chess
esiegel | February 17, 2013"There are some things we do much better than computers, but since most of chess is tactically based they do many things better than humans. And this imbalance remains. I no longer have any issues. It’s a bit like asking an astronomer, does he mind that a telescope does all the work?" -Vishy Anand
It used to be no contest. Even if a computer could perform million, billions, or trillions of calculations per second, a game like chess surely got too complicated too quickly for a computer to compete with humans. At least, that's what we used to think, but some things just don't stay the same, as…
jrosenhouse | August 22, 2012I am at a loss for good blog fodder today, so how about an amusing chess-themed puzzle I recently came across? It's a simple question: What is it that the queen cannot do that a king, rook, bishop, knight or pawn can all do? Good luck!
Come to think of it, here's another puzzle I've always liked. Nothing to do with chess this time. Imagine that you are in a pitch black room. No light at all. You are seated at a table. On the table is a standard deck of fifty-two cards, stacked neatly and squared away. Forty-two of the cards are face-down, while ten are face-up. Of course, since the…
jrosenhouse | May 31, 2012After some nervous moments, Viswanathan Anand defeated Boris Gelfand to keep the title of World Chess Champion. When the classical games resulted in a tie (one win for each with ten draws), the match was decided via a mini-match of four rapid games. All four of the games were exciting and hard-fought, with neither player making the most of his chances. The first game was a draw after Anand mishandled what was probably a winning position. Game two was a real barn-burner. First Anand seemed to be winning easily. Then Gelfand showed some impressive bishop-fu to take over the advantage.…
jrosenhouse | May 19, 2012Hikaru Nakamura has won the U. S. Chess Championship by a full point. It was a dominating performance, capped off with a stunning win with black, in the penultimate round, against the other pre-tournament favorite Gata Kamsky. This is Nakamura's third title. So, congratulations to him.
Today's tactical exercise comes from the tenth round game between Kamsky, playing white, and the struggling Yasser Seirawan. It's white to move:
The position looks a bit dicey for black, with white's rook eying his king down the half-open g-file. White's pieces seem well-placed for a king-side attack. His…
jrosenhouse | May 17, 2012The World Championship continues to be a snooze. Five games down, five draws. Only one game has made it past the thirtieth move. Both players seem very hesitant and completely uninclined to take any risks. Still seven games left, though, so we will see what happens.
Happily, the U. S. Championship continues to produce one nail-biter after another. Today's tactical exercise comes from the game six match-up between Gregory Kaidanov as white against Robert Hess as black. As you can see, we have a rather unusual material balance:
If you remember your basic point-counting (Pawn=1, Bishop and…
jrosenhouse | May 12, 2012We're two games down in the big World Chess Championship. The challenger is Boris Gelfand of Israel, squaring off against the defending champion Viswanathan Anand of India. Both games were quick draws, but things have been a little more interesting than that makes it sound. Gelfand whipped out the Grunfeld Defense in game one, which has never been part of his repertoire. Game two was a Semi-Slav. Gelfand, perhaps, had slightly the better of it in both games, but neither ever strayed far from equality. Ten more games to go, so let's see what happens after we get past the feeling-out phase.…
jrosenhouse | May 8, 2012For anyone who likes chess, the next few weeks are going to be very good indeed. The United States Chess Championships started today in St. Louis. The first round started a little over ninety minutes ago, but there has already been a strange occurrence. Have a look at this position:
Playing white was Alexander Stripunsky, On the black side was Alexander Onischuk. We are eleven moves in to a very unusual line of the Caro-Kann Defense, with white to move. He uncorked the interesting 12. d3?? It seems natural enough, since it prepares to develop the bishop and attacks the black queen…
jrosenhouse | February 26, 2012Me and my homeys got together last week for one more run at the US Amateur Team East:
The fellow in the Rocky Balboa hat is Ned Walthall. In the middle is Curt Kimbler, followed by Doug Proll on the end. How long have we been playing chess together? Well, let's just say that Ned used to give me rides to chess tournaments, back in the days before I was driving.
As big a chess fan as I am, I haven't been playing many tournaments over the last few years. Competing seriously means putting in some serious time and effort, and I just haven't felt too motivated in that direction lately.…
jrosenhouse | February 17, 2012Well, I'm off to sunny Parsippany, New Jersey to participate in the annual chess extravaganza known as the US Amateur Team East. It's the best tournament of the year, and, frankly, pretty much the only one I still play in. See you when I return!
jrosenhouse | December 8, 2011It occurs to me that I haven't done a chess post in a while. It's possible that I'm the only one unhappy about that, but there's actually a big chess story in the news. You see, for the first time in nearly twenty years, an American chess player has defeated a sitting World Champion. The American player is Hikaru Nakamura. The champ, from India, is Viswanathan Anand. This all went down on Tuesday at the London Chess Classic. More than that, as a chess fan let me just say this: Boy howdy! What a game!
It is sometimes said that top chess players are either perfectionists or pragmatists…
jrosenhouse | July 11, 2011I'm back! Did I miss anything?
The big summer vacay turned out to be much harder work than what I was doing in Virginia prior to leaving, but it was tons of fun nonetheless. Far too much to report on in just one blog post, so we'll do a few.
Of course, the first order of business was to participate in the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia.
No one seemed to mind that I was standing on a chair while taking that picture.
Since the World Open offers the largest cash prizes of any open chess tournament, it routinely attracts some of the top players in the world. One of the great…
jrosenhouse | June 25, 2011I'm leaving town! For the next two weeks. Among other things I shall be sallying forth to Philadelphia to participate in the annual chess extravaganza known as the World Open. Regular blogging shall resume when I return.
jrosenhouse | May 25, 2011It hasn't been the best week for Israel. President Obama gives a perfectly sensible speech saying publicly what everyone already knows, and the vile right-wing noise-machine presents it as “throwing Israel under the bus.” As Jeffrey Goldberg explains, Netanyahu seems hell-bent on a course that seems so obviously suicidal that you have to wonder what he could possibly be thinking.
Still, there has been one piece of good news for Israel this week. We now have an official challenger for the World Chess Championship, and he is Boris Gelfand, formerly of Belarus, but now an Israeli citizen…
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2011I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but the U. S. Chess Championship is currently going on in St. Louis. I have been dutifully following the games online, of course.
It is one of the great cruelties of chess that forty perfect moves can be undone by one moment of carelessness. We amateur players blunder all the time, of course, but somehow it's always a bit comforting to see the top players do likewise. For example, here's a position that occurred in the game between Benjamin Finegold (playing white) and Yasser Seirawan:
We have come to the finale of a long endgame. Finegold had…
jrosenhouse | February 25, 2011If you can forgive another chess post, the current issue of The New York Review of Books has a review, by Gary Kasparov, of a new biography of Bobby Fischer. The chessplayers among you won't find much you didn't already know, but the essay is well done nonetheless. Go have a look:
It would be impossible for me to write dispassionately about Bobby Fischer even if I were to try. I was born the year he achieved a perfect score at the US Championship in 1963, eleven wins with no losses or draws. He was only twenty at that point but it had been obvious for years that he was destined to become a…
jrosenhouse | February 23, 2011
The US Amateur Team East is one of the biggest and most exciting chess tournaments on the calendar. The comraderie of playing as part of a team, coupled with the complete absence of cash prizes, makes for a generally mellow experience. Having not played in a year I was a bit worried about some Caissic corrosion, but the first round helped me warm up.
This game was a reminder of how much fun chess can be when your opponent makes little attempt to cut across your plans. As usual we were paired down in the first round, meaning we were playing a team that was substantially lower…
jrosenhouse | February 18, 2011I will be spending the next few days in sunny Parsippany, NJ, participating in the annual chess extravaganza known as the World Amateur Team Chess Championship. I'm mostly retired from tournament play these days, too stressful, but I always poke up my head to push the wood at this one. I get to see a lot of old friends, and with 1500+ players it is an event not to be missed.
Monday Math will get the week off, in honor of the fact that my poor students have a test next week.
jrosenhouse | February 9, 2011I'll bet someone out there can help me with a technical question. I need to embed a chess diagram into a LaTeX document. It's for the evolution/creation book (don't ask). I know there are a variety of packages available for doing that, but I'm having trouble finding anything very helpful on the web.
For example, I came across this document that describes a package for making diagrams. It looks perfect, attractive diagrams with clear instructions for how to code them. But I can't figure out where to go to download it. It looks like the source code is included in the document, but I don't…
jrosenhouse | January 31, 2011In chess news, Hikaru Nakamura took clear first place at the annual chess extravaganza in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, ahead of world champ Viswanathan Anand, former world champ Vladimir Kramnik, and current world number one Magnus Carlsen. Here's Gary Kasparov explaining the significance of this result for American chess:
Fischer never won a tournament ahead of the world champion. He was second in Santa Monica. Of course there were far fewer such events back then, and Fischer had several great tournament results like Stockholm 62, but it's interesting. Reuben Fine only equaled Keres on…
jrosenhouse | May 11, 2010Could this fantastic match have ended in any other way than with a tremendous tactical slugfest?
The final game of the big chess match took place today, with the score tied and Topalov playing white. Topalov did what Topalov does: he overplayed a slightly better position, allowing Anand to unleash the forces of hell upon him. The game started with one of the stodgiest and most conservative openings, but ended with a breathtaking flurry of tactics. Let's have a look.
Position after 7. ... Nf6-e4
This introduces the Lasker Variation of the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined, an old…