Chess
Leonard Barden
Saturday March 29, 2008
The Guardian
China’s golden girl Hou Yifan, 14, is closing in on a record-breaking grandmaster title at men’s level. Last week Hou won the Ataturk women’s invitational in Istanbul with an unbeaten 7/9 and a rating performance well above the required 2600 points.
Normally an all-female event would not count for the open GM title but two of her rivals were full GMs and a third awaited title ratification, so she should be going for her third and final GM norm when she competes in Merida, Spain, next week, where the top seed is the England No1 Michael Adams.
Hou can become a GM nearly a year younger than the all-time No1 female player, Judit Polgar. It is less than two decades since many experts argued that women could never achieve the highest male standards, and even after Polgar became a world top-10 GM there were claims that she was a unique phenomenon.
Can Hou surpass Polgar? I am not yet convinced. Polgar could have become a GM at 14 with selective tournaments, and the Beijing prodigy, though a wonderful strategist, has not shown the same level of tactical skills.
Here is the full article.
Let us all be happy that another Woman becomes a GM.
What difference does it make about age of becoming a GM?
I think bragging rights should go to the first woman World Champion that has beaten all of the following men: Kramnik, Topa, Vishy, Carlsen, and the like in a world championship tournament.
Once this happens, I think women will have finally reached the plateau of being competitively equal with their male opponents.
There is no question about ability, the only thing that betrays professional chess women are their biologies. Women need to have children and that is that. The issue is not about intelligence. One can argue that women chess masters who have children are smarter than male chess masters who choose not to have children. The women pass on their abilities and skill to another stronger generation.
Many can argue either way, however this is what has been a challenge to women professionals in every field. One must balance professional life with the health and happiness of children. GM Polgar is a true genius because she has both genius chess skills and a wonderful family just like her sisters. Many women can learn from their examples!
William L. Hosch – November 16th, 2006
As every chess player knows, your opponent had to cheat to beat you. Of course, strong players wouldn’t fall for tricks like a pawn up the sleeve that drops on the board when they aren’t looking or a piece sitting across two squares so that their opponent can j’adoube (“I adjust”) it later. So how can strong players be cheated?Intimidation is probably the oldest and least subtle means of cheating. Chess is known as the royal game and, for obvious reasons, many players have preferred throwing a game to their liege over losing their head. In a widely disputed claim, some chess historians believe that the Estonian Paul Keres, after years of Soviet detention for allegedly cooperating with the German occupation, was ordered to throw games to the Russian Mikhail Botvinnik during the 1948 tournament to fill the vacancy left when world champion Alexander Alekhine died. There is no dispute, however, that the Soviets refused to release the family of the defector Viktor Korchnoi, the challenger in the 1978 world championship match with Anatoly Karpov. According to the Soviets, the fact that Korchnoi’s son was in a Siberian prison had no connection to the match.
Many creative ways of distracting your opponent have been devised. During the 1972 world championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, the Russians claimed that an electronic “brain disruption” device had been installed in Fischer’s chair that was activated whenever Fischer got up to walk around during Spassky’s turn to move. Although Soviet technicians didn’t find anything, it planted a paranoid seed in Fischer’s mind, as he later had all of the fillings removed from his teeth to prevent the Russians from sending signals to his brain. For his part, Fischer insisted that the television cameras were too loud and demanded that the board be moved to a separate secluded room or he would not play. All of the on-again, off-again match distractions seemed to permanently destroy Spassky’s nerves, as he never returned to championship caliber after the match (see video). During the 1978 world championship, Anatoly Karpov had a parapsychologist in the audience, whom challenger Viktor Korchnoi claimed was distorting his brain waves. At one point in the match, Korchnoi threatened to punch the psychic in the nose before deciding to hire his own psychics to counteract the negative vibrations.
Collusion is the most difficult form of cheating to prove. Following the 1962 Curacao tournament to determine the next challenger, Sports Illustrated published Fischer’s article “The Russians Have Fixed World Chess,” in which he bitterly complained that the Russians prearranged draws against one another in order to conserve their energy for play against him (see video). The scandal led to the tournament system being scraped in favor of a series of elimination matches.
It is getting harder all the time to prevent outside help. In How to Cheat at Chess, William Hartson (facetiously) pointed out that, “If God had not meant for us to analyse on our pocket set in the toilet he would not have given us toilet paper on which to make notes.” During the 1978 championship match, Korchnoi accused Karpov of receiving different flavors of yogurt during the game as part of coded instructions. Of course, modern electronics has broadened the possible assistance to include wireless signals and computer analysis. (I’m sure that not all players cheat playing online and correspondence chess…) During the 2006 world championship match, Veselin Topalov questioned Kramnik’s numerous washroom trips and in the ensuing commotion nearly brought the match to an end. In interviews following his loss, Topalov suggested that Kramnik received computer assistance. So far, all that I’ve heard are empty allegations, without any plausible explanation of how Kramnik could have cheated. Still, I would be interested in hearing what others think.
Finally, I can’t resist mentioning two accusations of cheating involving former world champion Garry Kasparov. In a game against Judit Polgar, he blundered but quickly retracted the move by claiming that he had not let go of the piece, thereby avoiding the first loss of a reigning champion to a woman. (By the way, I highly recommend Susan Polgar’s blog. And don’t get me started over how the world championship title was stolen from her!) In 1996, Kasparov lost a match to IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer (see video) and claimed that the team of chess players assembled by IBM had intervened in move selections.
You know, you really ought to give William Hartson’s How to Cheat at Chess, especially chapter 7, a read. He will tell you of a number of very serious players who used their creative ability to find all sorts of clever ways of cheating. Funniest of all is the brilliance displayed by one of your fellow country men on p.44 ff….
– only the ones who are afraid to address their own shortcomings.
Amazing! How did you know? “Terrified of facing my shortcomings” is more like it though. And so the thought of e.g. managing to smuggle some laxative into your opponents tea while playing a long-time control game is not only a great relief, but makes for hours of tournament fun. Here are some ideas for you to get going on:
Shamelessly fart. Loudly. Laugh about it. Talk about the smell with the opponent.
Twitch
Complain about ‘dust’ on the board while your opponent is thinking
Snigger when he makes a move. Look stunned and shake head so as to give the impression the move is an obvious blunder
STARE at the opponent, don’t blink – especially when your opponent is thinking
Regularly scratch your tackle. Mutter something about a bacterial infection getting under your finger nails
Keep adjusting his pieces, but be sure to say ‘J’adoube’
Wear a wizard’s hat and mutter various curses and spells against him under your breath while he is thinking – loud enough for him to just hear it. When he looks up, stop and grin inanely.
Write down on your score sheet, instead of his name something else like: ‘Ugliest frigging chess player I’ve ever seen’, or ‘Armpit of Hades’ – but so that he can see it. If he doesn’t look, then show him – with a serious a face
If the opponent gets up to call the arbiter, DENY EVERYTHING.
I wonder if Barden got his sources correct. It’s impossible to get a norm in Merida since they play only 7 rounds.