Like a heavy snort of laughing gas? Like a whoopee-cushion on a pew in High Church? Like a sharp needle puncturing pompous bags of wind? The King is all of these and more. It is so varied in its material that it cannot be easily summarized, so bear with me if this review goes to some length in an effort to do justice to this remarkable book. The selections cover a tremendous variety of chess-related subjects. Some are more or less "straight" journalism: tournament and match reports (ranging from Dutch events to world championships), profiles of chess personalities, both major (Fischer, Tal, Korchnoy, Euwe) and minor (Diemer, Saemisch, Prins), and reports on major chess events (Fischer's abdication, the defections of Korchnoy and Pachman) from a behind-the-scenes perspective. Some are pointed critiques of the politics behind chess, both in Holland and at the international level. Some are social commentary ("Women Cannot Play Chess"), metaphorical musings (why a chess tournament is like sperm seeking to fertilize an ovum), discussions of Greek philosophy ("Seautoscopic Vision"), or arcane metaphysics ("The Bishop Jumps, the Knight Goes"). Some are hilarious humor pieces. Some are rhapsodic celebrations of the joys of chess ("Sweet Little Thing"), others stark, yet blackly humorous recognition of its essentially tragic nature ("Shame"). A great many are polemics, in some cases outright literary dismemberments, directed against Donner's enemies and rivals in the Dutch chess scene. All of these are carried off in a unique style. The normal forms and conventions of chess writing were in Donner's hands altered, transformed, and often gleefully twisted to serve the demands of his highly educated intelligence, sardonic wit, and biting critical insight. The normal run of chess writers seem positively drab
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Review.
and insipid compare d to Donner the parodist, the satirist, the debunker, the misogynist, the iconoclast, the provocateur, the fulminator. His reportorial style reminds one of the outrageous gonzo journalism of Hunter S . Thompson (of Fear and Loathing fame), and his polemics are reminiscent of such great scourges of hypocrisy as H. L. Mencken. In short, what we had in Donner was one of the great chess curmudgeons, perhaps the best of that rare ilk since Wilhelm Steinitz. While it is hard to do justice to Donner with short excerpts, some examples from The King will give a better idea of his work than further words from me. Warning: Donner was outspoken, often to the point of brutal frankness. Those sensitive to the tenets of "political correctness" are advised that they read on at their own risk. Women were a frequent Donner target. Some illustrative quotes: "However painful it may be, we must not shrink from the truth: women cannot play chess . ... they cannot paint either, or write, or philosophize . ... the fact [is] that women are much more stupid than men." "The authoress Hanny Michaelis protested against [my] assertion that women cannot write, citing a number of names as evidence to the contrary. What a ghastly list it was ! The nastiest hags and frumps that ever wielded a pen ! " "Men want to beat you up, but women want t o take care o f you. Personally I prefer a beating, because there's an end of it." Donner's own people, the Dutch, regularly came in for a share of abuse: "[There is] a conviction deeply rooted in the Netherlands that no Dutchman can ever achieve anything worthwhile . . . Euwe was so upset when he became world champion that he got rid of the title as soon as possible." "The theory [of seautoscopic vision] is difficult for the untrained mind to understand, and my attempt must be regarded as a failure due to the gigantic stupidity which keeps the whole of the Dutch-speaking area in an iron grip." On Dutch tournament organizers: "Kind, full of promises and guarantees before the contest but a blank amnesia afterwards - that's the way these gentlemen are." However, Donner was an equal-opportunity curmudgeon, and other nationalities were regularly skewered: "Vidmar was a very strong drawing master, whose lily-livered style of chess makes itself felt in the style of his fellow Yugoslavs even nowadays . . . . [His countryman Trifunovic] has contributed a few notorious drawing variations to chess theory and obviously holds to the firm belief that winning or losing is an abnormal end to a chess game."
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Lest the reader conclude that D o nne r was p u re l y a s p l e ne t i c despi ser, it should be noted that his admiration for Euwe was deep and genuine (a tribute to Euwe

upon his death in 1 98 1 is sincere and moving), as it was for several other greats such as Spassky and Korchnoy. And when the woman Nona Gaprindashvili won the 1 977 Lone Pine tournament ahead of many male GMs, Donner mock grudgingly admitted the worth of her achievement: "Even in the world of chess there is at least one woman who rates as a world-class player. For inveterate masculinists and for those who must write jocular pieces to earn a living, this is a serious setback, which will naturally not prevent us in the least . . . from continuing our struggle unabatedly." As the above quote shows, Donner was not afraid of writing self-evident absurdities. It is his refusal to take himself too seriously that takes the edge off his misanthropy and changes it from bile to wit. However, one person does receive the full brunt of his unmitigated scorn: the Dutch master Lodewijk Prins, for whose chess play and writing both Donner had nothing but contempt, and about whom he wrote a long series of hilarious hatchet jobs: "[Prins] plays a hideously crooked kind of chess . . . If correct play and judgement were what counted . . . he would never win a game . . . . He hasn't got a clue. He is the worst player in the whole wide world." When Prins managed to win a Dutch championship (held while Donner was away at Havana), Donner wrote "Prins was in his element . . . Utter nonsense proved a complete success . . . . It is a sad thing that a player of his level must rate officially as the strongest in Holland . . . . Ugh." Whereupon Donner challenged Prins to a match: "Dear Lodewijk ... I think you cannot tell a knight from a bishop and I ' m prepared to prove it." When Prins was unwilling to play: "Such a blunt refusal I had not thought possible. We now have a chess champion who refuses to play chess." Even in discussing an obscure line of the Gruenfeld, Donner managed to work in a nasty dig: "Many people who know the Prins Variation are glad, deep down, that there is a Prins Variation in journalism as well, although it tends to lie till it is black in the face." However Donner was not perversely stubborn about such opinions in defiance of facts. When he took similar aim at Hans Ree, giving 1 50- 1 odds that he would defeat Ree in a match, and then lost, he publicly retracted his bombast and paid sincere compliments to Ree's play. Compared to most chess books, The King is somewhat short on actual games, and certainly is not a "Donner's Greatest Triumphs" vanity project. Though not
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a world-beater (peak Elo in the low 2500s) Donner was capable of some excellent chess, of which this (Donner-Troianescu, Wageningen, 1 957) is the prettiest example:

21. e7U 'ltd6 (2 l . . .f5 22. E! xt7 E! xt7 23. xf7+ 'it>xt7 24. xh7+ <it>f8 25. E!d7) 22. 'iflhl (else 22 ... e2+) 'ltc6 23. xb7 4)f5 24 .Q.d5U 'ltc2 25. ell! 'lte2 26 .Q.xf7+U, 1-0 (26 . . .<it>h8 27. M6+).

However, Donner was keenly aware of chess's dark side, and its ability to induce madness: ''The chess player who has lost his game - who will describe him? .. . I have heard him calling annihilation upon himself in crude blasphemy . . . Derisively, he rejected our words of solace, demanding insults and chastisement. Standing afar and horror-stricken, I have witnessed how he swore to tear out his genitals, because he had played b6 instead of f6." Rather than any "perfect" game, though, what Donner enjoyed most was a theoretically lost game that (with his opponent's help) he somehow, miraculously, managed to win. He regarded these exhilarating swindles as signs of divine favor. Of one such against Ghitescu at Hoogovens, 1 974, he waxed lyrical in mock-biblical style: "An odor of sanctity began spreading through the tournament hall and outside too, as far as the blast furnaces spewing smoke in the distance. A few Reformed brethren, correctly assuming that the MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM was present in me then and there, gathered around me and asked me if this overwhelming token of Grace was not a Sign for me to return to the service of the Lord of Hosts . ... He . . . of Whom we can only speak obliquely . . . is my Friend, the Helper, by Whom I leap over a wall." The above is typical of Donner's idiosyncratic sense of humor, which is the most highly developed, most deliciously ironic, of any chess author I have ever read. I cannot resist two further examples. In 1 964 Bobby Fischer published his choices for the top 10 chess players of all time, from which, unsurprisingly, Donner was absent. Donner reacted in hilarious mock bombast and outrage: "He probably has not overlooked me at all. No, he has omitted me on purpose. What is more, I have the distinct impression that he has only given his views in order not to mention me ! ... how dare he, the little brat! "
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Revlew1
And in a pa rod y of a Dutc h children's c he ss classic, Uncle Jan T eacht',\' his Nephew to Play Chess, he invents a new character, the dissolute Uncle Hein

(Donner's own middle name), who tells Jan "What's this? Are you teaching the poor thing to play chess? Fie, for shame ! Why not have him drink hard liquor or take him off to a brothel, while you' re at it!", followed by a brisk refutation of the combination Uncle Jan was so proudly showing off. Donner's acerbic, often dark wit is perhaps not to everyone's taste, but personally I found myself unable to keep from laughing out loud about every other page, sometimes several times a page. Do not get the impression that The King is all humor, though. Donner' s journalistic efforts, including analyses o f important chess events such a s Fischer's abdication of the world title, are detailed, thorough, serious, insightful, and of interest to historians. And while he may have found much to lampoon in the Dutch chess scene, behind his farcical portrayals lay a real anger at the petty obstructions it placed in the path of chess professionals, through a hypocritical devotion to a sham ideal of "amateurism." With bitter sarcasm he remarks "My case happens to be less harrowing than it would have been if I had been totally dependent on the Dutch chess world, but not everyone gets the chance to marry a rich woman." (The sarcasm derives from the fact that Donner's wife actually was not rich.) Donner's controversial left-wing, often pro-Soviet political beliefs are present in The King, though not stressed. He is shown carrying a sign saying "America Out of Vietnam !". Well, heck, I was doing the same thing at the time, but his reverential tone toward the deluded fanatic Che Guevara will, for anyone to the right of Lenin, cause one's gorge to rise. He also expresses admiration for Castro and another Cuban, a General Bayo, who wrote a catechism for guerrilla fighters ("Q: What do we do with traitors? A: Traitors are shot after a short trial."). Donner comments: "It sums up the sort of man that we, in Holland, have not known for centuries ." I can just hear most Hollanders thinking ''Thank God !". But Donner must be taken as he was, and it would be absurd to judge him by today's decidedly less leftward standards. In any event, The King is by no means a political work. Among his stories from Cuba (and there are quite a few, as many tournaments were held there during Donner's time), there are such amusing and fascinating behind-the-scenes accounts as how Fischer's participation via teletype at Havana, 1 965, was arranged with the help of large amounts of rum. Also not to be missed is his explanation of Fischer's flop at Buenos Aires, 1 960 (it involves GM Larry Evans, a sum of money, and a friendly, well-endowed woman of flexible virtue). Those seeking instruction in opening theory or middlegame strategy will find almost nothing in The King. Yet thi s book is more about chess, about what
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Reviews
chess really is and what it means to be a chessplayer, than anything an "instructive" book could possibly convey. Frankly I think rather than spend the same amount on 3 "instructional" books that you' ll probably never really read and which won ' t raise your rating even 1 0 points, you ' d be better off buying Donner's book and having a good time. Some will no doubt balk at the price. It is admittedly high, but I can assure the reader that he will get his money's worth. The translation, by Richard De Weger, is superb. Footnotes explain references unfamiliar to non-Dutch readers. In addition to the writing, the book itself is extremely fine: handsomely clothbound in dark blue, the paper, print, and diagrams of excellent quality, with one of those delightful old-fashioned built-in ribbon bookmarks as an added grace note. The copy I received is one of a limited edition of only 750, apparently intended for a small audience of connoisseurs. It deserves a much wider readership, but at this time the publisher has no further plans in that direction. As the saying goes, "Act now, supplies are limited."

In 1 983, Donner suffered a brain hemorrhage that ended his playing career at
age 56 ("just in time," he sardonically put it). He continued working, typing with one finger, until shortly before his death. As a final word, one last quote from him seems appropriate. Speaking of a chance sighting of Robert Graves (author of /, Claudius) he wrote: "Great writers must be dead. Their being alive is no good to us. On the contrary, because they are alive, there is something unfinished about their work. . . . they may change their minds or give further explanations, spoiling their work." Donner's work is finished, but I wish it were not. I recommend taking this first and perhaps only opportunity for English-speaking readers to make the acquaintance of an original and singular talent. (April l 998)

36 1

Chess In Flux

362

Chess In Flux Entering the 2 1st Century, international chess is in turmoil, confronting issues unique in its history. Does chess played at slow time limits have a place in a f ast-paced, televised world? Willf aster time controls popularize chess, or destroy its artistry ? What of drug testing ? And what impact will computers ultimately have ? This section begins at a point in time on the threshold of this era offlux.

An Imperfect Visionary
Burt Hochberg
Burt Hochberg (born 1933, New York City), has had a distinguished career in chess journalism and literature. Besides a long tenure as editor of Chess Life ( 1966-1979), he is the author of several books, including Title Chess: The 1 972 U.S. Chess Championship (1973), Winning With Chess Psychology (with GM Pal Benko, 1991 ), and Chess Braintwisters ( 1999). He also edited the outstanding anthology The 64-Square Looking Glass: The Great Game of Chess in World Literature (1993). His aptly-named column "Perspectives ", which appeared for about a year, 1 998, reflected his long and broad experience with many figures in the chess world, both f amous and lesser-known. Visionaries are by definition impractical. But an impractical visionary with a lot of money can make a difference in pursuit of his dream. I would like now to remember a man whose long-range vision was not achieved because it - or he was too impractical and because technology was not ready for it. In the process of trying to achieve it, however, he made a real contribution to the game he loved. Sidney Fried, whose R.H.M. Press produced some of the best modern literature on chess, grew up poor in New York. In his youth, he said, he was a Communist. He abhorred paying taxes. Once he achieved f mancial success (first by investing in warrants and options, then by writing books and two weekly newsletters on the subject}, he made certain that everything of real value that he possessed was legally owned by his company, not by him personally. During the years I knew him well (roughly 1 972-84), he had an elegant four-story townhouse on New York City 's east side, a handsome yacht, and a house in Rancho Mirage, California, just a knight's move from Frank Sinatra's estate. The house had formerly belonged to Zeppo Marx and his wife, Barbara, who later became Sinatra's fourth wife. His success in avoiding taxes while he was alive, however, resulted in a tremendous problem for his two sons after he died in 1 99 1 at the age of 72. Though he left a significant legacy in his work for chess, he did not, incredibly, leave a will. Sidney took very good care of h i s health. A man of relatively small physical stature, he was always trim and fit. His diet consisted mainly of fish, he did not smoke, and he played tennis whenever he had the chance. He wore his longish
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Chess In "'lux
hair combed straight back and he was a l ways dressed neatly and simply. His only affectation was a little pencil mustache that rode interestingly up and down on his lip whenever he produced one of his characteristic crooked half-smiles.

He was in love with chess, but it was an unsatisfying, one-way relationship, like an adolescent sexual longing. Chess is not an easy lay, and Sidney was not strong enough to overcome its resistance. Chess "annihilates a man," wrote H. G Wells. "You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess." Had Sidney Fried not been financially secure, chess might have ruined him. The middlegame and endgame held little interest for him. The great unsolved mystery of chess, as he saw it, was the opening. Because Sidney hated the idea of memorizing openings, he wanted to find a universal, one-size-fits-all "system" that would always yield an acceptable position almost without regard for the opponent's moves. The only mystery, as I saw it, was why Sidney persisted in playing his inferior fianchetto hybrid in game after game, invariably getting a severely cramped position after half a dozen moves, to his perplexed annoyance. Sidney was anything but stupid, but he was definitely obstinate. He seemed to think that if he played his "system" often enough, it would one day realize that he did not intend to give up and would lie down and behave.
I met Sidney in 1 972. I was the executive director of the Manhattan Chess Club; he was a member. When I resigned that year after a disagreement with the club's board of directors, Sidney invited me to dinner, along with Lubosh Kavalek. The recent Fischer-Spassky match had led to a worldwide chess boom, which Sidney felt was the perfect opportunity to launch the great plan that had been percolating in his mind. Now that I was free of my duties at the club (though I was still the editor of Chess Life & Review, now Chess Life), Sidney wanted me to help develop a chess publishing program under the umbrella of his financial publishing company.

His plan had two prongs: I, from my home in New York, would develop various book projects and oversee the whole enterprise, while Lubosh, from his home in Reston, Virginia, would work on Sidney's special dream, The Survey of Current

Chess Openings.
The basic idea of The Survey was simple. The entire universe of openings would be mapped out in a grand outline and each opening divided into its constituent variations. Starting with the most current or significant variations and becoming more inclusive over time, 100 recent games in each variation would be analyzed by an assigned grandmaster and published as hole-punched pages for insertion in a loose-leaf binder to be provided. As warranted by tournament practice, the sections would be updated with additional pages, forming an ever-expanding database.
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Chess In Flux
Sidney, Lubosh, and I had many meetings, separately and together. I once spent an entire day at Lubosh's home as we tried to figure out how to coordinate the work of the many grandmasters who would be invited to participate, and how to organize our own work flow. Lubosh, with his profound knowledge of the openings and his friendship with so many grandmasters, would decide which grandmasters were to be assigned to which variations and would make sure the work got done on time. He would check incoming manuscripts for technical content and then send them to me for editing and production. Meanwhile, I would be working on separate book projects, traveling to important chess events - such as the San Antonio tournament in 1 972, the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Petr6polis Interzonals in 1 973, the Nice Olympiad in 1 974, and the Statham tournaments in Lone Pine, California - to talk to the world's leading grandmasters about book ideas. (Incidentally, my traveling to these events enabled me to report on them for Chess Life & Review at no cost to the U.S. Chess Federation, since Sidney paid all the bills.) Some of the books R.H.M. published during that period were How to Open a Chess Game, by Evans, Gligoric, Larsen, Portisch, Petrosian, Hort, and Keres (the creation of this book is worth an article all to itself); Understanding the French Defense, by Gligoric and Uhlmann; My Best Games, by Karpov; The Life and Games ofMikhail T al, by Tal; The NajdoifV ariation, by Geller, Gligoric, Kavalek, and Spassky; The Gruenfeld Defense, by Botvinnik and Estrin; The Modem Defense, by Hort and Mednis; The Art of Chess Analysis, by Tirnman; The Best Move, by Hort and Jansa; and others. I produced or edited many of them; a few were translations of foreign originals; others, especially the later ones, were produced in England by David Levy and Kevin O' Connell. Any publisher would be proud of a list like that, and Sidney was indeed proud of it. But he was obsessed with the Survey. Although its early sales and subscriptions were not particularly encouraging, Sidney spent lavishly on it. He simply refused to consider the possibility that his instincts might have misled him. I believe his instincts were correct. What sank the Survey in the early 1 980s was not public indifference (it was far too soon to gauge that) but two other factors . One was a really bad recommendation he had recently made i n his financial newsletter. Some investors lost money, subscriptions fell off dramatically, and he suddenly had to rein in his propensity for spending money on his hobbies. R.H.M. 's chess program was one of the casualties. It was simply costing too much. But the Survey would have been done in anyway by computer technology. We couldn't have predicted in the late 1 970s, when the first Survey sections were beginning to come out, that within a few years home-computer databases would

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.._.,,.,, '" Flux

he ..:ommonpluce. Com pared to

computer database, a paper-based ope n i n gs

as

database like the R . H . M . Survey would have seemed crank was after the electrical ignition was invented.

c l u msy as

the engine

Sidney 's dream was only partially realized, but its attempt had valuable consequences. Of course there is the library of chess titles. All have been out of print for years (though I believe the Tal and Timman books have been republished in new editions in England, and there are rumors that others are in the works), but thousands of players and students have benefited from them and many grandmasters were very well paid to write them. And I have no doubt that Lubosh Kavalek's legendary database, which has been a significant factor in several world championship matches, can trace its roots to the work he did for R.H.M. Although at the end of his life Sidney Fried was disappointed that he had not achieved all that he had wanted, he achieved a great deal more than most visionaries. He made a difference. (May 1998)

The Time Limits They Are a-Changin'

Geurt Gijssen

..

During the 1983 European Team Championship iil Plovdiv, Bulgaria, I was the captain of the Dutch team. I remember very well one of the team meetings several weeks before the event. One of the items on the agenda was who should take which chess book with him. Clear agreements were made who should take care for the latest issues of Chess lnformo.nt, who was responsible for the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, who should bring the endgame books of Cheron and so on. Now each top player has his own laptop and arrangements similar to those of 1 983 are completely unnecessary. But even more things have changed in the chess world. In 1 987 I was the Chief Arbiter of the Kasparov-Karpov world championship match in Seville. The time limit in this match was forty moves in two and one-half hours and then one hour for every additional sixteen moves. After five hours the games were to be adjourned. The same time limit was applied in the next match in 1 990 between Kasparov and Karpov in New York/Lyon. But there was something new. Both players used the help of computers for adjourned games and to analyze the games after they had been played. And from time to time the computer showed some improvements to the moves played in the games, even in the opening. Tom Furstenberg has written several interesting articles concerning the help of the computer. To diminish the influence of the computer, the match Karpov-Timman (Zwolle Arnhem-Amsterdam-Djakarta 1 993) was played according to the same time limit
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Ches.'l In Flux
( forty moves in two und one-half hours and then one hour for every additional sixteen moves), but this time the games were not to be adjourned until there had been seven hours of play. It is clear that this time limit reduced the number of adjourned games and therefore the influence of computers. I mmediately after the opening ceremony of the Karpov-Kamsky match (Elista 1 996) there was an unexpected incident. Rustam Kamsky, the father of Gata Kamsky and chief of his delegation, got into a furious dispute with Anatoly Karpov. According to Rustam Kamsky, in a press conference about four weeks before the start of the match, it had been announced that the time limit would be forty in two, then twenty in one, and finally thirty minutes for each player for the remaining moves. However Karpov said that there was a letter signed by both Gata Kamsky and himself, which had been sent from Groningen during the Koop Tjuchem tournament in December 1 995. In this letter both players suggested that the time limit should be forty moves in two hours, then one hour for every additional sixteen moves, with adjournments after six hours of play. After prolonged negotiations in Elista, it was finally decided that they would play with this time limit. Since the first forty moves would be played more quickly than in the match Karpov-Timman, the probability for adjourned games was less. In the last world championship tournament, i.e. the knock-out tournament in Groningen 1 997 and Lausanne 1 998, there were no adjourned games. The time limit was totally different: 1 00 minutes for forty moves, then 50 minutes for twenty moves and finally I 0 minutes for each player for the remaining moves. After each move, thirty seconds were added. For the first time control this effectively meant forty moves in two hours and for the second time control twenty moves in one hour. Before the start of the tournament many people were afraid of incidents and of possibly very long games. During the entire tournament there were no incidents and the games were generally shorter than before. I think that it had to do with the time limit. When a player had a lost position he resigned. With the "old" time limit players who found themselves in a lost position sometimes tried to take advantage of the opponent's Zeitnot. With this new time limit it is almost impossible to do so. In this regard, I would like to mention another development. In the 1 99 1 Candidates Matches at Brussels it was decided that, in the event a match finished 4-4, the match would be continued with rapid games (60 minutes for forty-five moves and then 15 fifteen minutes for each series of twenty moves). The Yusupov Ivanchuk match required the rapid games to break the ties . The first game of this mini-match is probably one of the most fascinating games of the last decade. This game was chosen as the best game in Chess Informant No. 52. In 1 996 the
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Che

In /<'lux
-

published a book titled 640 Best Games 64 Golden Gamt's. The best games of the period 1 966- 1 996 were published in this book. A jury of grandmasters and readers voted again for the best game. The result was that the game Ivanchuk-Yusupov finished second. Here are the move s of this remarkable game:
ln:firmanl

Ivanchuk-Yusupov: 1 c4 e5 2 g3 d6 3 j},g2 g6 4 d4 4) d7 5 4)c3 j},g7 6

4)f3 4)gf6 7 0-0 0-0 8 '(ltc2 e8 9 d1 c6 10 b3 e7 11 1ta3 e4 12 4)g5 e3 13 f4 4)f8 14 b4 J'U5 15 'llt b3 h6 16 4)f3 4)g4 17 b5 g5 18 bxc6 bxc6 19 4)e5 gxf4 20 4) xc6 itg5 21 1txd6 4)g6 22 4)d5 'llt h 5 23 h4 4) xh4 24 gxh4 '(ltxh4 25 4)de7+ Cjfjlh8 26 4) xf5 b2+ 27 fl l3e6 28 b7 !!g6 29 '(lt xa8+ h7 30 g8+ xg8 31 4)ce7+ h7 32 4) xg6 fxg6 33 4) xg7 4)f2 34 Jtxf4 xf4 35 4)e6 '(lth2 36 !!db1 4)h3 37 !!b7+ g8 38 b8+ '(ltxb8 39 Jt xh3 '(ltg3 0-1 .
It was decided that i n the event o f tie i n the match Karpov-Kamsky, tie-break games should also be played. As you probably know, at Groningen and Lausanne, rapid mini-matches of two (rounds 1 -6), four (round 7) or six games (the final) were played. If after two, four or six games the standings were still level, additional games would be played. The time limit was as follows: 25 minutes per player for the whole game with the addition of ten seconds per move; if after two games there was no decision, two more games were played; the time limit in these two games was 15 minutes per player for the whole game with the addition of ten seconds per move. If these games did not produce a match winner, sudden death games would be played. White received four minutes for the whole game and black five minutes. Once again ten seconds per move were added. The first decisive game would end the match. I was very surprised that even in these sudden-death games there were no incidents. Personally I was very happy that the last World Championship was not played using the time limits currently being used in many tournaments. By this I am referring to a final time control in which all remaining moves must be completed, e.g. 30 minutes. The problem I have often encountered is related to Article 1 0.2: If the player has less than two minutes left on his clock, he may claim a draw before his flag falls. He shall stop the clocks and summon the arbiter. (a) If the arbiter is satisfied the opponent is making no effort to win the game by normal means, or that it is not possible to win by normal means, then he shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise he shall postpone his decision. (b) If the arbiter postpones his decision, the opponent may be awarded two extra minutes thinking time and the game shall continue in the presence of the arbiter. (c) Having postponed his decision, the arbiter may subsequently declare the game drawn, even after a flag has fallen.

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Chess In Flux
A l l incidents during the Olympiads in Moscow and Yerevan had to do with Article 1 0.2 of the FIDE Laws of Chess. (June 1 998. For more about this see Mr. Gijssen 's part of the Q & A section - Ed. )

Centaur
Hans Ree
In the twelfth round of the Linares tournament, Kasparov played a 1 9-move draw with Topalov. It was not his only quick draw in the tournament, but for this one he was fined $3 ,000 by organizer Lufs Rentero. All the players had signed a contract that forbade them to offer a draw during the first forty moves. All except Shirov, the reckless adventurer who maybe considered it an insult. Kasparov grumbled, rightly, that the final position against Topalov was a dead draw and he had his second Dokhoian write a protest letter, but he accepted his fate. Or so it seems, but maybe it was a piece of theatricality. Rentero and Kasparov are partners in the new-founded World Chess Council which will organize the matches for Kasparov's world championship. First (probably) Kramnik-Shirov and then the winner against Kasparov. Maybe one day Kasparov's opponent will complain that the organizers are not impartial. Then Rentero will beat his breast, fiercely denying that he would ever give favors to friends: "Remember I f med Gary $3,000 for a quick draw?". We have grown suspicious, but not without reason. Some twenty years ago an English journalist complained that in sports only chess and marbles were above suspicion. One wonders what has happened i n the world o f marbles. The day afte r the tournament Kasparov went t o Madrid to advertise an event that had been announced a few months ago. In June, in the Spanish town of Leon, he will play a match of six games against Topalov, in which both players will have free access to a computer. It is an idea that has been cherished for years by Kasparov. Advanced Chess, he calls it. In Madrid his audience was treated to fine pieces of unbridled Kasparov rhetoric. A new age for chess had arri ved. Leon was privileged to see the first appearance of 2 1 st-century chess. Speculation and risk would cede to accuracy and the search for perfection. The symbiosis of man and machine would be an example not only for the chess world, but for all human endeavors. Last year he was the last stand of the human race against the computer Deeper Blue. If you can't beat ' em, join 'em, h e must have thought. Not everyone will like the idea. A hundred years ago it was also possible to raise the standard of
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Chess In f'lux by permi tting pl ayers to cons u l t books on open i n gs and endgames. I t was not done. Nowadays chessplayers are sometimes caught at a bookstal l during their game, consulting reference books. They are punished and their plea that they are trying to bring chess to a higher level is not accepted . For many people, speculation and risk are just the things that give chess its attraction.
chess

But it has to be admitted that Kasparov has found a promising source of new sponsorships. He and Topalov will get the same computer. But what they put into it will be their choice. Their personally screened databases with millions of games. Their own opening analysis from years ago that they may have forgotten by now. A chessplaying program of their choice. This will provide nice publicity for the program that is used by the winner. Who did win the match, the human player or the program that helped him calculate the variations and checked on his tactical mistakes? Difficult to say. If Kasparov's idea gains acceptance, the chess world will resemble the world of motorcar racing. A tournament will be a testing ground and a generator of publicity for the manufacturers of the machines. The following two games from Linares were created in the old-fashioned non technological way. Just humans thinking on their own. These games might give the impression that sometimes computer help would not be a superfluous luxury, even for the best players in the world. Give this "blindfold" test to a knowledgeable chessplayer: show him the moves, but not the names of the players. About the losers he might say: "From the competent way they play the first ten moves or so, it appears they are club players. But the way they handle the rest of the game makes it clear that they are not playing in a high league."

Ivanchuk-Anand, Linares 1 998, Round 12: 1. e4 c5 2. 4)f3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. 4) xd4 4)f6 5. 4)c3 4)c6 6 . .Q.gs e6 7. '/td2 .1le7 8. 0-0-0 0-0 9. f3 This is played occasionally. The usual move is 9. f4 or 9. 4Jb3. 9 4) xd4 10. '/txd4 a6 11. h4 bS 12. b1 '/tc7 13. h5 h6 14 .Q.h4 -'lb7 15. 4)e2 Very
..

slow and artificial maneuvers by White. 1 5 . Ad3 would give no advantage, but it looks superior. After 1 5. Ad3 d5 16. exd5 Ac5 White would have 17. d6 as an escape. IS ac8 16. '/td2 fd8 With simple natural moves, Black has gotten a fine position. He is ready for a break in the center. 17. e1 Another contortionist move. 17 e5 First this pawn, for after 17 . . d5 18. e5 xeS 19. Ag3 Black's queen would b e i n limbo. Now 1 8 . . . d5 is a threat. 18 .Q.xf6 Jl x f6 19. 4)c3 .Q.g5 20. '/td1 After 20. 'l5i'd3 would follow 20 . . . d5 2 1 . 4Jxd5 .ll x d5 22. exd5 xd5 and White cannot take on d5 . With the queen on d 1 he would have 23 . .lld 3, so now Black changes plans: 20 'ltaS Intending 2 1 . . . xc3 with a very strong attack. 21. 4)dS This allows a nice finish, but good moves were not to be found for white. 21 ... Jl xd5 22. exd5
.. .

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Chess In Flux

22 ... xc2! 23. \tl xc2 '/txa2 A rook up, White is helpless against the threat 24 . . . E!c8+. 24. f4 So that after 24 . . . .ilxf4 he can bring his rook to the defense with 25. E!h3. 24 c8+ 25. \tld2 J}. x f4+ 26. \tle2 '/txb2+ 27. \tlf3 cl,

0-1 . To avoid losing his rook on el White has to give up his queen, leaving his
position disorganized; Black then wins easily.

Kramnik-Svidler, Linares 1 998, Round 1 2: 1. f3 f6 2. c4 e6 3. g3 dS 4. d4 Jl.e7 S. Jl,g2 0-0 6. 0-0 dxc4 7. '/tc2 a6 8. '/txc4 bS 9. 'l!\'c2 Jl,b7 10. Jl.f4 dS This move has a bad reputation. 11. c3 xf4 12. gxf4 d7 13. fdl J}.xf3 This cannot be satisfactory for Black. After 1 3 . . . 'ik8 14. <\e4 c5 15. dxc5 <\xc5 16. <\xc5 'l!'Yxc5 1 7. xc5 Axc5 in Ribli-Karpov,
Amsterdam 1 980, Black had attained his goal in this variation: eliminating the weakness on c7. But even so Black was slightly worse in the ending and he lost.

14. J1.xf3 b8 1S. e3 f6 16. act '/td6 17. e2 fc8 18. e4 'l!\'d7 19. dS exdS 20. eS e8 21. xd5 '/th3 22. Jl,g2 '/th4 23. d4 White's game plays itself. His threats are 24. <\c6 and especially 24. <\f5. White is
winning.

23 '/txf4 24. c6 Now Black's queen, rook and bishop are in danger. He cannot save everything. 24 J1.h4 25. dl b6 26. d4 xc6 27. Jl, xc6 '/txe5 28. J1.d7 d8 29. xh4, 1-0. After 29 . . . E!xd7 ( or 29 .. :l!i"g5+ 30. E!g4) 30. xh7+ 'tftf8 3 1 . E! xd7 Black has only a few checks. (March 1 998)

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To the Harbor
Hans Ree
The story was originally told in the Canadian magazine En Passant but I learned it from Inside Chess. In 1 999, at the closing ceremony of a tournament in Havana, the Canadian FIDE master Irwin Lipnowski sat across from Robert Hubner, who had shared first prize. Apart from a money prize, Hubner had received two trophies . "You must have many trophies at home?" Lipnowski asked admiringly. Hubner said he had none. His apartment was full with books and there was no room left for trophies. "But what do you do then with these trophies?" Hubner explained that after the closing ceremony he would go to the harbor and throw his trophies into the water. That was what he always did when he had won a tournament. He didn't want to carry a heavy cup back to Germany. Lipnowski asked if it wouldn' t be more practical to tell the organizers i n advance that he wouldn't want their cups and trophies, but Hubner explained that this would be very discourteous, even insulting. This stands to reason. One realizes that leaving the cup in the hotel room wouldn't do either. It would be found, reported, and the organizers would have to spend time and costs to send the forgotten cup to Germany after all. No, there was only one solution. To the harbor. The meticulous care which Hubner took to avoid hurting the feelings of the organizers reminds me of a Dutch artist friend, the gifted painter Willem van Malsen. On one occasion I met him by accident on a train where, in the quiet of his compartment, he was carefully tearing apart a pair of his trousers. Why that? He explained that he was on his way to visit his mother, who in her old age still took pride in fixing the tom clothes of her Bohemian son. For him, tearing apart his trousers for her to fix was an act of love. I appreciated the opportunity to see a true artist at work. But back to chess. Lipnowski, who must have won fewer trophies in his life than Hubner, found it a pity that the recent acquisitions would disappear into the Havana harbor. Wouldn't Hubner rather give them to him? Most certainly he would. Indeed Hubner was quite grateful for the offer. It would spare him a long walk with a heavy burden. Lipnowski said that he would take good care of the trophies and that Hubner would be welcome to reclaim them any time he wished, but Hubner reassured him that the chance that he would actually do thi s was zero. Silver cups and table lamps, popular prizes in weekend tournaments in the time of my youth, seem hardly coveted by the top players of modem time. When Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik shared first prize at the recent Linares
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Ches.\' In Flux
tournament, Kasparov said that Kramnik could have the cup. He subtly emphasized that he himself already had five Linares cups. Kramnik, no less courteous than HUbner, let it be known that he greatly appreciated the gift. At the press conference, Kramnik talked about a subject that must be dear to his heart, as he had already broached it before: the need of protection against chess criminals who would use a computer during their games. Is this really a threat? One would like to laugh it away, but one wonders. At the end of 1 998 there was the infamous case of the German amateur Clemens Allwerman who won the Boblingen Open and was suspected of having used a computer. "It's mate in eight," he had said when his last round opponent had resigned, which would almost be proof of clairvoyance, had he thought this up himself. What happened to this case? The 1 998 story should have had a follow-up by now. There was a report from the German regional chess federation that had investigated the case, disclosing that Allwermann. shortly before his heroic feat, had bought a few thousand German marks worth of spy equipment in an electronics store. But if he has ever been punished or even reprimanded, I don't know. The criminally inclined could learn from this case that it is unwise to talk about a mate in eight and risky to play too far above one's normal standard. We haven't heard of such practices since 1 998, but this may only mean that crooks have gotten smarter. We anxiously await further developments. (March 2000)

Editor 's postscript: Since the above was written, we have learned more from German journalist Hartmut Metz, who has covered the Allwermann case in depth. At Boblingen Allwermann secretly used computer assistance, probably Fritz 5.32. The computer was operated by an accomplice somewhere nearby. Allwermann transmitted moves by a small radio in his jacket pocket. The radio had a number-pad on which moves were transmitted in postal code, e.g. "5254 " meaning e2-e4. Moves were transmitted back to him through an earpiece hidden under his hair. The affair profited Allwermann nothing: he was allowed to keep the DM 1, 660 prize money, but his electronic gear cost over DM 4, 500. He was suspended for one year ( 1999) by the Bavarian Chess Federation, but no legal prosecution took place. In his first tournament since Boblingen 1 998, Allwermann played at his customary Elo 1900 level.

Poll Position
Geurt Gijssen
At this time [June 2001] I am in Ohrid, Macedonia as chief arbiter of the European Individual Championship. This tournament is also a qualification tournament for the World Chess Championship 200 1 . It is a very strong
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tournament with 202 players, among them 1 47 Grandmasters . 46 uf t he m w i l l qualify for the World Championship. 5 o f the participants are already qualified by FIDE and three of them are on the FIDE reserve list. That means that 5 I will definitely play. In this championship the games were played according to the new time limit that was decided by the FIDE board during its meeting in Teheran, 2000: 40 moves in 75 minutes, then 1 5 moves for the remaining moves with an increment of 30 seconds or each move from move one. The rounds were finished after about four and a half hours, but the majority of the games were finished within three and a half hours. After 9 rounds I polled the players about the time limit. There were 1 27 players who responded. The first question was, "The time limit in this tournament is ?": Very good 1 3 ( 1 0.24%) Good 35 (27.56%) No opinion 10 (7.87%) Bad 35 (27.56%) Very bad 34 (26.77%)

Although 54% of the players considered this time limit bad or very bad, I expected an even larger majority to be against it. The second question was: "Which time limit do you prefer?": 1 . The time limit used in this tournament: 33 (25 .98%). 2. Fischer modus : 40 moves in 1 00 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes, then 1 0 minutes for the remaining moves with an addition of 30 sec from move 1 : 5 3 (4 1 .73%). 3 . 40 moves in 2 hours, then 20 moves in 1 hour, then 30 minutes for the remaining moves: 27 (2 1 .26%) 4. Another time limit: 1 4 ( 1 1 .02%) These figures can be interpreted many ways, but I was quite surprised that 68% of the players who answered preferred a Fischer modus. From the 69 players who responded that the time limit used in this tournament was bad or very bad, 44 preferred the Fischer modus of option 2. The main complaint about the time limit was that the players had no time at the end of the first period to relax, smoke a cigarette or to go to the bathroom. In many cases they had only 1 5 minutes on the clock and they had the feeling they were again or still in Zeitnot. Another remark was that the game was devaluated to a rapid game. Another remarkable opinion was that chess must be considered as a sport with all consequences. As in other sports, there should not be time for relaxation. The players should be always under pressure.

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Chess In Flux
Another important item was the tiebreak-system. The pairings were made with Swiss system based on ratings. In this case it was quite logical to use the ratings also for tiebreak matches and final standings in the event of an equal score. There were 1 3 rounds in this tournament and I proposed to the President of the ECU, Boris Kutin, to use the average ratings of the opponents less the two lowest rated players as criterion. It turned out that after the 1 3th round, 2 1 players shared the same 4 places a s well a s the 3 reserve places. I suggested the following tiebreak matches:
a

7 players should get a bye in the first round. The other 1 4 players should play 7 matches. These matches produce 7 winners. The highest-ranked player should qualify for the World Championship. The other 6 players should play matches. The winners should qualify for the World Championship and the 3 losers are the reserves. During a players' meeting after the 1 3th round it turned out that the reserve places were very much a topic of dispute and the players agreed that the ECU President should appoint the eventual reserve players. The consequence was that 2 1 players were fighting for 4 places. The schedule was as follows: 1 1 players received a bye in the first round. 1 0 players played matches for 5 places. The winners of these matches and the players who got a bye in the first round played 8 matches in the second round. The winners of the second round played 8 matches and finally the winners of the third-round matches qualified for the World Championship. Each match consisted of 2 games with 1 5 minutes for each player and an increment of 10 seconds per move. In the event that the score was equal, the players played one game with White having 6 minutes and Black 5 minutes at the start without an increment. In case of a draw, Black qualified for the next round. Before these sudden death games there was a drawing of lots for colors. The winner had the right to choose colors. Remarkably, everyone who won the toss chose Black. Apparently they were very confident that they would be able to make a draw. (June 2001 )

And the Talks Go On

Geurt Gijssen

There is still a lot of talk about the European Chess Championship in Ohrid. This is, of course, not very surprising, because the tournament was very strong and also very important. The importance was related to the qualification for the World Championship. And as everybody in the chess world knows, the prize fund of this tournament is very good. The new time limit in effect for Ohrid was: 40 moves in 75 minutes, then 1 5 minutes for the remaining moves, with an addition o f 3 0 seconds from move
375

I agree with many players who mentioned that it was better to organize some tournaments with this time limit before Ohrid. It was clear to me that several players did not understand the consequences of this time limit. Some of them, for instance, stopped writing moves at the moment they had less than 5 minutes. And although I mentioned the regulations in the players' meeting before the start of the tournament, they were not aware of this Article of the Laws of Chess. In one case it caused even a little incident. When I informed the player about this Article, he apologized. When I was at home, even during the holidays, I was still thinking about the time limit of this event and the problems we had. The majority of the problems occurred at the end of the f rrst period. Flags felt at move 39 or time was not added and the scoresheets showed 40 or even 4 1 moves; time was not added after move 40 and the clocks showed only 39 moves. In my opinion it is very simple to avoid all these problems: instead of several sessions, have only one: Let us say that the players receive at the start 2 hours for the

one .

whole game with an additional 30 seconds per move from move 1.

Another point is the pairings. During the tournament none of the chessplayers asked me any question about the pairings. Apparently they were not unsatisfied about the pairings. Only GM Nijboer remarked that he was not very happy that the pairings were based on ratings. In his opinion it was better to make the pairings from round 5 based on Buchholz. And he is probably right. However, the problem is that there is at the moment, except for the Olympiad, no Swiss pairings system and program based on Buchholz and authorized by FIDE. I intend making a proposal to develop such a system at the next FIDE Congress in Greece. There were also no comments about the fact that compatriots could play against each other in all rounds of the tournament, even in the last round. I recently received the following relevant comments from Stewart Reuben:

You may find a little statistical work I did on the European Championship interesting. Here there is no doubt, those who stayed in the bottom of the second half were severely disadvantaged relative to those in the top half in terms of the strength of their opponents in the first four rounds. Whether this evened out over 13 rounds I have no idea. Many players qualified for the World Championship from the European Championship. The data suggests those players were severely handicapped by their rating. I had predicted this possibility before the event and recommended the Dubov Pairing System be used. I am sure we all agree: No pairing system should be used which we know is biased against certain players. The problem is that one tournament proves nothing and, anyway, the analysis so far carried out makes no pretense of being statistically definitive. - Stewart Reuben
I am quite interested in Mr. Reuben's investigations. I looked for the players who started with three draws. In the table below you will find the players who
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Chess In Flux
did so. I found 23 players and as you can see 8 of them qualified (names in bold) and 4 played tiebreak games (players who scored 7 .5). Starting # Score 24 8.0 29 8.5 39 7.5 53 8.0 58 8.0 1 05 8.0 111 7.5 1 27 7.5 1 32 6.0 1 55 5.5 1 66 6.0 1 98 Name Rc Score 8.0 8 .0 7.5 8.0 7.0 7.0 4.5 6.0 5.5 6.5 5.0 6.0 Rc 2542 2525 2524 2504 25 1 5 2545 2483 2503 2558 256 1 2502 25 1 1 Starting # 28 36 52 54 81 1 07 1 22 131 1 47 1 57 1 92 Name

Ehlvest
2539

Zvjaginsev Tiviakov
Galkin

Baklan
2552 Najer 2502

Pigusov
2537 Huzman 2548 Yegiazarian 2530 Tischbierek 2598 Smirnov 2563 Kantsler 2552 Ermenkov 2552 Hillarp-Peterson 2560 Thorfinsson

Asrian Volkov Gdanski

Savchenko San Segundo Izoria Podgaets Stojanovski

Rc

average rating of the opponents.

I think there was another problem in this tournament. Several players had already told me before the start of the tournament that +3 (that is, a score of 8 points) is sufficient to qualify for the World Championship. And they made up their minds how to achieve this. Against strong opponents, they tried to make quick draws, against weaker opponents (those in the lower half of the field) they played for a win. The last round was remarkable. All players with 7':1 2 points, except Beliavsky and Conquest, drew within 10 minutes, because in doing so they qualified. Players with 6 . 5 and 7 points were fighting for a win to qualify for the World Championship or at least for the tiebreak matches the next day. I was not very happy with the fact that this tournament was both a qualification tournament for the World Championship and a tournament for the title of European Champion. There were several players who were already qualified
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Chess In f'lux
for the World Championship: Azmai paras h v i l i , M . G u re v i c h , Krascn kow, S hort and Van Wely. They could play very relaxed, keeping only the title and the prize fund in mind. And they also had a huge influence on those who might qual ify and those who might not. For example, the last round Short-Miles game won by Short. If Miles had won the game, he had the possibility of qualifying for the tiebreak matches. It is, in my opinion, better if it is possible to find sponsors for these events, to organize two separate tournaments : a qualification tournament for the World Championship, and a tournament for the European Championship. I repeat, if it is possible to find sponsors for these two events. Finally I would like to mention that in each event players who were in the lower half of the field always have more problems finishing near the top of the final rankings. It is not so strange that strong players qualify in a tournament like this . I am sure this is not the end of the discussions. (August 2001)

An Ohrid Time
Tony Miles
The recent European Individual Championship in Ohrid, Macedonia was probably the strongest Open tournament ever - being accustomed to being in the top hundred players in the world makes it a bit of a shock to be seeded 74th in a field of 200 ! However it will probably be mainly remembered as the first important event where the new FIDE time limit was used. For anyone that is not aware of it, the powers that be are trying to impose on the world of chess a new standard time control of 40 moves in 7 5 minutes, plus an increment of 30 seconds a move, then an extra 1 5 minutes plus the same increment for the remainder of the game. This move is clearly very controversial, and has been condemned in an open letter by Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik (alphabetical order in case you wondered !), and has definitely not been well thought out, but it appears that we will be forced to live with it for a while. There are many aspects that need to be considered. The first is what is the reason for the change. The FIDE argument is that speeding the game up will make it more marketable, and while I accept that for television (if only they were interested), and as a spectator sport, half-hour games (which I believe was what FIDE wanted before the opposition proved so large) or blitz are more appealing, I cannot see that 3- or 4hour games are much more viable than 6- or 7-hour ones. Another is that this move, if generally accepted, would lead to the destruction of classical chess. This is the argument made by the three Ks in their letter, and it also seems very valid to me. A third point which seems to have been almost totally ignored is a practical aspect. Personally I usually drink a lot during games. Now, though, I may have
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Chess In Flux
to change, as a few calls of nature can lead to substantial time trouble. Imagine reaching a queen ending that is going to go on for another fifty moves or so, at thirty seconds a move . . . not a happy thought. As for an attack of galloping gut rot . . . well, that really doesn't bear thinking about. To be fair I did ask the Chief Arbiter Geurt Gijssen about this, and he pointed out that the arbiter does have full discretion to pause the game under such circumstances, but that is hardly ideal. The main subject of discussion though, is the effect on the quality of games. The FIDE attitude was that 3 hours was plenty of time and that quality would not suffer at all, though this sounded more like a vague hope than any serious conclusion. One point that strikes me as important, but generally neglected, is the question of recording moves. The official line is that with thirty second increments one has enough time to record all the moves and is therefore obliged to do so. In my view the increments give enough time to play sensibly, but being obliged to write necessitates breaking ones concentration every thirty seconds and hence destroying the quality of play in anything other than a trivial position. I suspect that if electronic boards, which automatically record the moves, are used there would be a substantial improvement here. My own view, which I think is not widely shared, is that this time control is pretty much on a par with rapid chess, and if that is what FIDE wish to market then they may as well go the whole hog and do just that. Like the three Ks though, I would greatly regret the destruction of classical chess. Anyway "Quality of Play" is always a fun topic. Let's take a look at a few high- (or perhaps low-) lights of the Ohrid tournament.

P. Blatny (2547) T. Likavsky (2425): l.f3 g6 2.d4 f6 3.c3 dS 4.Af4 a6 s.e3 bd.7 6.eS .Q.g7 7 .1l,e2

7 ...b6?? 8.c6 1-0.

K. Sakaev (2637) A. Delchev (2584): l.d4 f6 2.f3 cS 3.dS bS 4 . .il.gS aS s.c3 e4 6 .1l,h4 Ab7 7.e3 e6 s.de

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Cltll ln Flux

8 de?? 9.Ab5 Oops ! 9 ... 4)c6? Here 9 . .1lc6 would l imit the damage. 10.4)e5 1-0. If 10 . . . 'ltb5 l l .'ltd7 mate, or 10 . :lwc7 l l .a4. Making the
. . .

most of his extra free day, Delchev went on to qualify for the World Championship ! Okay, it is true that one cannot entirely attribute these classics to the time control. An hour and a half should be enough to avoid such accidents. The thing is though that one has to speed up one's play somewhere, and bashing out the opening moves quickly is the most reasonable option on balance. It can be overdone though ! Let's take something a little less drastic now:

A. J. Miles (2562) - V. Bologan (2676) Nothing too complicated. After l ..b4

followed by f!a7, and if necessary .lle 2-f3, the black b-pawn is a goner. And ...

A. J. Miles (2562) - J. Lautier (2658) Position after White's 40th move . White
is three pawns up and threatening "ttlf7 . And, just so I can embarrass someone other than myself ...
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Chess In Flux

N. D. Short (2676) N. Sulava (2526) Barely out of the opening, and Black's queen is trapped. Right, take a look at these three positions. Given that there were no huge time scrambles and no colossal blunders, what do you think was White's total score from these three positions? At a normal time control I think I could guarantee it would be 3/3. Needless to say, in this case it was not! (Answer below)

Just to make some space between the question and the answer, how about this little curiosity . . .

L . Ilic (2282) V. Korchnoi: l.e4 c 6 2.d4 d S 3.c3 g 6 4.h3 f6 S.eS fd7 6.(3 b6 7.Jl.d3 aS 8.0-0 a6 9.a3 h6 10.e2 c7 1l.c3 a4 12.Jl.e3 c4 13. c2 e6 14.gael bS lS .il.cl

ts d7 t6.h2 c7 17.f4 g7 18.g4 e6 t9.f3 Jl.e7 20.g2 b6 21.g3 ga7 22.gf2 aS 23.gl b6 24.gfft aS 2S.h2 b6 26.g2 b7 27.h2 a8
..

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Che.'t.'l /11 Flux

28.cifi>g2 'ttd 7 29.cifi>h2 tte8 30.cifj>g2 ttd8 3V"lh2 g5 32.h5 h5 33.gh gf 34.Jl.f4 Jl.d7 35.gg3 f8 36.!2 .Q.e8 37.Jl.cl fS 38.ef .Q.d6 39.e5 e5 40.de Jl.e5 4I.Jl.g6 d6 4:z.gro Af7 43. t;tf2 As3 44. gg3 ggs 45.g:Z e5 46.Jl.h6 d8 47.ge3 d4 48.cd ed 49.e7 ge7 50.fe Jl.d5 51.cifi>gl the7 52.d4 c5 53.thd2 .il,c6 54. the3 gdt 55. h2 thh4 0-1.
Don't ask me . I am only the reporter . . . :)
..

Answer to the above question: White scored one point out of the three. Hard to explain. One factor, though, is the strange second time control. Reaching move forty with a winning position it is hard to avoid the temptation to relax slightly. When ones opponent does not only fail to resign, but actually puts up resistance it is quite hard not to drift into time trouble and panic. As this is my column and I am a sensitive soul, I can't quite bring myself to show you how exactly I scored only half a point from those two positions but here for your education is how the erstwhile challenger for the PCA world title flawlessly exploits the advantage of the extra queen:

Short-Sulava: l.e4 d5 2.ed thd5 3.c3 thd6 4.d4 f6 5.Jl.e3 Jl.f5

6.t!Jf3 .Q.c8 Oops ! 7.0-0-0 c6 8.Jl.f4 thb4 9.ge2 Jl.e6 IO.j\c7 a6 l l.a3

Double oops ! 11 ... thc3 12. thc3 c7 13.f4 Ad7 14.d3 4)cd5 15. thb3

b5 16.e5 e6 17.g3 .Q.d6 18.f4 a5 19.Ag2 a4 20.t;td3 b4 21.hel 0-0

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Chess In Flux

22. d2 .Q.c8 2,3.al .Q.a6 24. 'ltf3 c5 25.dc Ac5 26.ab Jlb4 27 .c,3 Jla5 28.a4 Jlb7 29.a5 a5 ,30.'ltf2 d8 3Vit'c2 lac8 32.c;tlbl

32 ... 4)c3 33.bc Jlg2 34. 'ltg2 labS Counter-oops. 35. 'ltb2 aa8 ,36.c4 c;tlf8 37.e3 lab2 ,38.4ifi'b2 4)e8 39.d3 f6 40.4)d7 c;tle7 41.4)b6 d8 42.a3 4i!ld6 43.d3 4ifi'c7 44.d8 4ifjld8 45.it'c3 c;tlc7 46.4)a4 4i!lc6 47.c;tlb4 e5 48.fe fe 49.4ifi'c3 4)f6 50.4ifi'd3 h5 51.h4 c;tld6 52.4ifi'e3 4ifjle6 53.4)c3 Cit'f5 54.c5 Cit'g4 55.c6 4) e8 56.4)e4 4)c7 57. Cit'f2 Cit'f5 58.4)c5 g5 59.hg %-%.
Oh, I almost forgot. The new European Champion is Emil Sutovsky of Israel (Israel? Europe?? Oh well . . . ) after a rapid ( 1 5 minute plus increment) playoff with the prodigious Ukrainian Ruslan Ponomariov. The bronze medal went to Georgian Zurab Azmaiparashvili after another playoff with Judith Polgar (em . . . yup . . . luckily I never referred to it as the Men's championship did I?). Of the fifty qualifiers for the World Championship, according to my count four are of West European origin. Food for more thought perhaps. (June 2001)

Veterans
Hans Ree
I have touched on the dreary subject before and this will not be the last time. When the doping testers come into our lives, I will not give them my blood, nor my urine. This might lead to my being banned from official chess competitions, which would be terrible, the worst disaster in my life. But let's look at it from the bright side. I haven't been playing many tournaments lately anyway and having to consider myself the kind of person that would yield to such nonsense, would be worse. So, there is little choice. Jan Timman once said on Dutch television that he wouldn't submit to doping tests either, because he considered them useless and humiliating. But what if it really came to them? He plays chess a lot. It is his life and the source of his income. Can he be expected to give this all up? For him the choice would be really hard.
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Chess In f'lux
When last year chess journalists wrote about the specter of doping c o ntro l the Dutch Chess Federation was not impressed. 'JYpical journalistic panic-mongering, they felt. It would pass away, they said. Our federation was exempted by the government for the year 2000 from the duty of adopting doping laws and in the meantime a report would be published by NeCeDo (Dutch Center for Doping Problems) that would prove once again that chess-enhancing substances did not exist. No problem at all.
,

The report came and of course it did indicate several substances that would be able to improve the functioning of the mind. What would one expect from a center for doping problems? Of course, the effects were said to be small, the indicated substances might be counterproductive, the scientific literature was ambiguous . . . But if an organization like NeCeDo wouldn't find problems where they do not exist, it might as well dissolve itself. So, now what? The Dutch Chess Federation finds doping regulations senseless, but they are demanded by our Minister of Sport, Mrs . Vliegenthart. Would the federation want to do without Timman? No, of course not, but it also would not want to do without Vliegenthart's subsidies. The federation is still pondering the issue. Our bridge and draught federations have already given in. Don 't give way, Dutch Chess Federation, don' t yield to the whims of the crazy witch Vliegenthart who wants to thrust me out of the chess world ! What profits can all the subsidies of the world bring you when Timman is not allowed to play chess? Timman said once that it would be a nice idea to organize a tournament where all kind of brain enhancers would be freely dispensed to all players, who would find them in nice little bowls on their tables in the tournament hall, courtesy of the sponsor. Indeed an excellent idea. It wouldn't be very difficult to find generous sponsors for the Smartchess tournament. One candidate would be Mr. Van der Wielen of Numico, a Dutch finn that makes pills consisting of vitamins, minerals, brain boosters and all kinds of "maximum life-span" stuff. So enamored is Van der Wielen of his often exotic products, that he expressed the opinion that the Chinese live longer than the Dutch, because of their traditional acquaintance with life-sustaining herbs and roots . Coincidence had it that on the day I wrote this column, my newspaper published a page-long article about three Dutch top managers - one of them being Mr. Van der Wielen - and how they kept themselves smart and sharp, to the benefit of the economy and all of us lesser mortals . The article was titled "Pill Gorgers". Of course, top managers have to stay smart, everybody understands that. During dinner, before dessert, the three captains of industry went together to the toilet
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Chess In Flux to see if the color of their urine still allowed for some alcohol-taking. No fear in their minds of a sneaky doping tester, standing ready with his little bottle, not with them !
Every health store, drugstore and even many supermarkets nowadays provide bottles or caskets of ginkgo biloba. It has been all the rage for the last five years. Supposedly good for blood circulation and oxygen supply to the brain and therefore good for mental concentration and memory. I wouldn' t know, but many doctors say that it works even if you don' t believe in it. Be that as it may, this popular product is denied by NeCeDo to Dutch chess players. Ironic that in an age when everyone is encouraged to become smart, chess players are forced to stay dumb, on threat of expulsion from their trade. Dutch Chess Federation, when you consider your decision, think also of the older players ! Few are the senior citizens nowadays whose general practitioner does not prescribe for them one of these memory-enhancers, it's almost standard practice. Should the senior citizen's chess and bridge clubs become the happy hunting grounds of the infamous drug testers? No, for supposedly they will restrict their distasteful activities to professional chess players. But some of these are old too. What will be the fate of Dutch chess patron Joop van Oosterom 's yearly "Ladies against Veterans" tournament? Would there be a drug tester so foul that he would dare to ask ex-World Champion Vasily Smyslov (79) for his blood and urine? And would the great man oblige? And proud Viktor Kortchnoi (69), would he? I cannot imagine he would. This year's "Ladies against Veterans" tournament was held in Munich and therefore called the Schuhplattler tournament, after a Bavarian dance that involves much shouting and wielding of axes and saws. As far as I know, nobody was hurt. The ladies won 27-23, but the best individual player was once again Viktor Kortchnoi.

Galliamova-Kortchnoi, Schuhplattler, 3rd round: 1. e4 c6 2. d4 dS 3. d2 dxe4 4. xe4 j'tfS S. g3 Jlg6 6. h4 h6 7. f3 f6 8. eS h7 9. -'ld3 J}.xd3 10. xd3 e6 11. -'ld2 bd7 12. f4 -'te7 13. 0-0-0 cS 14. Jl.c3 0-0 15. xd7 'l;txd7 16. fS 'l;tdS 17. b3 gac8 18. dxcS 'l.t xcS 19. J}.d4 a3+ On the site http://chess.Iostcity.nVschuhplattler/ there was a daily
report written by Dutch IM Paul Boersma from which I have derived most of the following notes. Here, according to Boersma, 19 .. :t1fa5 was much better.

20. Cifi'b1 dS 21. c4 b4 22. e2 bS 23. f6 Jlxf6 24. Jl.xf6 gxf6 25. hS fS 26. f6+ Around here people were starting to look for White wins and finding them, one being 26. !! d2 4)xa2 27. d3 . 26 ... Cifi'h8 27. gd2 grd8 28. 'l.te3 Cifi'g7 29. hS+ Cifi'g6

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Cheaa In Flux

Bravely forward, avoiding a draw by repetition, but Black is taking a big risk. 30. gh3 After the game, 30. g3 + was analyzed to a win for White : 30 . . . <iftxh5 3 1 . "fg7 (threatening 32. g4+ fxg4 33. "fxt7 mate) and among other fruitless defenses Boersma gives 3 1 . . J! g8 32. g4 fxg4 33. xf7+ k!g6 34. kl e l , which is still quite complicated after 34 . . . 4Jd3 35. k! xd3 k!f8, but it seems that 36. k! d5 + exd5 37. "fxd5+ does the trick. 30 . xc4 An unexpected defense 31. gg3+ gg4 32 . xg4+ fxg4 33. f4+ liflf5 34. 'ttc 5+ e5 35 . xd8 t;txa2+ 36. 1iflcl itxb3 37. gd2 Things have been an obscure mess for the last few moves and after this White will be in real trouble. Much better was 37. h5. 37 ... a2+ 38. g xa2 'lt xa2 39. d5 'ttc4+ 40. 'l!'fxc4 bxc4 41. lifld2 a5 42. liflc3 lifle4 43. f6+ f4 44. liflxc4 Even here analysts thought that the endgame might still be saved by 44. h5 + . 44 g3 45. h5 f4 46 . b5 e 4 47. d5+ lifle5 48. e3 g 3 49. 1iflxa5 fS 50. Iiflb4 f4 51. g4+ d4 52. xh6 f3 53. f5+ lifld3 54. h6 fxg2
.

55. h7 gl'tt 56. h8'l!t 'ltb6+ 57. lifla4 a6+ 58. b4 'l!tc4+ 59. a3 c5+ 60. liflb3 b5+ 61. a2 '/txfS 62. 'tth l 'l!tf2+ 63. b3 g2 64. 'l;th3+ e2, 0-1 .
A newcomer to the veterans' team was Dutch 1M Hans Bouwmeester (age 70) who had not played a regular tournament for many years, being much more involved in correspondence chess nowadays. Understandably he proved a bit rusty, spoiling a number of promising games. This nice attacking game by the middle Polgar sister was not one of these.

Sofia Polgar - Bouwmeester, Schuhplattler 3rd round: 1. e4 e5 2. f3 c6 3. -'lb5 f6 4. o-o d6 5. d4 Jld7 6 .el Ae7 7. c3 exd4 s. xd4 o o 9. j}_xc6 bxc6 10. Jl.f4 gb8 n. b3 c5 12. f3 Jle6 13. 'ltd3 d7 14. dl a5 15. e3 b6 This move, removing a piece from the kingside, was blamed for things to come and the solid 1 5 . . . f6 was preferred. 16. gadl a4 17. e5 d5 18. f5 c4 19. bxc4 xc4 20. xe7+ 'ltxe7 21. g5 g6 22. 'l!tg3 b2 23. gd2 c6 24. c3 .b7

(See diagram top of next page.)

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25. 4) xh7 ifjj xh7 26. Ag5 f6 27. exf6 f7 28. l3,de2 4)c4 29 .1lh6 The

simple 29. f3 would win a piece, but White's attack is so overwhelming that she doesn't spoil anything. 29 l3,fb8 30 .1lg7 ifjjgS 31. h4 d7 32. h8+
..

it'f7 33. h7 l3.b1 34. l3, xe6 '/it xe6 35. JlhS+ CitieS 36. g8+, 1-0. (July
2000)

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