Chessbase News, Germany
June 9 2006

Mig on Chess #210:

Precious Mettle

“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline – it
helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear
weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.” – Frank Zappa

There have been quit a few significant events in the chess world in
past few days, several of them not having to do with the off the
board GM dust-up that will surely be reported here in detail.

We’ll start off with the chess instead. Armenia’s Olympiad team
didn’t let down their chess-mad nation and took the gold medal by an
impressive two-point margin. They were the only team that didn’t lose
a single match, drawing three and winning ten. This shouldn’t be
considered a real surprise, although it used to be generally
recognized that the gold is always Russia’s to lose. Armenia won the
bronze in 2004, the obvious difference this year being Levon
Aronian’s transformation into a world-class player and a force on
board one.

Having a new first board has a huge impact on a team’s potency.
Akopian was strong on board one for Armenia in 2004 but was
devastating on board two in 2006. The Armenians didn’t lose a single
game in the final eight rounds and held on to their big lead with
eight draws at the end. First reserve Gabriel Sargissian exemplified
the curious strategy employed by the winning team. They played the
same four players for the last nine rounds! Lputian and Minasian were
both on 2.5/3 but never played again. Sargissian’s final 10/13 isn’t
as impressive as the amazing 8/9 he had before drawing his last four
games. Going with their hot hands turned out to be more important
than giving them rest.

The vagaries of the scoring system and the swiss system of pairings
had a few side-effects. In the final round Armenia coasted home with
four brief, prearranged draws with Hungary. The Hungarians, without
Leko and Polgar, were never in contention but jumped up at the end by
bashing Iceland 4-0 in round 12. A 3-1 victory over Armenia would
have given Hungary a medal; a narrow win would have meant tie for
third. Instead they showed all the ambition of a bowl of goulash and
took the four guaranteed draws. Congratulations guys, you finished
fifth. That’s what, the aluminum medal? Cowardium?

>From a lack of mettle back to medals of precious metal, 12th seed
China took silver while 7th seed USA got the bronze. Israel tied the
US on 33 points and had the identical match score, but lost the
bronze on strength of opposition tiebreaks. China took silver despite
losing four matches, an achievement that must have required some
serious feng shui. They lost to just about every contender they
faced, in fact, falling to Russia, Armenia, USA, and France. (USA and
Israel lost one match each.) China compensated by whipping weaker
teams like love slaves on bondage night, scoring 3.5 four times and
stomping the not-weak Georgian team 4-nil. Former world’s youngest GM
Bu Xiangzhi, now 21, emerged as a solid top board, winning when he
was supposed to and not losing a single game. His startling 2790
performance was surpassed by the even younger Wang Yue, who fulfilled
his great promise with a 10/12 score and the second-highest
performance rating of the entire event, 2837. The other Chinese
players were only so-so, but they didn’t have to be better.

If you recall, last November China also took silver – and almost won
gold – at the World Team Championship despite failing to excel
against the other top teams. Such performances always lead to some
fans speaking out in favor of using match points instead of board
points for the primary Olympiad scoring system. Currently match
points are used as second tiebreak. This makes sense because, as
we’ll see, match points are practically meaningless when you are
pairing with board points. Using match points, Armenia still wins
easily, followed by USA and Israel. Teams as far down as 30th finish
higher than China. Russia also lost four matches and would have
finished around 20th on match points.

The obvious problem is that when a 2.5-1.5 squeaker is worth the same
as a 4-0 annihilation, the cumulative score doesn’t say as much about
the strength of the team. While the teams would doubtlessly play
differently were the scoring system different – and much more
conservatively, of course – we can see this effect by looking at the
Turin scores. On match points Georgia jumps up from =11-15 to clear
fourth place. Scotland had one fewer match point than China, 16, but
finished in a tie for 49th-54th and lost to China 3.5-0.5 in the
second round. Had the Scots eked out one more half point against
Argentina in the final round they would have tied China on match
points despite being a far weaker team that faced much weaker
competition throughout.

Of course this is somewhat beside the point because if you are
scoring by match points you are also pairing by match points and that
wouldn’t happen. With match point scoring teams do a lot of agreeing
to draws on certain boards to give unofficial rest days and to target
what they think are better match-ups. Despite the aberrations it’s
not as if a bunch of weak teams have snuck into the medals, either
historically or this year. Super-conservative play, many more short
agreed draws, and ignoring the value of a big match win is not the
way to go.

Speaking of big wins, how about the bronze medal for team USA? It
looked like the Americans were out of it after they lost a tough
match to Israel in the 12th round. But the pairings tossed them a
Viking funeral and they got Norway in the final round while rivals
Russia and Israel finally faced each other and France fell to the
tough Bulgarian squad. (Anyone know why there were only 13 rounds
this year instead of the usual 14?) USA scored 3.5 against Norway to
vault up and tie Israel. The Israelis must have thought they had a
medal in the bag when they beat Russia 3-1, but – oh the tsuris! –
they had underperformed for most of the event and their tiebreaks
were dreck.

The real American miracle had come earlier, against France in round
ten. The French were all set to administer a 3.5-0.5 blowout with one
game already drawn and winning positions on the three remaining
boards. Suddenly Bauer blundered into a mating net against Ibragimov
and Nakamura got a miracle endgame draw against Fressinet so the
American’s got a 2-2 split and a huge morale boost that carried them
through to the finish. (The comments made at Playchess and on the
message boards during course of these games are priceless. They’re
up! They’re down! They’re up!)

Hikaru Nakamura in particular seemed charged up and the 2005 US
champion put the team on his young shoulders the rest of the way,
winning three straight games, including the US team’s only wins in
its matches with Russia and Israel. The only decisive game of the
match with Russia was his win over Grischuk, in which Nakamura
characteristically avoided exchanges only to head into a losing
position. But as the saying goes, that was the penultimate blunder.
Computer analysis is often unkind to Nakamura’s risky, if not risqué,
play, but his opponents find it very hard to deal with and that’s
what counts. From his last four Turin games you could say he was
losing in two, perhaps three, with trouble in the fourth. His score
from these games: 3.5/4!

American top board Gata Kamsky staggered to the finish line after a
valiant marathon that started in Bulgaria. He’d already looked tired
when Topalov caught him at the finish of the MTel, but unlike Topalov
he came directly to Turin to take over Olympiad duties. (Four of the
six MTel players did this; Topalov and Ponomariov didn’t.) After a
strong 4/6 start in Turin Kamsky was exhausted, but he kept going out
there to make sure the US would be putting out its strongest team,
making things easier on the other boards. Current US champ Alexander
Onischuk surely benefited from Kamsky’s presence. He was a very solid
first board in Calvia in 2004 and here on board two he turned in four
wins without a defeat. Let’s not forget that the 2004 US team
finished fourth without Kamsky or Nakamura. USA captain John
Donaldson has a report here.

Dress for Success! Assaulting your opponents eyeballs is legal. Two
of these were worn by top players, one by a Kalmykian dancer. To be
fair, the orange on Kamsky (center) is one of the “Right Move”
t-shirts handed out by the Kok campaign. With matching baseball caps,
of course. Rublevsky (left) has no such excuse, unless he’s
representing the Hula Party.

Russia, wherefore art thou, Russia? The tip-top seed finished =6-10,
and this two years after their silver medal in Calvia was considered
a dramatic fall from grace. And the weak link? It certainly wasn’t
Vladimir Kramnik, back to the board after a half a year away to
recuperate from a difficult medical condition. All he did was face
the toughest opposition of any player in Turin and turn in the
highest performance rating, 2847. The only sour note was his curious
absence in the final round, when Russia fell to Israel 1-3 to fall
off the podium. Russian champion Rublevsky turned in the only the
second negative score in Russian team history. Dreev managed it in
back in 1992 when the Russian team first appeared.

It could be said that Russia deserved better. They faced the
strongest teams and had the second-highest performance rating as a
squad. (Some stats from the Wiener-Zeitung site, others from a few of
Jeff Sonas’s posts to the Daily Dirt.) That’s the system for you, and
you can’t lose ten games and expect a medal. Defending gold medal
winner Ukraine also fell from grace, finishing with the same 32
points as Russia. They had the absence of Ponomariov on board two to
deal with.

They could also feel better via schadenfreude by looking at what
happened to the #2 seed. India crashed and burned all the way to
=30-34th. Every player underperformed his rating substantially and
they went with essentially a five-man team, Singh playing only in the
first round (and losing). Anand won his first game after arriving
from Sofia and never won again. His long string of draws ended with a
sensational loss to Canadian champion Pascal Charbonneau.

Many of the top individual performances went to members of the junior
set. Wang Yue, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Bu Xiangzhi, and
David Navara all had results worthy of top-ten players. Will that be
the top ten in five years? The Czech team led by Navara had a great
event but couldn’t keep up the pace at the end. Uzbekistan also
deserves mention as a lowly seeded team that was up near the leaders
for most of the event. The young Azerbaijani team faired poorly
despite a strong showing by Radjabov. They certainly would have done
better with Mamedyarov on the team, but he was absent after several
disputes with his federation.

As usual, the women’s event was much truer to seeding than the open.
(Still called the “Men’s Olympiad” by some, despite at least five
women participating, two of them on board one.) Ukraine’s decision to
put young Katerina Lahno on board two paid off when Zhukova had a
great event on top board. Their reserve Ushenina played more games
than anyone else on the team and went undefeated. Then came Russia
and China and a huge gap down to a pack of teams that included USA,
Hungary, and traditional power Georgia. Chinese reserve Hou Yifan
scored 11/13. The Chinese medaled with most of their top women
players not participating, a remarkable display of depth.

The coverage of the celebrations in Armenia are good for any chess
fan’s soul. The photos of the crowds at the airport are great. They
were met by the Armenian prime minister as well as many cabinet
members and military officials. “The Olympic champions then headed to
the city’s Freedom Square where more than a thousand people waving
national red-blue-orange flags and chanting “Armenia! Armenia!”
gathered to cheer them. The celebration, featuring speeches by senior
officials and performances by Armenian pop singers, was broadcast
live on state television.”

Wow! And check out that gorgeous Soviet-era Chayka automobile. It
looks like a scene out of American Graffiti on the Hrazdan. Team
captain and Defense Minister Sarkisian was even nominated to head the
national football federation. I didn’t see Aronian in any of the
team-with-flag photos in Yerevan so he may have gone directly home to
Germany. Either that or the diminutive world #3 is hidden behind the
flags. No matter, he played very big in Turin. His shattering win
against Sokolov and his 11.Nf7!! against Navara in round eleven were
worth the price of admission.

Aronian-Navara before 11.Nf7! and Sokolov-Aronian, final position 0-1

Vote Early and Often
Speaking of prices, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov won reelection as FIDE
president. He’ll now be in charge until 2010 or until indicted,
whichever comes first. Like anyone who likes the game of chess as
traditionally played I was disappointed with the result. Living on
the whims of a dictator is no way to run a professional sport, so
chess will continue not to be one for now. I was also disappointed by
the estimable David Levy’s analysis of the election, which gave
entirely too much credit to considered thought in the result.

I’m sure it’s polite to dissect the choice between Ilyumzhinov and
Kok as if all the delegates had deeply pondered the future of global
chess before casting their votes. (That they were motivated by
geopolitics is even more risible.) The sad truth continues to be that
there are quite a few delegates who have nothing in mind but their
own enrichment and when one of the candidates also has that
enrichment in mind he’s going to be very tough to beat. With the many
federations that are essentially without players, the delegates are
beholden to no one. No responsibility, no accountability… hey, a
new watch!

The system of one vote per federation is nice and democratic but
preposterous if the long-term best interests of the sport are in
mind. Why should a federation delegate from a poor nation with few or
no international players care about potentially mythical corporate
sponsorship and TV deals for Grandmasters if he can get a box of
clocks instead? I’m not even saying he’s wrong to choose
self-interest, or the immediate interests of his tiny federation. The
problem is the system. How can FIDE tackle long-view issues requiring
investment and planning when short-term benefits are handed out
instead?

The United Nations – itself a dysfunctional organization not
necessarily to be held up as a model – has the Security Council to
cut down on such patronage, among myriad reasons. If Ilyumzhinov’s
FIDE continues to ignore the needs of the vast majority of players,
expect the major federations to increasingly go their own way. The
only cards FIDE holds are the rating list and the increasingly rare
burst of Kirsan cash. Both are replaceable. It’s useless to speak of
reform while Ilyumzhinov is still in charge. Despite the close
election (when it comes to chessplayers represented, Kok probably
won) it’s unlikely FIDE will acknowledge the tremendous amount of
opposition to Ilyumzhinov’s policies and methods. At the very least
they will continue to be as oblivious as before to their failures.
Where are those candidates matches? My guess is that the delegates
from Somalia and Belize don’t much care. And why should they?

Even the biggest feather in Ilyumzhinov’s cap, the Kramnik-Topalov
match, has been plucked from a turkey. I’m happy about the match
because I like matches and chess and don’t like loose ends; it’s the
follow-up that is depressing. Having a unification match that leads
to a world championship tournament is like having the Beatles reunite
and play only Ringo songs. The greatness of chess and its champions
was founded on titanic matches. Big players, big cities, big
sponsors. Adding a supertournament to the calendar is hardly a
substitute.

According to FIDE there will never be another legitimate world
championship match. Offering a shot to the highest bidder in the top
20 is not the same. Giving a fair shot to anyone with the ability to
fight through a cycle was why FIDE took over the championship. Now,
if Radjabov’s Azerbaijani backers can put up a million dollars he
gets a match, but Anand doesn’t. The only shot Anand gets is in a
tournament little different from Linares or Sofia, trivializing the
title the way the knock-outs did. Decreasing the status of the world
championship title – historically the only event big enough to
penetrate the mass media in many countries – decreases the status of
the game.

In other news, a shout-out to Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, who proved
that an Israeli can win a world championship even if FIDE doesn’t let
the humans play. Their program Junior just won the world computer
chess championship in Turin. Their program also continues to play the
most risky, interesting chess.

28.Rd5! against Rajlich (the engine Rybka under its programmer’s
name) in the diagrammed position was a very pretty pin+clearance move
to save the draw. It doesn’t always work, but Junior continues its
tradition of offering material to enter visibly dubious positions
that it fights out of successfully. Perhaps a Nakamura sponsorship
deal should be arranged.

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