Pestaño: Records in chess

Chessmoso

Thursday, November 22, 2012

THERE are more than 100 records in chess and counting. It is the most compared to any other sport.

Listed in the various websites I visited, including an article by Hall of Famer Bill Wall in chess.com, are the shortest and the longest games, the youngest and the oldest players, the most and the least players, the best and the worst etc.

Cebu holds the record for the largest chess tournament in terms of participants with 43,157. It covered a period of three months and had its grand finals on Jan. 22, 2012 and I was one of the official witnesses.

Just lately, Rhenzi Kyle Sevillano, 13, set a perfect record of 9/9 in Davao, which is rare in top level chess. Shell can be considered as “top level” at least for kiddies.

There are only a very small number who set perfect scores at top level. Gustav Neumann went 34-0 in Berlin in 1865. Henry Atkins went 15-0 in Amsterdam in 1899. Emanuel Lasker went 13-0 in New York in 1893. Capablanca went 13-0 in New York in 1913.

Alekhine went 11-0 in the Moscow Championship in 1919-1920. Bobby Fischer went 11-0 in the US Championship in 1963-64.

Wesley So scored 9/9 in the 2011 Inter-Provincial Chess Team Championship and won the gold medal in the 2011 SEA Games 2011 in Indonesia with a score of 9/9.

Eugene Torre played in 21 Chess Olympiads, the most by any player.

In 2011, Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami faced 604 players in 25 hours. He won 580, drew 16, and lost 8.

A disaster in a simultaneous exhibition was two wins and 18 losses by Joe Hayden, aged 17, in August 1977. Hayden wanted to set an American record by playing 180 people simultaneously at a shopping center in Cardiff, NJ but only 20 showed up. Hayden lost 18 of the games (including one to a seven-year-old). His two wins were scored against his mother and a player who got tired of waiting and left in mid-game.

Iceland has the highest per capita chess population in the world. In December 2005, Reykjavik had eight grandmasters living in its city of 110,000.

The highest rating by a woman is Judit Polgar’s peak Fide rating of 2735 (July and October 2005 lists). Hermann Helms wrote a chess column for 62 years, from 1893 to 1955, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

George Koltanowski (honorary GM) wrote a daily chess column for 52 years, totaling over 19,000 articles in the San Francisco Chronicle . On Dec. 4 1960, in San Francisco, California, he played 56 consecutive games blindfolded, with only 10 seconds per move. He won fifty and drew six games. It is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

The largest private library for chess is owned by GM Lothar Schmid with over 20,000 chess books. The strongest player is not human but a chess computer “Houdini”with a rating of 3300.

These are just some of the cool trivia in chess and I will be writing about them in the future.

LOCAL CHESS. The First Colonnade Mall Youth Open Chess Tournament will be tomorrow and Sunday at the Activity Center, Colonnade Mall.

Organized by the Cebu Chess Association, this developmental chess tourney for the youth is sponsored by Rose Pharmacy Inc., A1 Handless Inc. and Eng’r and Archt. Jefrey M. Solis of Cepca.

The tourney will be a seven-round Swiss System, with 30 minutes time control.

Registration starts at 12:30 p.m. while the game proper starts at 1:30 p.m.

Cepca will have a team match up against selected Ladies varsity players from USC, UC and USJR 12 boards at Collonade tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Our monthly tournament for members only will be on Sunday at Colonnade Mall at 1 p.m.
Please text Jun Olis at 09232629642 for details of both tournaments.

The tournament at Jun Olis residence in Opon in celebration of the city fiesta last Tuesday was won by Romy Resuera. He was followed by Kraig Quinain and Jojo Muralla.

(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)

Pestaño: Karjakin, Grischuk are rapid and blitz champs

By Frank 'Boy' Pestaño

Chessmoso

Thursday, July 12, 2012

THE Official World Blitz and Rapid Chess Championships were held from July 1-11 in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan and had a prize money of $400,000. It is worth noting that the Rapid championship was a first in the history of Fide.

The rapid tournament was a 16-player single round robin and the blitz event was a 16-player double round robin.

Rate of play was 15 minutes plus 10-second increment per move, starting from move one for rapid and three minutes plus two-second increment per move, starting from move one for blitz.

There was a special rule. The players were not allowed to offer draws directly to their opponents. Any draw claim will be permitted only through the Chief Arbiter and accepted in case of a triple-repetition of the position or the 50-move rule.

The players who joined the tournament were Magnus Carlsen, Teimour Radjabov, Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Morozevich, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexander Grischuk, Veselin Topalov, Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Viktor Bologan, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alexey Dreev, Igor Kurnosov, Vladislav Tkachiev, Murtas Kazhgaleyev, Anuar Ismagambetov, Dmitry Andreikin, Le Quang Liem, Nikolai Chadaev, Pavel Kotsur and Rinat Jumabayev.

Karjakin won the rapid competition with a score of 11.5/15, a full point ahead of Carlsen. He had an incredible third day performance of 4.5/5.

After two days of play and 10 games Carlsen looked like he was a certain winner. But
then the Norwegian world number 1 lost two in a row, allowing Karjakin to catch and then overtake him.

Ivanchuk played a large part in the final result, running out of time to Karjakin in his first game of the day, then beating Carlsen in the second.

Carlsen lost another game against Grischuk in round 13, and should have lost another when Veselin Topalov missed a checkmate in their final round clash.

Karjakin holds the record for both the youngest International Master (11 years and eleven months old) and youngest grandmaster in history (at the age of 12 years and seven months).

The World Blitz Championship was won by Grischuk . He led almost throughout. Carlsen started slowly but finished strongly, defeating Karjakin to overtake him for second place.

Grischuk is a Russian grandmaster and was Russian Champion in 2009. He has won two team gold medals and one individual bronze medal at Chess Olympiads.

Russia vs. China. Russia defeated China 77.5-72.5 in their annual Scheveningen match held in St. Petersburg this year from July 1-9.

The Russian men’s team won the classical chess, 13.5-11.5, but their women went down, 14.5-10.5. In rapid chess, the Russian men also won, 29-21. The Chinese women scored another victory as well, albeit with a smaller margin, 25.5-24.5.

The players who represented Russia (men’s) -Dmitry Jakovenko, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Nikita Vitiugov, while the Chinese men’s players were Wang Hao, Wang Yue, Li Chao, Ding Liren, Yu Yangyi.

The women’s players were Valentina Gunina, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Natalija Pogonina, Olga Girya, Baira Kovanova for Russia and Zhao Xue, Ju Wenjun, Huang Qian, Shen Yang, Ding Yixin for China.

Poker. Antonio Esfandiari has won the largest buy-in tournament in poker history, the $1-million Big One for One Drop at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

He is a professional poker player and former professional magician, known for his elaborate chip tricks. By winning the event, along with the largest cash prize in the history of poker at $18,346,673, Esfandiari is now ranked number one in all-time tournament poker winnings.

(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)

Pestaño: Different definitions of chess

Chessmoso

Thursday, November 8, 2012

CHESS is more than just a game. Different people look at it from different points of view.

Peterson Sia, who has an extensive collection of chess books, lent me the Complete Chess Addict by Mike Fox and Richard James where there is a collection of various definitions of the game of chess by its adherents, mostly grandmasters and famous people. Here they are. Also take note of the definition by Chessmoso at the end.

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever--George Bernard Shaw.

Chess is not a game but a disease-Henry Campbell. Bannerman.

Chess is the art of analysis. Mikhail Botvinnik.

Chess is a beautiful mistress. Bent Larsen.

Chess is a fighting game which is purely intellectual and excludes chance. Richard Reti.

Chess is everything--art,science and sport. Anatoly Karpov.

Chess is one of the sins of pride--John Bromyard.

Chess is life. Bobby Fischer.

Chess is undoubtedly the same sort of art as painting or sculpture. Jose Raul Capablanca.

Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for. Hans Ree.

Chess is a fine entertainment. Leo Tolstoy.

Chess is not merely an idle amusement……life is a kind of chess. Ben Franklin.

Chess is the game which reflects most honour on human wit. Voltaire.

Chess is sport-a violet sport. Marcel Duchamp.

Chess is the touchstone of the intellect. John Wolfgang von Goethe.

Chess is not for the timid soul. Wilhelm Steinitz.

Chess is an international language. Edward Lasker.

Chess is work. Walter Browne.

Chess is a fairy Tale of 1001 blunders. Savielly Tartakower.

Chess is the most exciting game in the world. Irving Chernev.

Chess is a test of wills. Paul Keres.

Chess is life in miniature. Chess is struggle. Chess is battles. Gary Kasparov.

Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. Indian proverb.

Chess is the struggle against error. Johannes Zukertort.

Chess is a contest between two men in which there is considerable ego involved. Reuben Fine.

Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or art.

Napoleon.

Chess is as much a mystery as women. Cecil Purdy.

Chess is one of the noblest inventions of the human mind. Cyril Joad.

Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness. Siegbert Tarrasch.

Chess is not a science. Henri Poincare.

Chess is not only knowledge and logic. Alexander Alekhine.

Chess is a cure for headaches. John Maynard Keynes.

Chess is the fairest of all the games.

Chess is an addiction that has sometimes destroyed marriages ,friendship and one’s usefulness—Chessmoso, by observation after more than 50 years of being involved in the game.

1st Stallion Open. Fernando Villanueva is inviting all players to an NCFP-rated tournament on Nov. 10-11 in celebration of the Pasil fiesta along Conception St. Contest starts at 1pm.

Format is 7 rounds Swiss with a time control of 30 minutes. Champion will pocket P5,000 while the second and third placers will earn P3,000 and P2,000, respectively.

The fourth to 10th placers will settle for P300 each. There will be special prizes for the top lady and kiddie players.

This competition is organized by NM Rogelio Enriquez, Gino Cabansay and Jun “Amo”Gracia. For more details contact arbiter Marvin Ruelan-09267352951.

(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot .com)