Chess (#677)

Gata Kamsky retained the US title beating Yury Shulman 1.5-0.5. Anna Zatonskih had a much rougher ride before beating Tatev Abrahamyan 2.5-1.5 In an Armageddon bid game, Zatonskih retained black by bidding the lower amount of 20 minutes. White got the statutory 45 minutes. Zatonskih neutralised the big time deficit and drew, to exploit black draw-odds and take the title

The European Chess Union responded strangely to Peter Heine Nielsen’s protest about the tiebreaker system in the European championships, accepting his logical point but refusing to change the results.

With eight World Cup spots available to 29 players, who all finished on 7.5 from 11 games, tournament performance ratings (TPR) were tie-breakers. But the top and bottom rated opponents were deleted before TPR calculation. As Nielsen pointed out, this leads to bizarre results.

The ECU responded “We agree with your principal (“academic”) claims that the new regulations for tie-breaking in the Individual European Championships are an unsuccessful combination (to say the least) of Performance Rating (PR) and Median-Buchholz..”

However, the ECU also said “ Dear Mr. Nielsen, the ECU Board decided to reject both of your claims (a) to retroactively change the final standing of the EICC 2011 and (b) to give compensation to anyone for this. “ This is the chess equivalent of the absurd rain-rule that left South Africa to score 22 runs off 1 ball versus England in the 1992 World Cup.

The May Ratings saw little change at the top for the good reason that most top players were inactive and preparing for big battles. Anand at 2817 remains no:1, ahead of Carlsen 2815 and Aronyan 2808. The No:5 Ivanchuk (2776) and Vugar Gashimov (2760) at no:10 were the only top ten players to actually play games. The inactivity ends this weekend as the Candidates starts.

Amidst the hibernation, there was a sideshow. An Ukrainian illusionist, Andriy Slyusarchuk beat Rybka 4 blindfold! Slyusarchuk says he’s memorised Pi to 30 million digits (the world record is 67,890 digits). He claims he memorised 3000 chess books to develop playing strength. Nobody has worked out how he’s pulled off this stunt. In an article he authored for detiarbata.livejournal.com, GM Georgy Timoshenko claims Slyusarchuk doesn’t even know the rules of chess.

The diagram, WHITE TO PLAY, Sjugirov-Manukyan (Russian Teams Chp 2011) is almost a study. The Ng7 is dominated. Play went 33.g5+! Kg6 34.Nc6! Nxf5 Otherwise 34...Ra2 35.Nce7+ Kxg5 36.Nxg7 Kf6 37.Ngf5 Rxc2 38.Ne3 Rd2 39.Nc6 picks up a piece.

Now white took the exchange and duly exploited it with 35.Nxa5 Kxg5 36.Kf2 Kf4 37.Nc6 Nd6 38.Rb4+ Kf5 39.Rh4 Kg6 40.Rd4 Kf5 41.Nb4 h6 42.Rh4 Kg5 43.Rg4+ Kf6 44.Rg8 Ke6 45.Kg3 Nf5+ 46.Kg4 Kf6 47.Rc8 h5+ 48.Kxh5 (1-0).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player