Tourney structure: seven-round round robin Time control: 100 minutes/50 moves + 15 minutes + 30 seconds/move starting with the first move Duration: May 22 to May 28 Game start: daily 14:00 (server time), last round 12:00

21st Sigeman & Co. tournament

The elegant playing hall with large screens overhead

It has been a flood of excellent tournaments, all with attractive lineups, and the 21st edition of the Sigeman and Co. grandmaster tournament held in Sweden is no exception. It brings together several local talents such as Jonny Hector, Emmanuel Berg, Hans Tikkanen and Nils Grandelius, and pitting them against Nigel Short, Loek van Wely, Ivan Sokolov, and Hungarian talent Richard Rapport.

GM Stellan Brynell and Ulf Andersson provide live commentary for the audience

Hungarian junior Richard Rapport

The organizers continue the tradition with superb coverage in all ways, including live commentary by legend GM Ulf Andersson and GM Stellan Brynell (in Swedish), and with an excellent website providing a choice of two webcams of the action and a third for the commentary.

Ivan Sokolov started with a win in round one

Hans Tikkanen analyzes his game with...

... Nils Grandelius. They drew.

In the first round Ivan Sokolov was the only player to draw blood, beating Emmanuel Berg, but Nigel Short looked like he might join him after working a significant advantage in the endgame against Jonny Hector, but failed to break the Swede’s resistance.

GM Jonny Hector has long been one of the most original grandmasters

Pictures are copyright © by Calle Erlandsson

Here is the game between Jonny Hector and Nigel Short:

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

2013 Hainan Danzhou Tournament

By Liang Ziming

The fourth edition of 'Hainan Danzhou Super Grand Master Chess Tournament' started on May 21 in Danzhou City, Hainan province, China.

Like the previous three editions, this tournament is still a ten-player single round-robin tournament with a total prize fund of 300,000 yuan. The ten GMs playing in this traditional tournament are Ding Liren (2707), Yu Yangyi (2675), Bu Xiangzhi (2662), Ni Hua (2646), Wen Yang (2618), Zhou Jianchao (2607), Zhou Weiqi (2590), Lu Shanglei (2551), Xiu Deshun (2534) and Wei Yi (2530), with an average rating of 2612.

China’s top player Wang Hao is now resting after having just finished the super tournament in Norway. The former Women World Champion Hou Yifan, who played in the past three years, is also not participating, turning the tournament into a pure men’s tournament for the first time. GM Wang Yue is also missing for personal reasons.

The time control for this tournament is 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. Draw offers are not allowed before move 30.

The opening ceremony, held in the banquet hall of HNA New World Hotel Danzhou, was attended by Mr. Yang Junan, Chairman of the Chinese Chess Federation, Mr. Ye Jiangchuan, the General Secretary of the Chinese Chess Federation, Mr. Lin Dong, Mayor of Danzhou city, as well as dozens of guests and journalists and hundreds of students from the local primary schools and middle schools.

Players and VIPs posed together in the opening ceremony

The officials of the Danzhou government (right, Mayor of Danzhou city, Mr. Lin Dong)
kicked off the tournament with a beautiful crystal chess set.

In the drawing of lots ceremony conducted by the Chief Arbiter Ms.Liang Zhihua (left),
each player was asked to choose a box in a glass jar on the stage. GM Bu Xiangzhi,
the winner in 2010 and 2012, chose number seven.

Top seed GM Ding Liren chose number eight

Former women world champion GM Xu Yuhua and IM Lou Yiping give a presentation
to local primary students

The first two rounds saw seven decisive games, which promises a fierce competition for this tournament. Top seed Ding Liren has had a good start with two wins, one over Lu Shanglei and another over Wei Yi.

The veteran GM Ni Hua (above) is also in a good form, beating Xiu Deshun and Lu Shanglei.

The defending champion GM Bu Xiangzhi started with a draw against Wei Yi with
his pet Petroff Defense with black and won a tough game over Zhou Jianchao in
an unbalanced endgame after Zhou missed a good drawing chance in the end.

After a draw against Bu Xiangzhi, the promising star Wei Yi found himself in a very
passive queen and rook endgame in round two against Ding Liren. Although he
defended hard, Wei Yi failed to balance the position and finally got mated in a rook ending.

Ding Liren won an incredibly complicated game against Lu Shanglei

In the game with Lu Shanglei in the first round, Ding Liren as black chose his recent favorite Caro-Kann and got a big advantage by successfully dominating the center. After several inaccurate moves by Lu Shanglei, Ding comfortably won pieces and the game.

IM Lou Yiping annotates Liren-Shanglei:

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

Editorial – Cheats are prospering

By Executive Editor, IM Malcolm Pein

In his brilliant book from 1977, How to Cheat at Chess, Bill Hartston wrote something like: “If God did not want us to analyse on our pocket set in the toilet, he would not have given us paper on which to make notes.” 40 years ago cheating was a joke. In the electronic age it is anything but.

Something has to be done about it before we have an epidemic, some serious fisticuffs, more bad publicity or just a general darkening of the mood, to the extent that every time there is an upset, people start muttering that the victor must be cheating. Indeed at the recent European Individual Championships there was such an incident and the whisperings were entirely unjustifiable.

With some mobile phones now having software that is playing to about 2400, the temptation to sneak off and check some lines is proving too much for some and what particularly saddens me is that junior players have been caught. Recently at the Cork Open, Gabriel Mirza, whose daughter plays for the Irish junior team, became suspicious of his teenage opponent who had gone to the toilet “at least 20 times”. Now I wouldn’t recommend his course of action but this is what he was quoted as saying in the papers:

“After each move this guy was leaving the room. I went a few times around to where his pals were playing, but he was not there. I went to the toilet where there was just one locked. I entered in the next cubical, climbed on the toilet to watch over to the one which was occupied, and, surprise, he [was there] with an Android checking the moves with a chess engine.”

At this point he dragged his opponent out and there was a physical altercation. Obviously I can’t tell you exactly what happened, but Mr Mirza denies assault and the matter might end up in court. If I were the parents of the boy I would be trying to avoid any more publicity. The tournament organiser Gerry Graham expelled both players: Mirza for his reaction and the boy for cheating. He admitted it, although he didn’t need to as he was caught red-handed. I must say I have some sympathy for Mr Mirza. I honestly don’t know how I would react in his position, but if he did assault a minor then there is obviously no excuse for that.

In England recently a junior player cheated and was expelled from a tournament. There have been other incidents with adults. FIDE have been unable or unwilling to take a lead. Pathetic, but hardly surprising. Therefore I think it must fall to the ECF to come up with a set of disciplinary measures that can be implemented in England and, if the other chess unions want, in the rest of the UK.

Thanks to Professor Ken Regan and others, we can tell when a computer has been used or appears to have been used. This, combined with the rating of the player, enables an arbiter to judge with near certainty if there has been cheating. So I would like to propose the ECF Directors come up with some enforceable sanctions that can be implemented in these cases. I hope we can begin a debate, but my instinct would be something like:

• For junior players, a one year ban and for a second offence five years.
• For adult players, a five year ban and for a second offence a life ban.

CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by Richard Palliser. The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organised the London Chess Classic.

CHESS is mailed to subscribers in over 50 countries. You can subscribe from Europe and Asia
at a specially discounted rate for first timers here or from North America here.

Lothar Schmid: 1928–2013

Lothar Maximilian Lorenz Schmid was born on May 10th 1928, heir to the Karl Mai adventure series. He became one of Germany's strongest grandmasters, winner of countless medals at Olympiads and team championships. Internationally he was known as the arbiter in great matches, and a one of the world's leading collectors of chess books. Lothar Schmid died on Saturday at the age of 85. Read our report here.

Click to read the NYT obiturary

Schmid earned his living helping his brothers to run the family’s publishing house, and as a player never reached the pinnacle; but his collection of books ran to many thousands of volumes, and included some great rarities. He owned, for example, one of only ten surviving copies of the first printed book about chess, Luis Lucena’s Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess (Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez), published in Salamanca in 1497. He also possessed all eight editions of Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi, published in Rome in 1512 by the Portuguese apothecary Pedro Damiano (1470-1544). The first bestselling chess manual of the modern game (it ran to eight editions in 50 years), it offered advice on how to play and introduced readers to the “smothered mate” (in which checkmate is delivered by a knight when the opposing king is unable to move because he is completely hemmed in by his own pieces). Damiano suggested that chess was invented by Xerxes the Great, King of Persia from 519 to 465 BC.

Read the full article in The Telegraph

Checkmating Alzheimer’s Disease

Could Mind Sports help older adults improve cognitive performance and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s

By Michael Ciamarra

You’ve read the headline of this article. Interesting you think. You nod and move on. What if you notice that you forgot what you just had read a moment ago?

It’s those little things that begin to make you concerned – misplaced keys, forgetting to shut the refrigerator door, driving home forgetting which way you turn to get there. What happens when you cannot remember the person sitting across from you who happens to also be your spouse?

Many know this reality all too well – especially if you are a caregiver or have seen the devastation of Alzheimer’s in your immediate family. The never ending data is alarming and staggering.

Comparison of a normal aged brain and one of a person with Alzheimer's [Wiki]

Every 68 seconds, someone in the U.S. develops Alzheimer’s disease. One in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that in 2013, 450,000 Americans will die with Alzheimer’s disease. Estimates are that 7 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s by 2025 – a 40 percent increase.

By 2050, cost of care for Alzheimer’s is projected to balloon from $203 billion in 2013 to $1.2 trillion, 70 percent of which will be covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Nearly 14.5 million caregivers provided more than 17.5 billion hours of unpaid care. Those numbers will rise over the next decade as well.

Age is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s or dementia, so as our population continues to age the prevalence of the disease will continue to grow. Closer to home, almost 53,000 Alabama citizens are living with Alzheimer’s. In Alabama, by 2025 there will be a 31 percent increase in the disease.

The latest data underscore the need for an urgent global response, including a strong investment in research, to stop the emerging Alzheimer’s crisis. Fortunately, policy makers are recognizing this urgency about investment, research and education. The White House recently unveiled a $100 million dollar BRAIN Initiative and that will take a very important step toward the most dramatic breakthroughs in human health. Brain research is vital for Autism, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury, mental health, and a host of other concerns.

Chess vs Alzheimer

What can be done to stop the disease or slow it down in the meantime? There exists an intriguing activity that could, indeed, slow or stop the disease. A recent National Institute of Health – National Institute on Aging publication, Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease: What Do We Know? is fascinating. The front cover of the document featured two seniors playing chess! The document affirms that, “Staying cognitively active … through mentally stimulating activities … such as playing games are linked to keeping the mind sharp.”

Further, it suggests that the reasons why an active brain prevents Alzheimer’s may be, “Such activities may protect the brain by establishing ‘cognitive reserve,’ the brain’s ability to operate effectively even when it is damaged or some brain function is disrupted.” Harvard Medical School last month noted, “...exposing the brain to novel activities in particular provided greater protection against Alzheimer’s disease than just aerobic exercise.”

"Chess-Players" by Honoré Daumier, 1867 [source: Wikipaintings]

Does playing chess or any mind sport prevent Alzheimer’s? Could this nearly 1800 year-old game hold a key to keeping your thinking healthy and engaged? Could chess or other mind sports be one of the “preventions” to ward off the 6th largest killer disease in the US?

Chess is in fact a particularly good brain builder! It is a fairly easy game to learn. It takes a little practice but you can play it very quickly and the possibilities of play are endless. Playing games like chess can stimulate our minds, increase our social interactions with others and possibly reduce stress, but when it comes to reducing risk of Alzheimer’s, the type, variety and frequency of the games we play is key.

I am going to suggest, based on my long experience and observations, that any game that is challenging and stimulating will be beneficial to an older adult. Mind sports lends itself to a variety of complexities from various patterns to calculations that stimulate players' brains. Research says that people who don't exercise their gray matter stand a chance of losing brain power when they age.

A “mind sport” doesn’t leave the game outcome to dice or chance or bluff. Although those games are fun and recreational – they do not confer to an individual the same lasting values as a mind sport.

Chess seems like a treatment that works. In fact, people over the age of 75 that partake in leisure activities that stimulate the brain were less likely to develop signs of dementia. Research shows that chess affects specific areas of the brain and the stimulation will shift with the problems that a chess player faces during the game.

We all know that games can be fun and challenging, but if we are interested in actually maintaining brain fitness, then mind sports stimulate all six cognitive areas of the brain at the same time and are the most beneficial.

Those six cognitive areas:

• Short-term memory, used when we remember information shortly after it’s been understood.
• Long-term memory, used when we recall something from the vast store of information that’s in our brain.
• Language, the use and form of words.
• Calculation has two definitions. First, calculation is the use of numbers. The other form of calculation involves assessing the risks, possibilities or effects of a course of action. Playing chess is another way to exercise calculation skills.
• Visual-spatial, referring to our visual perception of objects.
• Critical thinking, our ability to analyze and evaluate situations.

The emergence of mind sports as a tool to reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s is based on using and exercising all six cognitive areas of the brain and continuing the program over a period of time. Chess touches every one of those areas.

It can’t hurt to learn chess, checkers (there are dozens of different ways to play this very beautiful game), Bridge or another mind sport. Those games are easy to learn and are endlessly fascinating. The day may not be far off when doctors recommend a game of chess along with the physical exercise and a healthy diet for older adults! The recreational value will make for a memorable experience and a better life in the future – one you will want to remember.

Michael Ciamarra is a World Chess Federation (FIDE) certified Chess Instructor and a US Chess Federation certified Advanced Chess Coach. He is a member of the American Checker Federation. He coaches mind sports (chess, checkers, etc) to older veterans, and blind and low-vision veterans at the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center. He speaks to senior groups about the value of Mind Sports as a way to improve cognitive performance and teaches chess and Mind Sports to older adults. He can reached through alabamachess at gmail.com.

You can also visit Michael's Facebook page, which has the above historical 3D chess photograph in its header. It can be views by gazing into the background and bringing the two images together; or if you are not able to use that technique you can use cross-eyed viewing using this image (in which we have reversed the plates).

Veterans from Tuscaloosa’s VA Medical Center are playing mind games. Actually, they are playing a game that will hopefully strengthen their minds. Chess. There has been some research to indicate that games like chess, which require a lot of brain power, can improve a person’s memory. It could also help to slow Alzheimer’s symptoms. Experts describe these “mind sports” has being like a Stairmaster for your brain. The idea is that when you stay cognitively active, your mind stays in shape.

Experts will be coming to the VA once a week to coach the veterans on how to play chess. For many, it’s their first trying the game. Instructors say they should be ready to play a full game on their own in four weeks. At that point, there has been some discussion about arranging for tournament play with the Birmingham-area VA Medical Center.

Source: CBS42.com

The American Continental Championship took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia from May 06th to May 15th. The tournament was especially important not only because of the presence of almost every top Latin American grandmaster, but also because the top four places qualified for the upcoming World Cup in Tromso, Norway that will start in August.

Lothar Schmid: 1928–2013

Lothar Schmid was born on May 10th 1928 in Dresden, Germany. In 1941, at the age of 13 and at the beginning of his career, he won the Dresden Championship. In 1943, he took second in Vienna (German Junior Championship). In September 1948, at the age of 20, he tied for fourth/fifth place at the full German Chess Championship (12th GER-ch) in Essen. In May 1949 he took third in Bad Pyrmont (13th GER-ch, which was won by Efim Bogoljubow). In 1956 he won in Göteborg, in 1957 he took fourth in the Dublin Zonal. In 1964 he won in Wilderness and tied for fourth/fifth in Zürich. In 1968 he tied for second/third with Tigran Petrosian, behind Paul Keres, in Bamberg. In 1970 he won in Mar del Plata. These are only a few of the successes in a long chess career.

Lothar Schmid played for West Germany at eleven Chess Olympiads:

Schmid won four individual silver medals (1950, 1952, 1968, 1970) and two team bronze medals (1950, 1964). He played for German team at twelve Clare Benedict Cups, winning nine gold, one silver, and two bronze medals in 1957–1973. He won first German Correspondence Championship (1950–1952), the first Eduard Dyckhoff Memorial (1954–1956), and came second with in the second World Correspondence Championship in (1956–1959). Schmid was awarded the IM title in 1951, and the GM and GMC titles in 1959.

Lothar Schmid at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden 2008 – photo Frank Hoppe

Lothar Schmid died in Bamberg on May 18, 2013, of age-related illness.

In 2008, on his 80th birthday, we published a story by Elmer Dumlao Sangalang, a long-standing friend of Lothar. We reproduce this article here.

Lothar Schmid – the Complete Chess Authority

By Elmer Dumlao Sangalang

Lucena's book, which appeared in 1497

I love books. I love to read them. I love to have them. As a result, I have a growing library. And because chess ranks top among my few absorbing hobbies, most of my books are on chess. It is a genuine source of delight for an aficionado like me, that chess possesses an extensive literature which in content probably exceeds that of all other games combined. Each year I have some interesting new book to look forward to. 

Whenever I sit back to relax and appreciate my modest chess book collection, I never fail to think fondly, specially on the occasion of his 80th birthday, of a friend elsewhere in the world who must be two-hundred times as joyous about his – for he is in possession and has direct access to any one of a vast collection of more than 50,000 chess books!

He is International Grandmaster Lothar Schmid, the celebrated bibliophile owner of the largest private chess library in the world. Born Lothar Maximilian Lorenz Schmid in Dresden, West Germany, on May 10, 1928, his love for books must have been enkindled by the fact that his family owned the large publishing firm, the Karl May Verlag, whose management passed on to him when his father died. It is not just the sheer number, but also the quality of his collection that is remarkable. For example, he owns one of only ten extant copies of the first printed chess book by Luis Lucena, entitled Discourse on Love and the Art of Chess with 150 Endings (in English translation), which appeared in 1497.

He also has all eight editions of Pedro Damiano’s book, Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de la  partite (1512-64). About six feet of shelf-space in his library is taken up by all editions published in more than a century of Jean Dufresne’s famous little primer, Kleines Lehrbuch des Schachspiels (1881). These and many other fascinating features of GM Schmid’s legendary collection have been written about frequently. But does anybody know that it even has a Philippine section?

GM Schmid spent two and a half months of 1978 in Baguio City, the Philippines, as chief arbiter of the Karpov-Korchnoi match. He got to love the City of Pines and the famed Filipino hospitality. His stay, however, was abbreviated by pressing business concerns that required his physical presence in West Germany, so he was not in attendance at the match’s conclusion.

Schmid returned to our country fourteen years later to participate in the 1992 FIDE Congress held in Manila as member of the Commission on Chess Art and the Rules Commission. In the meantime, we became friends through correspondence that I had initiated with my request for an autographed picture in 1982. Along with it, GM Schmid sent me a souvenir booklet/program of the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the Bamberg Chess Club. 

In genuine appreciation of his extraordinary thoughtfulness that I felt I had not deserved, I reciprocated by sending him several of our locally published chess booklets. I was gratified to learn from his response that he valued them even if, in my personal assessment, they were obviously inferior to most of the countless publications he was accustomed to. I was so impressed by such humility from a chess personality of his stature that I earnestly sought out all extant Philippine chess publications and sent them to him to augment his collection. Every time a new book of Philippine origin appeared, I made sure that GM Schmid promptly got his copy in mint condition. In due time his compilation grew in size to develop, according to him, into a noteworthy part of his library that he now refers to as the beloved “Philippine Section”.

Lothar Schmid (right) during the Spassky-Fischer match in 1972

Not to be outdone in generosity, GM Schmid has gifted me with some rare and precious titles such as Das Konigliche Spiel by Petzold and Schachspiel und Trictrac by Kluge Pinsker (Hg.). When he came to our country in 1992, he brought me a couple of limited-reprint vintage tournament booklets as souvenirs of his visit. I treasure and take great pride in them, together with all the letters and chess-inspired cards I have received from him through the years of our friendship.  In mutual admiration, I call them my “Schmid Collection”.

Officiating at the Petrosian-Fischer Candidates Final in 1971

GM Schmid was consistently among the best three players of West Germany in the three decades following the Second World War. As an over-the-board (OTB) player, he represented West Germany in the Olympiads eleven times from 1950 to 1974, winning the silver medal on second board in Lugano 1968. He should have also won two more silver medals for his excellent debut performances on board two, in Dubrovnik 1950 and in Helsinki 1952, but medal honors, besides the gold, were not being awarded in the early years of the post-war Olympiads.

At the Fischer-Spassky Belgrade rematch in 1992

His most notable OTB achievement was shared second place with former World Champion Tigran Petrosian, half a point behind GM Paul Keres, but ahead of prominent contemporary GMs Wolfgang Unzicker, Borislav Ivkov, Jan Donner and Laszlo Szabo in the tournament held in his hometown Bamberg in 1968, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bamberg Chess Club.

A man of great chess talent, Lothar Schmid also excelled in postal chess, where he holds the title of International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster.  He won the great Dyckhoff Memorial Correspondence Chess tourney in 1956 and subsequently took second place equal with ICCGM Lucius Endzelins, half a point after ICCGM Viacheslav Ragozin, in the 2nd World Correspondence Chess Championship, 1956-58. 

But his most famous chess-related activity involved chess organization. GM Schmid was the chief arbiter of several world championship matches.  With great tack and patience, IA Schmid refereed the 1972 Fischer-Spassky in Reykjavik, 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi in Baguio, 1986 Kasparov-Karpov in London-Leningrad and 1992 Fischer-Spassky in Sveti Stefan-Belgrade.  His study of and training in law found relevant application in the officiation at the highest levels of chess competitions.

As my way of congratulating GM Schmid for having lived life to the full for eight decades of a century, I am presenting his favorite game.  It is not one of his big wins against the world-class players GMs Paul Keres and Efim Bogolyubov and former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik.  What he relishes most is this game against his old friend and fellow Olympic Team member GM Klaus Darga in Frankfurt 1966, given with his light annotations.