Mediaboss Marketing

The way wetake notation and the way weset clocks are two prime examples of rulebook U-Turns: rulesthat have gone througha 180-degree reversal.

In the Beginning:In the pre-technology dayspaper and pencil timesplayers mostly moved their chess soldier first and then notated it later. Then along came a fellow by the name ofAlexanderKotov. In his bookThink Like a Grandmaster,he advised that players first write down their move on their score sheet. This procedure, at the very least, slowed down many a wood pushers knee-jerk response to their opponents last move. It created a momentwhena player could reconsider their plan before executing it. A lot of players and scholastic coaches bought into the ideawrite your movefirst! A whole generation of chess wizards grew up notating their idea before completing their move over-the-board.

Rule-Benders Association Strikes Again:Like any well-meaning idea, this wasoneof whichwastaken advantage. Some players would notate,reconsider,erase the move,notate again,reconsider,erase that move again and again beforephysically movingany new piece on theboard.Eventually, avocal minority claimed thismethodologywas cheating, under the argumentthat it was note-taking. They never did drum up enough support for their cheating claim among the delegates--until the advent of e-notation devices.

E-Notation Devices:When e-notation devices appeared on the scene the landscape changed instantly. With those devices,a player couldview what the board position would look like on their screen,beforeactuallycommitting to that movethatscheating 101. Thedelegates changed the rules:Everyone, regardless of thosewith or without e-notation devices,MUST make their move first on the board before notating it.

The U-Turn:The player backlash to that move first dictate forced a rulebook U-Turn.Today,an unannounced variation to the main rule (move first-notate next) allows aplayer usinga paper scoresheetto scribble first,then make that same move OTB.Butnone of thatwrite,erase,write again,erase again stuff is allowed.

Interestingly,online games now sanctioned by US Chess avoids the notation problem altogether, asonline servicesautomaticallytake notationandavoid the entire issue ofthe playernotating first or moving first.

In the Beginning:The journey of the clock-setting rulebook U-turn is short.In the analog-clock days,setting your device was easy:simply set the clock mechanically for the base time control,no delay, no increment. Then came digital clocks,which provideddelay and increment.

Delay:For games withadelay,the players base time waits for a delay period before counting down after each move. That extra delay time results in digital-clock gamersreceivingmore playing time than analog gamers,so thedelegates created a rulefor balance:Games with delays reduced the base time by one minute for each second of delay. Digital clock manufactures had delay controls builtstandard, but notfor that adjusted base time, and fiddling withthosedigital clocks proved to beannoying and cumbersome.

Increment:When incrementsentered the scene adding valuablebasetime aftereach moveall sorts of fairness issuesreared up.Again, games with digital increment clockswere providingmore playing time than analog-clock games. To compensate, analog clocks werepermitted toadd to the base time, an extraminute for each second of increment. It didnt take long for players to believe that analog clocks gavethem more playing time.

The U-Turn:All thisfiddling with clocksstopped when thedelegates saw the lightand did a 180-degree turnabout. Now all clocks,digital and non-digital,have tostart with the same base-time control. No addingtime. No subtractingtime. No clock fiddling.Wenow all start at the same pointanotherrulebook U-Turn!

Future Rulebook U-Turn?There is one last bit of minutia that thedelegates will probably still need tohandle:increment time starting at move one. Someplayersbelieve that base time plus increment time together need to bedisplayedat the start of the game(ex:theclockfor a game 60 with a 30 second increment wouldbe seen as60:30).But the argument is that extra 30 seconds might be the difference between a flag fall and extra playing time. Not all digital clocks have the capability to make this happen, insteadonly showingthe base time for move one. The increment time is then automatically added only after the clock is pressed,so that the incrementonly becomesavailable starting with move twonot moveone. Tohave the incrementstartat move one,we are back to fiddling about with those timers again!

I wonder what OTB rules will come under U-Turn scrutiny with the advent of any new online US Chess rules?

The free, updated as of 5-11-20, US Chess Rules (Chapters 1+2+11 from the 7thedition rulebook) are now downloadable and availableon-line. Past Just the Rules columns can be viewedhere.

Tim Just is a National Tournament Director, FIDE National Arbiter, and editor of the 5th, 6th, and 7theditions of theUS Chess Rulebook. He is also the author ofMy Opponent is Eating a Doughnut&Just Law, which are both available fromUS Chess SalesandAmazon/Kindle. Additionally, Tim recently revisedThe Guide To Scholastic Chess, a guide created to help teachers and scholastic organizers who wish to begin, improve, or strengthen their school chess program. Tim is also a member of the US Chess Rules Committee. His new column, exclusive to US Chess, Just the Rules will help clarify potentially confusing regulations.

Read more:
Just the Rules: Rulebook U-Turns | US Chess.org - uschess.org

In a previous column of 17th October 2020 I referred to a workby the great ancient Greek potter and vase-painter Exekias, which depicts the Greek heroes, Ajax and Achilles, absorbed in a board game during the siege of Troy. The game was not chess, but that visual evidence did not discourage classicists from datingthe moment of the invention of chess to the siege. It is generally accepted that HomersIliad, which recounts dramatic key events from the siege, emanates from the 8th century BCE. The supposition that chess also derives from that period wouldplace its introductionin an era centuries before even Needhams claim, scrutinised in my column last week, that chess, under the guise of Xiangqi (Chinese chess), dates from China in the sixth century AD.

So which genius, according to this scenario, is meant to have invented chess? The answer is Palamedes, the only warrior in the Trojan War to have outwitted the cunning Odysseus.

In the latter half of the 18th century, and the first decades of the 19th, France dominated world chess with a stream of champions, such as Philidor, Deschapelles, La Bourdonnais and Saint-Amant, the last of whom continued the tradition of the French beating the English at chess, by winning a short match in London against the foremost English exponent, Howard Staunton.

It was Louis-Charles Mah deLa Bourdonnais, cementing his reputation with a series of victories in London during 1834, who conceived the notion of founding the worlds first chess magazine, which he christenedLe Palamde, in honour of the supposed mythical inventor of the game. The evidence was nebulous, based on parallel legends of Palamedess alleged invention of dice, even, in some accounts, of numbers and the general fact that Palamedes was, if anything, even more intelligent than the famously brainy Odysseus.

La Bourdonnais launched his ground-breaking periodical in 1836 and it lasted until 1839. La Bourdonnais died a year later. In 1841Le Palamdewas revived by hissuccessor as the leading French chess protagonist, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, who published it continuously until the close of 1847, when this homage to the Ancient Greek hero finally and definitively ceased publication. Somewhat ironically, the first phase ofLe Palamdes existence coincided with one of the most coruscating of epochs in the history of French chess. In contrast, the magazines revival was obliged to cover what was predictably termed the Waterloo of French chess, by English fans. This was Howard Stauntons overwhelming rematch victory against Saint-Amant himself at Paris in 1843, whereupon the sceptre passed from the French capital to London, and Simpsons-in-the-Strandachieved its apotheosis as the grand home of British Chess.

Is the claim that Palamedes invented chess in any way plausible? Hidden in the answers to this question are some fascinating insights into the nature of myth and legend.

In Greek legend, after Paris abductedHelen and eloped with her to Troy, her brother-in-law, the Greek commander Agamemnon, despatched Palamedes to Ithaca, the realm of Odysseus,to persuade the ruler of the island to join the attack on, as Christopher Marlowe stylishly put it, the topless towers of Ilium. Odysseus had previouslypledged to uphold the marital rights of Helen and Agamemnons brother, King Menelaus of Sparta.

Odysseus, however, had no intention of honouring his oath, so, when the recruiting officer fetched up on his shores, he feigned madness, by ploughing his fields with the deranged combination of ass and an ox, both yokedto the same plough. Of course, this reduced the operation to a chaotic farce. Palamedes, though, easily saw through the ruse and placed Odysseus son, the young Telemachus, in the pathof the plough, whereupon Odysseus had to abandon the cunning deception, ceased his bogus work and thus involuntarily admitted his sanity. By means of this counter ruse, Palamedes forced Odysseus to sign up for the war against the wife-stealing Trojans.

Odysseus, apparently, never forgave Palamedes for exposing his trick to excuse himself from the Trojan War, and when Palamedes himself counselled the Greeks to abandon the siege and sail back home, Odysseus spotted his opportunity and struck him down. Concealing gold in Palamedes tent, Odysseus fabricated a missive, seemingly from the Trojan King Priam.The incriminating note was inevitably discovered, the Greeks accused Palamedes of treachery and he was stoned to death. According to other accounts, Odysseus and Diomedes (another Greek hero) drowned him during a fishing trip, while yet another version indicates that he was enticed into a well in the hope of finding treasure, and was then crushed by fall of stones. Palamedes is prominent in many accounts of the Siege of Troy, but Homer himself omits him entirely fromThe Iliad.

Ovid, Virgil, Plato and Euripideshave all written about his fate, while inmore modern times the outstandingDutch dramatist, Joost van den Vondel, wrote Palamedes in 1625,based on the ancient Greek myths. The play caused unmistakable and topical political reverberations, the judicial murder of Palamedes representing the execution of the contemporary politician Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Vondel excoriated this act as legalised assassination, with the guiltfor Palamedess death beingthrown squarely on the shoulders of the autocratic Agamemnon, a metaphor for the Dutch ruler, Prince Maurits of Nassau.

What I find mostinteresting is that a separate appearance of Palamedes existsin an entirely different guise and from an entirely different direction.

Sir Palamedes also enters records of myth and legend as a knight of King Arthurs round table, a deadly enemy of Tristan, failed lover of Princess Iseult, slayer of the Questing Beast, friend of Lancelot and ultimately the victim of Gawain.

The fascinating element here is the way myths, legends and identifiable characters from the Trojan war, reappear in a Celtic, Irish and mediaeval guise. A startling instance is the parallel between the deaths of Agamemnon in classical myth and the death of Llew Skilful Hand in the Welsh epicThe Mabinogion.

Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War, only to be murdered in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. The same fate befalls Llew, and both stories emphasise that the victim dies neither wholly on land nor wholly in water. Both also employ symbols of eagles and goats, the name Aegisthus itself having its root in the Greek for a goat.

The parallel, noted but not explained by Robert Graves in his epic work on Greek myth,is either an example of the incursion of such myths into other cultures, while assuming the outward forms consistent with the new host, or, and I think this more likely, that there must be an ancient proto myth originating further east, which has resurfaced in different forms. In this case it would be the tragedy of a mighty warrior, naked, unarmed, vulnerable, suspended in a limbo between the elements of earth, air and water and traduced by those he trusted most. Such a potent narrative might well have spread and taken root in a multiplicity of varied forms, such as the dramatic trilogy of Aeschyluswhich covers the death of Agamemnonand its consequences, and the Celtic wizardry ofThe Mabinogion.

As with the game of gwyddbyll from The Mabinogion, and Xiangqi advocated as the progenitor of chess by Needham, the claims of Palamedes, in whichever of his two manifestations, to have invented chess,have about as much credibility as various legends claiming that the Egyptian god Thoth invented draughts. Attribution of chess to Palamedes tells us more about 19th French veneration for the ancient classics of Greece and Rome, than it does about any identifiable and reliable evidence for how chess came into being.

With Palamedes relegated to the realm of the imagination, I conclude by focusing onthe latest news fromthe world of chess. Unfortunately, The 2020 Candidates Tournament to determine the new challenger to reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen has been suspended at the midway point, due to Covid-19. FIDE, the governing body for global chess, now seeks a new venue for the restart, which is expected to be spring 2021.

The sons and daughters of Palamedes are quite unaccustomed to fear and would probably resume combat in almost any location which volunteered its services and invited them to play chess. Might I, however, suggest that the ideal hosting nation would be Germany, a state which has spectacularly bucked the statistical trend amongst industrialised countries for coronavirus infection.

The figures, as I write, for deaths per million people from Covid-19 are most revealing: Spain743; USA695; U.K.660; Italy620; Sweden586; France 532and Germany121.

Why might this be? My explanationis that the Germans, unlike the French, Spanish and ourselves in the UK are notably proficient at obeying orders, including public health orders.German literature can even boast one play,The Prince of Homburg by Heinrich von Kleist, which glorifies obedience to orders from above, and another,The Captain of Kpenickby Carl Zuckmayer, which satirises that self-same German propensity for unquestioning adherence to the diktats of perceived authority.

Suffering far lower lethal levels of the pandemicthan any other comparable nation, Germany seems to me to be the perfect location for the restart.

This weeks gameis a brilliant victory by La Bourdonnais, founding editor ofLe Palamde, and taken from his glorious series in London 1834. The French maestro certainly would have earned the right to call himself World Champion, had the thought occurred to him at that time. As it was, the chess fraternity had to wait for the advent of Wilhelm Steinitz (who was minus three years old at the time of La Bourdonnaiss triumphs) that Germanic Titan of order, method and obedience to strategic laws on the chessboard, until anyone actually claimed the title of World Champion on a public and official basis.

Excerpt from:
Chess at the Siege of Troy - TheArticle

MADISON Victor Lundy has tied as winner in the 2020 Alabama State Chess Championship for the Under 1800 section.

Alabama Chess Federation sponsored the competition, which was held online at chess.com because of COVID-19 constraints. The championship was open to all students if the player has a rating that is Under 1800 with U.S. Chess Federation.

Lundy was a bit surprised about his win. The 1800 section is always comprised of strong players, he said.

Because of COVID-19 constraints, tournaments and most practices have been staged online. For me, I find the online tournament to be a little harder because you have the distractions of your home. But cheating isnt so much of a problem, due to the tournament directors and how they use different methods to find potential players that cheat, Lundy said.

Lundy first became interested in chess in 2014 and started playing competitively in 2015. I learned how to play in the local school, Rainbow Elementary School. Noel Newquist (who teaches art at Heritage Elementary School) taught me the basics of chess, which I used as my base when learning new ideas and strategies, Lundy said.

Lundy is a sophomore at Bob Jones High School. I plan on joining National Honor Society and HOSA (Future Health Professionals) once the pandemic starts to die down, he said.

He is a member of Madison City Chess League and coaches the All Star Chess Club. By offering an East and West All Star club for second- and third-graders to get an extra hour of weekly practice and instruction, we sought to develop some of our youngest, most promising players to be ready for the State Scholastic Chess Championship, Lundy said.

The result was a sweep of team awards in the Primary (K-3) school section and a second-place team trophy in the Primary Club section for Madison, he said. All Star Chess Club is open by invitation only with a nomination by the students chess coach.

Victors parents are Jon and Regina Lundy. Jon works as a software engineer at Northrop Grumman. Regina is a psychiatrist with Alabama Behavioral Health.

Victor is available for private lessons.

Read more:
Victory Lundy ties as state chess champion - The Madison Record - themadisonrecord.com

11/2/2020 In this "Simon Says" the Ginger GM takes a look at an aggressive and modern variation in the English Opening. | Watch "Simon Says" on-demand and with a ChessBase Premium account). (Normally 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 14:00 ET).

The English Opening Vol. 1

Williams main teaching method behind this set of two DVDs is to teach you some simple yet effective set ups, without the need to rely on memorising numerous complicated variations.

More...

Simon Says: "In this show we take a look at a very interesting and modern variation in the English Opening. The line we discuss comes about after the moves 1 c4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 g3 d5 4 cxd5 Nxd5 5 Bg2 Nb6 6 e3!? Nc6 7 Ne2!? White's idea is to play f4 and attack in the centre and on the kingside."

Join the show to learn about this interesting and modern line.

Here's the warm-up: "Black eyes the pawn on a3 but White wants to attack. What did he play?"

(See the full game and the solution below)

You can also watch the show in the archive with a ChessBase Account. Don't have an account? You canregister a free 90-day accountto watch!

Chess Endgames 14 - The golden guidelines of endgame play

Rules of thumb are the key to everything when you are having to set the correct course in a complex endgame. In this final DVD of his series on the endgame, our endgame specialist introduces you to the most important of these rules of thumb.

View all past shows, with a ChessBase Premium Account.

ChessBase Account Premium annual subscription

At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Lets Check and web access to playchess.com

In early 2015 Simon Williams launched his own show called "Simon says" after producing the first of his ChessBase video series. On a weekly basis (with breaks for tournaments and chess events) Simon entertains the chess world with attacking ideas, play strategies and witty manoeuvres on the chess board.

ChessBase Premium members have permanent access to the videos in the archive. Over 60 shows and counting have been published to date. Their lengths differbut most of them run for about 60 minutes.

Read more inMeeting Simon Williams.

Much more from Simon's shows in the archive atVideos.ChessBase.com

The Tactical Chigorin

Opening with the Chigorin shows your intention to play for a win right from the outset. After 2...Nc6 Black's pieces fly into the game putting pressure on White's position from a very early stage. This opening is ideal for the type of player who strives for an unconvential yet attacking game right from the start.

Simon's latest DVD series,"The Exciting Budapest Gambit"is now available. Check it out, starting with the sample below:

The English Opening Vol. 2

Williams main teaching method behind this set of two DVDs is to teach you some simple yet effective set ups, without the need to rely on memorising numerous complicated variations.

Read more:
Simon Says: An aggressive and modern variation in the English Opening - Chessbase News

GM Sergey Karjakin won the October 27 Titled Tuesday tournament, his first-ever Titled Tuesday victory. The Russian grandmaster edged out GMs Alireza Firouzja and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov on tiebreak.

The tournament, an 11-round Swiss at a 3+1 time control, had a total of 617 participants. There was a surprising leader after eight rounds: Vietnamese GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (@crescentmoon2411), who had profited from an overly risky winning attempt by GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (@ChessWarrior7197) of Uzbekistan.

The live broadcast of the tournament.

For unknown reasons, Firouzja joined only from round two so coming in second place after that was pretty impressive. His win against Kazakhstani GM Rinat Jumabayev (@Jumbo) in round nine was nice:

Karjakin defeated Nguyen in the final round after winning a piece in the middlegame. That was a moment of mutual tactical lapses:

A much better game was Karjakin's win in the penultimate round against Ukrainian GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, an expert of the Alekhine Defense. Black's plan with ...a5 and ...Bb4 didn't really work, and after that Karjakin outplayed his opponent with the precision and clarity GM Bobby Fischerwas famous for.

It was funny to see Karjakin spending a few seconds on his 38th move (where rook takes works as well), double-checking the prettiest finish.

October 20 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

Karjakin won the $750 first prize. Firouzja won $400, Mamedyarov $150, and GM Gata Kamsky(@TigrVShlyape) $100 for coming fourth. The$100 prize for the best female player went to GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (@ChessQueen).

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time (19:00 Central Europe) with a weekly prize fund of $1,600.

Link:
Karjakin Wins Oct. 27 Titled Tuesday - Chess.com