Olympiad Results for Round 7

A surprising loss by England to Belarus. Scotland lost to a slightly stronger Montenegro team which is a pity considering our draw against the Philippines in round three. Canada scored an impressive draw against Bulgaria, well done to GM Mark Bluvshtein for beating GM Veselin Topalov. No surprise results in any of the other matches mentioned.

United States of America  2    Poland     2
Belarus                             3    England    1
Canada                            2    Bulgaria   2
Australia                          2.5  Finland    1.5
Scotland                          0.5  Montenegro 3.5
United Arab Emirates      1    Ireland    3
Peru                                3.5  Jersey     0.5
New Zealand                  3    Panama     1
Wales                            2.5  Bahrain    1.5
Macau                           3.5  Guernsey   0.5

Olympiad Results for Round 4, 5 and 6

I've placed every ones results together this time. No major surprises except one. Well done to GM Michael Adams of England on beating GM Magnus Carlsen in the team open match between England and Denmark completely unexpected. Scotland got a couple more victories after losing to Khazakhstan.

Round 4

Russia1     3           United States of America 1
England     3           Turkey                            1
Australia   1.5         Peru                               2.5
New Zealand 0.5    Austria                          3.5
Scotland    1           Khazakhstan                 3
Canada      3.5       Thailand                        0.5
Ireland     4            Jamaica                         0
Wales       3          Jersey                            1
Guernsey    1.5     Bermuda                        2.5

Round 5

United States of America 3   Argentina   1
France                   2             England     2
Canada                   2.5        Denmark     1.5
Moldova                  1.5       Australia   2.5
Wales                    1.5         Venezuela   2.5
Ireland                  4             Hong Kong   0
Iraq                     2            New Zealand 2
Sri Lanka                1         Scotland    3
Jersey                   2.5       Kenya       1.5
Angola                   3.5       Guernsey    0.5
              
Round 6

Vietnam                  1.5   United States of America 2.5
Croatia                  2     Canada                            2
England                  2.5   Norway                         1.5
Kyrgyzstan               2     Ireland                          2
Scotland                 2.5   New Zealand                1.5
Mongolia                 2     Australia                       2
Jersey                   2.5   Barbados                      1.5
Jamaica                  3     Wales                          1
Guernsey                 2.5   Seychelles                   1.5

Chess Olympiad 2010 Results for Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Impressive draw by IM Sam E. Collins in the first round for Ireland against a 2700+ GM. Unlucky getting Russia1 in round 1 although perhaps Ireland are glad to have played that game first. Australia had Armenia in round 2 a very strong side. America doesn't seem to have been tested yet. Canada had a strong side to play in round 2. Well done to IM Thomas Roussel-Roozmon beating a GM rated 2609. Not a very fair first round for New Zealand they had no chance against Cuba. A close game for New Zealand in round 3 against Ireland that might have gone either way if you judged the game by player ratings. Well done New Zealand.


Round 1
Russia1                              3.5    Ireland           0.5
United States of America   4      Faroe Islands   0
New Zealand                     0      Cuba              4
Australia                           4      Bahrain            0
Canada                            4      Mozambique    0


Round 2
Mongolia                 0.5    United States of America 3.5
Armenia                  3.5    Australia                          0.5
Uzbekistan               2.5    Canada                          1.5
Mauritania               1      New Zealand                   3
Ireland                  4      Papua New Guinea            0


Round 3
United States of America 3        Chile             1
Uruguay                          2        Canada          2
Australia                         4         Puerto Rico   0
New Zealand                  2.5      Ireland          1.5

Other results in the Olympiad for the British Isles

I was surprised to see England lost one of their matches but they still seem to be doing well. Good luck to everyone in their next games.


Round 1
Malaysia  0.5 England  3.5
Belarus    4   Jersey     0
India        4   Wales     0
Guernsey 0   Estonia   4

Round 2
Bosnia & Herzegovina    2.5  England                1.5
Libya                             4    Jersey                    0
United Arab Emirates    4    Guernsey                0
Wales              4    U.S Virgin Islands  0

Round 3
England   3     South Africa    1
Finland   3.5   Wales              0.5
Jersey    3     Chinese Taipei  1
Palestine 3.5   Guernsey        0.5

Scotland at the Chess Olympiad

No surprises in the first two rounds we beat Burundi and lost to the Ukraine. I am pleased to say that we got a draw against the Philippines.

Round 1
Scotland 4 - Burundi 0
Round 2
Ukraine 4 - Scotland 0
Round 3
Philippines 2 - Scotland 2

A nice win by GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant against an opponent with a higher rating. GM Colin A. McNab managed a draw against a much stronger opponent.  FM Graham Morrison also managed a draw against a stronger opponent. IM Stephen R Burns-Mannion unfortunately lost in a rook, bishop vs rook, knight endgame that was advantageous to his GM opponent. I think that the team did really well against the Philippines who are a much stronger team. The Philippines in general is ranked 35 in the world since its average rating is higher than ours since their ten top ranked players are stronger. Scotland is rated at 60 in the world. Those are the current ratings from FIDE. The two countries ratings during the competition are lower being 37 and 63 respectively.
http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml

The results can be found at http://www.chess-results.com/tnr36795.aspx?art=20&fed=SCO&lan=1&flag=30&m=-1&wi=1000

If you want to go to the official Olympiad site you can do so here.

Scotland's next opponent is Kazakhstan I wish them good luck in their next match.

Update on the 4th Edition of Reassess your Chess.

I sent an email to Jeremy to find out how the books progressing. This is a direct quote from the email he sent me.


"Doing the final proofing now. Once those are imputed, then off to the printer. They will then send me a blue-line, and after checking that out and giving the green light, BIRTH.

Expect it to hit stores early to mid-November. 670 pages (oversize pages at that). $29.95. This is a true, highly detailed, fun to read, course in positional chess and chess psychology."


I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy when November comes around. I'd highly recommend anyone looking to improve their chess to get one too.

Reassess your chess

Jeremy Silmans 4th Edition of his book How to Reassess your chess according to Amazon is out on the 21st and thats just three days away. Its going to be a complete rewrite of his old book. If you are going to get this book you don't need me to tell you to wait till this new edition is out. The 3rd Edition of this book isn't easy to come by and the price on Amazon is frankly ridiculous. I hope that it does appear quite close to the date on Amazon the book has been beset with problems that have caused its date of publication to vanish into the distance. I'll certainly get the new edition when its available I'm keen to see what has changed since I have the 3rd Edition of the book.

Kendo and Chess

When I was in my late teens I was inspired to join a kendo club after watching the National Geographic Documentary - Kendo's Gruelling Challenge The 120 second test of spirit. It was in fact a documentary originally in Japanese that had an American commentator dubbed over it. They also changed the original title of the documentary. I have to admit that I didn't join a club straight away. Unfortunately it took quite a few years before a club turned up in my area of Scotland. I was in my early twenties when I started Kendo.

My beginning chess isn't quite as inspirational. I just seemed to be drawn to the game when a club started up in my primary school. To tell you the truth I can't really say why I liked chess at the time. No one in my family played the game. I unfortunately quit after finding no real support in secondary school. When I was in primary school I went to a few tournaments but in secondary I didn't attend a single one. Its a pity I gave up and I have to admit I didn't really study the game at all. Since coming back to chess I certainly study the game a lot more. I didn't have a single book on chess when I was a kid I must have about ten or so now. I think when I was a kid I may have taken a chess book out once in a library but I can't really remember. Could I have been a Grandmaster? Probably not. It takes a lot to be one. Just like it takes a lot to be a 8th Dan in Kendo. But if it can take almost a lifetime to get to 8th Dan is it really unlikely that you can be a Grandmaster in your sixties?

In the modern world we hear about teenagers getting to Grandmaster level all the time. We want to be a Grandmaster yesterday. But all this hurry doesn't seem to help us. I know they say that the best years of a chess players career are around forty and then they start to decline. I think perhaps at least reaching master level isn't impossible. Kendo and Chess are a journey that lasts a lifetime. Perhaps it doesn't matter were the journey ends. In Kendo the four poisons are (ku) fear (gi) doubt (kyo) surprise (waku) confusion. They are also applicable to chess. Fear of losing for instance. Doubting your abilities. Surprise at an opponents move in reply to a sneaky trap. Confusion due to not understanding a chess position. They can all be mastered with practice and increasing your chess knowledge. I hope some of this is helpful and that you enjoy the documentary on Kendo.

Seeking the Endgame

I found an interesting radio documentary on chess mentioned on http://closetgrandmaster.blogspot.com/. Its called Seeking the Endgame. Its broadcast on the BBC's World Service and can be listened to on the internet here. Its broadcast in two parts. The first part was broadcast on September the 10th the second part will be broadcast on September the 17th. You can still listen to the first part. I hope you enjoy it.

Video Analysis of the game.

Here is some video analysis of the game between Magnus Carlsen and the World. It was done by an American National Master. You may also like to go to GM Susan Polgar's blog for analysis of the game. There is a link to her blog at the bottom right of the page. You may find it informative to compare my analysis with the two stronger players analysis to pick up on my mistakes. :)

My Analysis of the game

You should be aware I am not a strong player. So the analysis is not going to be great. If you are a weaker player than me you might find it informative. I have also posted the analysis on gameknot since the site gives you the ability to annotate games. You can also make them public so other players on the site can leave comments. Its a good way to improve your chess. I have included the votes made on each move which you may also find interesting.

Play online chess

Magnus Carlsen 1 The World 0

There was no doubt that Carlsen would win this game. I had fun voting on the game even when it got laggy quite often and I had to reload the page. I've posted the game so you can go through it at your leisure I may give analysing the game a go. Using my brain of course and not Rybka. There were 44,000 people voting on the game according to the host website. The combined might of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura and Judit Polgar plus a large number of chess enthusiasts couldn't stand up to Magnus Carlsen. We all had fun though and that's the main thing.

Play online chess

Chess eBooks on the Kindle 3

I have some photos of the kindle 3 displaying a chess ebook you may find interesting. I own an old printed copy of this book. The books is called The Mammoth Book of Chess by Graham Burgess. The version I have in print is the second edition from 2000. There is in fact a new edition of the book that was released in 2009. There is an electronic edition of this book as well as the printed one. The pictures show a page with chess pieces since I thought chess players would be interested to see how it displays them. I think you'll agree it looks good.

Chess Art

Here is an interesting chess engine I've come across that you play against through your browser. Its not the strongest of engines but that's not the point. It's a work of art. It doesn't unfortunately understand the concept of a drawn game which my pawn endgame against it shows. It will basically play forever. It does produce interesting coloured patterns during the game. You might like to give it a go. http://www.turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/index.html

Battle Chess?

Do you remember that old PC game battle chess I used to play it as a child. Well I just notice on http://chessvine.com/ that a live action variant of it is on youtube. That's right a karate exhibition that involves chess. At least its just a demonstration unlike chess boxing which involves two people knocking lumps out of each other and playing chess in between rounds. Karate chess looks like harmless fun. Now if only someone could create Kendo Chess then I'd be a happy man.

Correspondence Chess

If you want to play correspondence chess seriously the best thing to do is to find your nearest association. Mine is the SCCA since I'm from Scotland. The link to the association is at the bottom of the blog. Once you have signed up with your association you can play international games at the ICCF website. They are the correspondence equivalent of FIDE. If you don't want to play too seriously there are lots of websites offering free accounts to play chess. There is gameknot, chess.com, redhotpawn and scheming mind. I've played chess on all these websites and they have quite a few features in common. One feature that only chess.com has that is interesting is mentor. Its a program on the website you can use to learn strategy and various other chess lessons provided by high ranking players like Jeremy Silman. It does unfortunately require you to pay for their most expensive account in order to access it. Correspondence chess is very different from playing at a chess board with your opponent right in front of you. It can take months to finish a game so you aren't under as much time pressure. Players can still play too quickly and make mistakes however. Using the internet isn't the only way to play it there is of course the option of posting your moves to your opponent by letter or by email.

Free chess engines

If you want a chess engine to analyse your games there are many to choose from. If you want a commercial engine there is Chessmaster which is good beginners and intermediated players. I think perhaps even more advanced players could still get something from it. However they usually move on to Fritz or Rybka. I admit to having all three. They all run natively on Windows however. What if you want to use another operating system say Linux? Well there are lots of free chess engines available on the internet. The one I suggest is stockfish since its available for all the major operating systems. http://www.stockfishchess.com/
There are lots of other chess engines available to choose from at http://www.superchessengine.com/ and if you want to use Winboard as your interface to the engine its at http://www.tim-mann.org/engines.html I found a very interesting piece on a free chess engine called Firebird which may be a clone of Rybka it may not be but personally I won't be using it. If it can be proven that it isn't then I'll certainly give it a try. http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/chess-engine-controversy/ If you don't want to use winboard with the engine of your choice you can use Arena. http://www.playwitharena.com/ I have used it but I don't like its analysis feature. I'm probably a little spoilt but I prefer Fritz or Rybka with Aquarium for computer analysis. Give arena a go anyway and let me know what you think about it.

Magnus Carlsen Vs The World

Chess.com are hosting a match between Magnus Carlsen and three grandmasters plus the general chess playing public. We get to vote on which grandmasters suggested move is the best one. I will be joining in since I never got to play against Kasparov in his game against the world. I know there are some people in forums who believe this match is too soon but I don't see why. It is pretty much a friendly. Some may have wanted to play Anand but I don't mind. Yes Anand is world champion and some could claim that the player with the highest rating isn't necessarily the best player but I don't know personally. How many people can claim they could correctly predict the result between Anand and Carlsen when they finally play each other for chess's highest title. I'm not going to predict who will be world champion when it happens it may be too close to call. I'll just enjoy watching the games when they happen.