On April 1, Chessvibes.com reported that United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement announcing that they would meet later this month to play a game of chess.

Although President Obama stated last month that the United States does not see the current situation “as some Cold War chessboard,” he now acknowledges that “the game of chess goes beyond any possible conflict… between the United States and Russia. This is an expression of hopes and aspirations of people in every country to solve all conflicts between us between the boundaries of the 64 squares.”

President Putin added, “The stakes are very high. The game will be of utmost importance for the new world order.”

Although both Obama and Putin have some experience with chess, they both will be assisted by famous grandmasters. Obama is expected to be assisted by three-time U.S. Champion Hikaru Nakamura, and former world Champion Garry Kasparov, a Russian opponent of Putin who characterized Putin as “a decent calculator [who] likes to attack, but… lacks… positional judgment.”

Another former world Champion, Anatoly Karpov, currently a member of the Russian Parliament, is expected to assist Putin.

(Editor’s note: Yes, this is an April Fool’s Day joke.)

Anand wins Candidates Tournament,

earns rematch against Carlsen

Many people believed that Vishy Anand would withdraw from high-level chess competition after losing the world championship last year. However, Anand, at 44, the oldest competitor, won the eight-man double round-robin Candidates tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, and will play Magnus Carlsen for the championship in November.

Anand was undefeated, scoring 8 ½ - 5 ½, to place first by a full point over Sergey Karjakin who was second with 7 ½ - 6 ½. Anand won his first-round game against Levon Aronian, ranked number two in the world. Aronian recovered to tie Anand after 7 rounds, but lost his last two games to finish in a tie for 6th-7th, with 6 ½ - 7 ½.

Chess has come a long way in the last hundred years: The prize fund for the tournament was €420,000, with Anand, as the winner, receiving €95,000, and even Veselin Topalov, who finished eighth with 6-8, receiving €17,000.

Deepak Aaron scores big

at Eastern Class Championship

Deepak Aaron, the strongest player to grow up in the Capital District, came home on spring break from Georgia Tech, where he is studying chemical engineering, to play in the Eastern Class Championships in Sturbridge, Mass.

He defeated Grandmaster Alexander Fishbein and drew GMs Alexander Ivanov and world champion contender Gata Kamsky, and raised his rating 35 points, to 2465.

Kamsky placed first with 4 ½ - ½, ahead of GMs Sam Shankland and Aleksander Lenderman, who tied with Deepak and Victor Shen for 2nd – 5th, with 4-1 and Ivanov and Fishbein with 3 ½ - 1 ½.

Other Capital District players: in the Expert section: Dean Howard 1 ½- 1 ½, Peter Henner 1 ½  - 2 ½.  Class A:  Dilip Aaron 2 ½ - 2 ½, Martha Samadashvili 2 ½ - 2 ½, Scott Boyce 1 ½ - 2 ½. Class B: Zaza Samadashvili 3 ½ - 1 ½, Jonathan D’Alonzo 3-2, Sandeep Alampalli 2 ½ - 2 ½. Class D:  Joseph D’Alonzo 3-2.

Sam Shankland is a senior at nearby Brandeis University, and is establishing himself as one of the strongest players in the U.S. His uncle, my endodontist, is happy that his nephew may have found a career doing something where he may be one of the best in the world.

Shankland was undefeated when he met Kamsky in the fourth round. Kamsky sacrificed a piece for an attack in a game that drew a crowd of spectators, including me. 

Kamsky-Shankland,

Sturbridge, Ma. 3-16-14

1. d4 Nf6 2. Bf4 d5 3. e3 e6 4. Nd2 c5 5. c3 Nc6 6. Ngf3 Bd6 7. Bg3 O-O 8. Bd3 Qe7 9. Ne5 Nd7 10. Nxd7 (f4 is more common) Bxd7 11. Bxd6 Qxd6 12. dxc5 Qxc5 13. Bxh7+!? Kxh7.

14. Qh5+ Kg8 15. Ne4 Qc4 16. Ng5 Rfd8 17. Qxf7+ Kh8 18. Qh5+ Kg8. The crowd of spectators was at its thickest at this point, at least 10 of us. Kamsky thought for a long time, at least 10 minutes here, obviously looking for a win rather than a draw by perpetual check. Looking at the position, I saw that Kamsky had an attack, but I didn’t see how he could win, and thought he might have to settle for a draw since he was behind in material.

19. Rd1! e5? After this move, Houdini downgrades Black’s position from  - 2.4 to -3.3 20.Qf7+ Kh8 21. e4 Ne7 (Black must give the piece back to prevent Rxe5) 22. Qxe7 Bb5 23. Rd2 Qxa2? (desperation, but Black is lost anyway).  24. Qf7 Qa1+

25. Rd1 Qxb2 26. Qh5+ Kg8 27. Qh7+ Kf8 28. Qh8+ Ke7 29. Qxg7+ Kd6 30. Rxd5+ Kc6 31. Qf6+ Black resigns.

This week’s problem

As a young man, future world champion Wilhelm Steinitz was known as the “Austrian Morphy.”

The American Paul Morphy was perhaps the most brilliant chess player of the 19th Century — he traveled to Europe in 1857, defeated all the best European players, and then retired from chess, reputedly because there was no one strong enough to compete with him.

Here Steinitz finds a neat mate in 3.

Until very recently, American chess was largely centered in New York, with some secondary centers in California and possibly Chicago. However, in 2007, Rex Sinquefield, a retired billionaire financial advisor, best known for his contributions to conservative political causes, decided to provide major funding for the Chess Club of St. Louis.

Because of his substantial contributions to the chess center, Sinquefield has been awarded the Gold Koltanowski Award by the United States Chess Federation as the person who has done the most to support chess in the United States during the last four years, and St. Louis was designated Chess City of the Year in 2009 and 2011.  

Since 2007, St. Louis has hosted the United States championship the last four years, with the largest prize funds in history; hosted both the U.S. Women’s Championship and the U.S. Junior Closed Championship in the last two years; established a major club with 900 members; conducted weekly rated events; offered several levels of chess instruction for players of all standings; conducted a variety of high-level scholastic programs; maintained a full-time staff; and sponsored rotating “Grandmasters in residence.” (The current GM in residence is Ronen Har-Zvi, who lived in the Capital District for about five years, giving chess lessons to a group of local players.) 

In September, the Chess Club of St. Louis conducted the first Sinquefield Cup, a tournament with a total purse of $170,000 for a double round-robin tournament with only four players:

— Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, rated first;

— Levon Aronian, rated second in the world;

— Hikaru Nakamura, rated fourth in the world and one of America’s top two players; and

— Gata Kamsky, the other top American player, who lost a match for the world championship against Anatoly Karpov (7 ½ - 10 ½) in 1996 at the age of 22, before taking an eight-year break from chess.

The average rating of the four participants was 2793, making it the strongest tournament in history.

Carlsen won the tournament by winning his last-round game against Aronian.  With 3 ½ points, he needed only a draw to clinch first, while Aronian, with 2 ½, needed a win to force a three-way tie with Nakamura.

At first, Carlsen appeared to be content with a draw, but, by the time Aronian offered it on move 48, Carlsen turned down the draw, and the certainty of the $70,000 first prize because, he said, “It was a little bit of a gamble, but I thought winning the last game would be so sweet.”

Carlsen won to take first place with 4 ½ - 1 ½, ahead of Nakamura (3 ½ - 2 ½), Aronian (2 ½ - 3 ½), and Kamsky (1 ½ - 4 ½). It was the first time that Carlsen had played in the United States, and he also became the first person to achieve a USCF rating over 3000, a provisional rating of 3004.

After this tournament, Carlsen took a two-month rest, before his ultimately successful match against Anand for the world championship.

Nakamura said that he was very disappointed not to have won the tournament. However, last week, he demonstrated that he had fully recovered, by winning the prestigious London Chess Classic, this year conducted as a rapid chess event. Nakamura defeated former world champion Vladimir Kramnik in the semifinals, and Boris Gelfand, who lost the 2012 world championship match against Anand, in the finals.

Chess at Robben Island

South African President Jacob Zuma, who was imprisoned for 10 years, recently stated, “On Robben Island, chess provided a solace to us that we needed in those conditions of isolation and deprivation. It propelled our minds beyond the confines of the prison walls and allowed us to reflect and to position our thought strategically to fight the regime. Many comrades made chess sets out of soap and driftwood that allowed us to continue to play this great and noble game.” 

One of the strongest players on Robben Island was Nelson Mandela.

Neville Alexander, a fellow inmate recently interviewed by PBS, described him as taking “his time with every move, [considering] it very carefully. He would sort of mislead the other person by pointing things, this way, that way, the other, and then making the move that wasn’t expected, and so on…. [Mandela] had that way of, as I say, it was a war of attrition, and he tended therefore to be victorious in most cases.” 

National Chess Congress

Five players from the Capital District — Patrick Chi; Phil Sells; Martha Samadashvili; her father, Zaza Samadashvili; and myself — traveled to Philadelphia over Thanksgiving to play in the National Chess Congress.

In the Premier section (limited to players over 2000), our home-grown master, Patrick Chi, held his own with a score of 3-3.

In the under 2200 section, Phil Sells gained 27 rating points to regain his expert rating (over 2000) with a score of 3-3.

Going into the last round, I had gained more than the 83 points needed to regain my expert rating, but blundered away a won game to finish with a score of 3 ½ - 2 ½, and a rating of 1985 (a gain of 68 points).

Martha Samadashvi, in her last tournament before traveling to the United Arab Emirates for the World Under-10 championship, scored 4-2 in the under-2000 section, to raise her rating 102 points, to 1861.

Zaza Samadashvili, troubled by a virus, and perhaps overwhelmed by his responsibilities, did not play the last day and finished with a score of 2-4 in the under-1800 section.

Local club championships

In Saratoga, a seven-player double round-robin, the favorite is Gary Farrell, with a score of 8-2, and two games left to play.

Defending champion Jonathan Feinberg is undefeated, with three wins and five draws for a score of 5 ½ - 2 ½, and has a chance of catching Farrell. Other scores: Bill Little, 4 ½ - 3 ½; Glenn Gausewitz, 3 ½ - 3 ½; Dave Finnerman, 3-4; Josh Kuperman, 2-5; and David Connors, 1 ½ - 7 ½. 

In Albany, a 14-player single round-robin, the leader is newcomer Jeremy Berman, with a perfect score of 3-0, followed by Timothy Wright, 5-1; Jonathan Lack, 3 ½ - 1½ ; Dean Howard, 2 ½ - 1 ½ ; Jason Denham, 2 ½ - 1 ½;  Glen Perry, 1 ½ - ½; Peter Henner, 2-1; and Michael Mockler, 1 ½ - 1 ½.

Joseph Jones ( 2 ½ - 2 ½) and  Gordon Magat (2-3), who were expected to be among the leaders, already have more than two losses, followed by Will Stephenson, 1-4; Art Alowitz,  ½ - 3 ½; Cory Northrup, ½ - 3½; and Chuck Eson, 0-3.

Schenectady, with a 13-player single round-robin, has been the most surprising tournament.

Jon Leisner, 3 ½ - ½, and Michael Mockler, 4-1, are leading, joined by Cory Northrup, 4-1, followed by Zachary Calderon, 3 ½ - 1 ½; Peter Henner, 3-2; Carlos Varela, 3-2; Junior Canty, 2-2; Carl Adamec, 2 ½ - 2½; John Phillips, 2-3; Matthew Clough, 2 ½ - 3½; Joel Miranti, 1-4; Richard Chu, 1-4; and Elihu Hill, 0-3.

There have already been five upsets of greater than 300 points: Clough - Henner, ½ - ½; Northrup – Henner, 1-0; Phillips – Canty, 0-1; Adamec - Clough 0-1; and Miranti - Clough 1-0.    

This week’s problem

Are you as smart as a 10-year-old?

Magnus Carlsen found an elegant way to finish off this game when he was 10. Can you see it?

Alexis de Toqueville is best known for his classic work, Democracy in America, which was published in 1835 after his two-year tour of the United States. Toqueville had persuaded the French government to send him to the United States on the pretext that he was going to study American methods of handling convicted criminals. He is reported to have said that the measurement of a society is the nature of its prisons.

It would be interesting to see what Toqueville would say about the Special Housing Units of New York State correctional facilities. About 5,000 inmates are locked in cells approximately 100 square feet, 23 hours a day, and are allowed out only for “recreation” in a small pen.

Although the inmates can communicate with other inmates by yelling across the cellblock, they are not permitted to participate in any programs, and access to the outside world is severely limited. Some of the inmates are sent to SHU for months, if not years; many of them have serious mental health problems, or develop them as a result of the stress of the solitary confinement.

Nevertheless, some inmates in SHU, known as “the Box,” play chess, usually for postage stamps as they are not permitted access to money. Although few, if any, inmates have ever played in formally recognized tournaments, the quality of play can be surprisingly strong. Some players demonstrate a keen sense of tactics, even though, at times, their knowledge of theory may be weak.

Some years ago, I played a correspondence game against an inmate whom I was advising on legal matters. Although he was not very good, he did persuade me to play a game against another inmate, Damian Coppedge, who goes by the name of Focus, who is a particularly interesting man and a very good player.

Focus was convicted of manslaughter in 1998, at the age of 21, and he is presently serving 19 to 22 years. In prison, he has become a committed Buddhist and an accomplished writer and poet.

Over the last two years, we have been playing four games: Although I have won two of them, and will almost certainly win a third, all of the games have been hard-fought, and Focus has demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the openings, imaginative and creative play, and a good fighting spirit. The fourth game, which is now in its 31st move, is an extremely complicated tactical game, and it is by no means clear who is winning. 

Focus was sent to the SHU in the Southport Correctional Facility as the result of a fight with another inmate, which he felt he could not avoid. Southport is one of New York State’s two “super max” facilities; all of the inmates are in SHU.

Apparently, despite the desperateness of the inmate’s situations, there is still an active chess culture. Focus sent me two games that he played against another inmate — one that he won and one that he lost — and a third game, against an inmate named Foots, who introduced himself by asking, “Do you know anything about chess?” This was followed by a boast that he would “crush” Focus in any "book games."

Mr. Foots claimed to have been a very successful player in New York City’s Washington Square Park and to have memorized the standard reference work, Modern Chess Openings.

Focus – Foots,

Southport C.F.

October 6, 2013 

1.e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 de 4. N:e4 Nd7 5. Bd3 Ngf6 6. Ng5 e6 7. N1f3 Bd6 8. Qe2  h6 9. Ne4 N:e4 10. Q:e4  Nf6 11.Qe2 c5 12. dc B:c5 13. Bd2 Qb6 14. O-O-O. 

All of the moves up to now have been played by strong players, and the game is still within Houdini’s book lines: somewhat remarkable for a game played between two inmates without formal chess training.

Now Houdini indicates at least four master games with 14.. Bd7 15. Ne5, and White has a small advantage. However, Mr. Foots wisecracked, “Let me gobble up this pawn you don’t want,” and played 14..B:f2?. This is a mistake. 15 Rhf1 Bc5. White’s lead in development and open lines now give him a significant advantage, even a pawn behind.  

16. Bb5+? and Focus gives it away. 16 Ne5 would have maintained White’s advantage. 16.. Bd7 17. B:d7 N:d7.

Houdini says the position is equal, but now Focus tries an unsound sacrifice, which should have lost.  18 Ba5?  Q:a5  19. R:d7 K:d7 20 N:e5+. This kind of hyper-aggressive chess is not unusual for prison chess — sometimes, as here,  it actually works. If 20.. Kc8, 21 N:f7 Rf8 22. Q:e6+ Kb8, White would be down a Rook for a pawn and could resign, but Mr. Foots played 20..Ke8. and lost after  21. N:f7 Rf8? (Kd7 or Ke7 would have kept the game going) 22. Q:e6+  Be7 23. Nd6+ Kd8 24. R:f8+ B:f8 25 N:b7+ Resigns.

Focus won 10 stamps, and the satisfaction of shutting up someone he described as “full of bombastic b.s.”

Club championships

The three largest local chess clubs — Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga — have all commenced their championship tournaments.

Thirteen players are competing in Schenectady, which will be directed by Phil Sells, including former champions Carl Adamec and John Phillips. Two of the participants from last year, Carlos Varela and Zachary Calderon, are now established Class A players, and are legitimate contenders, along with Jon Leisner, Mike Mockler, and myself.

Albany, like Schenectady, has adopted a round-robin format for its 16-player tournament. The highest rated player is 2012 champion Dean Howard, an Expert who will be challenged by seven A players: last year’s co-champion Mockler, Gordon Magat, John Jones, Tim Wright, John Lack, new member Jeremy Berman, and myself, as well as tournament director Glen Perry, whose rating is now just below the Class A threshold at 1782.  The Albany tournament also features two new unrated players, Mahmoud Ramadan and Will Stephenson.

The Saratoga championship will be a double round-robin tournament with seven players, including defending Champion Jonathan Feinberg, last year, Schenectady Champion David Finnerman (who could not play in the Schenectady championship this year due to scheduling conflicts), Gary Farrell, Glen Gausewitz, Bill Little, Josh Kuperman, and David Connors.

This week’s problem

Wilhelm (later William) Steinitz (1836 -1900) was the first undisputed world champion, winning the title either in 1866 against Adolph Anderssen or in 1886 against Johannes Zuckertort, before losing it to Emmanuel Lasker in 1894.

He took breaks from competitive chess, and his career as a chess journalist was sometimes marked by controversy due to his bluntness, but he made a modest living as a chess professional, both before and after he moved to the United States in 1883.

He played two matches for the World Championship against the Russian Mikhail Chigorin in Havana, in 1889 and again in 1892. One of the more famous games of the second match is the 4th game, where Steinitz has an obvious forced mate after a hard to find first move. 

There is an episode of the old TV sitcom, Leave it to Beaver, where the sleazy Eddie Haskell tries to cheat Wally Cleaver in chess by removing a Bishop when Wally is not looking. Chess players, of course, know that this is absurd; any chess player would be sufficiently aware of the position to notice such an action immediately.

Chess, unlike say poker or bridge, is a game of perfect information; both players have complete and full knowledge of the board, and success is determined solely by one’s skill in moving pieces on the board.

So, one might think it is impossible to cheat. However, now that chess computers are stronger than the best human players, cheating, especially in high-level competitions, is becoming a serious problem.

Last month, a German International Master, Jens Kotainy, was disqualified from a strong European tournament, after the director had observed that he was reaching into his pocket to check his cell phone after every move, and the cell phone was observed emitting vibrations that could have been a code. 

The problem was discussed at length in a January 2013 letter from University of Buffalo Computer Science Professor Kenneth Regan (who is also an International Master) to the Association of Chess Professionals.

Professor Regan analyzed the results of the 2012 Zadar Open, and in particular the allegations against the Fide (Fédération internationale des échecs) Master Borislav Ivanov, who scored 8-1 to win the tournament with a performance rating of 2697.  He concluded that there was a strong correspondence between the moves made by F.M. Ivanov and a computer program and the odds of such a correspondence were 1,000,000 to 1.

Regan also strongly stated that the statistical evidence of such a correlation was secondary to actual observations of cheating, but nevertheless he believed that such evidence had a role to play. Indeed, it was precisely that statistical correlation between computer moves and the moves played that led the tournament director to investigate I.M. Kotainy. 

During the course of a chess game, a player is not supposed to receive any assistance from other players, have access to chess books, or, of course, use a computer. In a recent tournament, my friend Alan LeCours was accused of cheating by his opponent because his opponent had heard me asking LeCours how his game was going even though we did not discuss the position, and, of course, I did not and would not have made any comments or suggestions about moves to play.

In the early 1980s, a friend of mine from college, who was a tournament director himself, reported an incident of cheating that resulted in an International Master’s disqualification from the World Open. The I.M., once known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the openings, stepped out of the tournament room and visited a bookseller and was observed leafing through a book describing the unusual line of a particular opening that he was playing.

However, such incidents were rare; generally, strong players do not need, and could not get, meaningful assistance during the course of the game.

Cheating in chess did not usually involve activity at the board.

To be sure, there were incidents of players agreeing to throw games, to enable other players to win tournaments or achieve “norms” for titles. (I have heard rumors that at least one United States Grandmaster in the 1980s achieved his title by such arrangements.) And some players would lose games on purpose to artificially lower their ratings, so they could win large cash prizes in lower rated sections, a practice known as “sandbagging.”

The United States Chess Federation has adopted rating “floors,” 200 points below a player’s highest rating, in a generally successful effort to stop sandbagging. However, what took place at the board was usually open and honest.

Computers changed all that. For example, the standard time control in top-level international tournaments was 40 moves in 2 ½ hours, and games used to be adjourned after five hours. If the game had not been completed, the players would customarily analyze the position overnight, sometimes with the help of an assistant.

This meant that players competing for world championships depended heavily on a very good grandmaster assistant, or, in the case of certain Soviet players, a whole team of assistants. Today, there are no adjournments: Time controls have been adjusted so that the game is completed at one sitting. 

Big-money postal chess tournaments are also a thing of the past: It is just too easy to cheat by using a computer to analyze a postal game.

However, the use of computers to cheat in over-the-board games is a relatively new phenomenon. The problem, if not addressed, could severely interfere with chess competition, not only at the highest levels, but also in recreational tournaments, where, say, a class B player accesses a computer to win a money prize in an Under-1800 section.

This week’s problem

Israel Albert (Al) Horowitz, a youthful chess hustler in Times Square, who went to Wall Street, and then left it to devote himself to chess, was one of the top United States players in the 1930s and 1940s, but was best known as a promoter of the game, as the chess correspondent for The New York Times, a founder of Chess Review, and is the author of many chess books.

He “never took chess or himself too seriously: chess was a science, yes; a sport, of course; and art, to be sure; but it was also a business,” according to Burt Hochberg, a chess expert and author who died in 2006.

Horowitz was famous for being a “chess vagabond,” giving many simultaneous exhibitions. In the position below, he has forced mate in four moves. His opponent could have made a nonsensical move, which would have delayed the mate, but would still have permitted a pretty mate in six. 

Chess Solution

11. Q:g7+  K:g7, 12. Bh6+ Kg8, 13. Rg6+ hg,  14. Nf6 mate (if 13…fg 14 Nf6 is still mate). The nonsensical move 13.. Qg7 is met by 14. R:g7+ Kf8, 15 R:g8+ K:g8, 16 Nf6 mate.