One giant leap for mankind

5/9/2002 – Why is a great chess player, vice champion of the world at that, dangling at the end of a 150-foot rope? Well, just taking a break from chess and going for adventure in the south-sea island of Bali. Alexandra Kosteniuk, who stopped over in Hamburg for a few days, brought along an electronic picture album. You will find a small selection (plus a nice video clip)here.

Memories of Moscow

5/9/2002 – Peter Svidler is 25, one of the world's top GMs. He is also intelligent, funny and very eloquent. During a recent visit in Hamburg Peter spoke to us about the FIDE world championship, Ruslan Ponomariov, women's chess, books, music, movies, humour and more. The video interview is on ChessBase Magazine 87. You will find excerpts of it here.

Two grandmasters and a computer in Corinth

5/8/2002 – From May 13 to 18 the Greek city of Korinthos (Corinth) is paying host to an interesting rapid chess event. First top GM Mikhail Gurevich, Elo 2641 and number 47 in the world, will take on the computer world champion Junior 7 in four 60-minute games. Then Gurevich will play six rapid chess games against the Greek champion Christodoulos Banikas. More

Peace in our time

5/6/2002 – The Prague negotiations described in our previous report have born fruit, all parties have presented a plan that sees the winner of the Einstein cycle and the winner of a special FIDE match between Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov playing a match in November 2003 for the undisputed Chess World Championship title under the FIDE banner. The Unity Agreement has been signed, you will find the text of the document here.

Man vs Machine double bill on Playchess.com

4/30/2002 – On May first 2002 we have a special treat for you – after you get back from the Labour Day rally. At 18:00 GMT "Computer killer" Alexei Dreev will play a full-length tournament game against an especially tuned version of Deep Junior 7. And at 19:30 GMT Deep Junior will be replaying its annulled game agains Ilya Smirin in the special ChessBase-Kasparov Chess event. Two high quality games against top GMs. Join many hundreds in the action-packed Playchess server coverage. More

The Grandmaster and the Creature from a Parallel World

4/27/2002 – Sergei Tiviakov, born in Russia, now living in Holland, is a very strong grandmaster. Recently he played in the 6th Golden Cleopatra tournament in Cairo, which he duly won. During his stay he visited the Great Pyramids and brought back some spectacular pictures – and an astonishing tale of an encounter with a creature from the parallel world. This you have to see to believe.

A matter of honour

4/26/2002 – Imagine the following: White is winning a game, Black is playing some last desperate moves. Suddenly White has technical problems and cannot continue. So he offers Black a draw. Black refuses and insists White get the full point. There is a heated argument: Black wants to resign, White insists on a draw. Finally both sides agree to replay the game from scratch. Unimaginable, such gentleman-like behaviour? Well that's what happened in yesterday's Man vs Machine game.

And here it is: new plans for a reunified chess world

4/25/2002 – The Einstein Group in London and Nahed Ojjeh have announced their support of the reunification of the chess world. To this end they are seeking collaboration with all interested parties in a daring new proposal that is to be discussed at the upcoming Eurotel Trophy in Prag. The funding would be mainly supplied by Madame Ojjeh, a Syrian born billionaire who lives in Paris. You will find the joint press release of both parties here.

Category 16 in the Taiga

4/19/2002 – We are talking marshlands and lakes, forests with sable, musk-rat and stoat. And oil, around 2.5 billion tons of it. The Nefteyugansk region of West Siberia has few settlements, one of them being Poikovsky. That is where the 3rd Karpov International Chess Tournament is being held, a category 16 with ten strong GMs. You can catch the action at the official web site. And maybe check out a little Taiga puzzle here.

Little monsters!

4/18/2002 – At this very moment there are ordinary people, just like you and me, walking about with devices stuffed in their pockets that have the capability to scare mere mortals out of their collective wits, especially when it comes to playing chess. These little monsters are the new generation of pocket PCs. James E. DuBois has written a nice review here.

The best of all possible world championships

4/14/2002 – FIDE have recently concluded a world championship cycle, the Einstein Group is running their own world championship, and Yasser Seirawan has proposed a "fresh start". Now statistician Jeff Sonas has analysed the relative merits of these three (and 13,000 other possible) systems to find out which are the most practical, effective, inclusive and unbiased. There are some suprises in store (the FIDE system is no. 12,671 on the list, Seirawan's proposal is no. 345). More

Garry Kasparov begs to differ...

4/12/2002 – A few days ago world champion Vladimir Kramnik, in a widely-read interview, spoke about his upcoming match against the world's strongest PC program. Comparing it to the IBM computer that beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 Kramnik said: "Fritz is clearly stronger than Deep Blue, whatever the hardware." Kasparov takes exception to these remarks. "Deep Blue’s play in some of the games was close to perfection". Kasparov's interview and all his games against Deep Blue are here.

Vladimir Kramnik on Man vs Machine and world championships

4/11/2002 – In July we are going to see a big qualification tournament for the right to challenge world champion Vladimir Kramnik. In October there will be a spectacular Man vs Machine battle in Bahrain. Now the man at the center of these exciting events has speaks out and discusses computers, Fritz, Deep Blue, the classical world championship and FIDE. You will find the exclusive interview here

Smirin on computers: God bless me!

4/10/2002 – In a few days GM Ilya Smirin is going to start his match against four top chess programs. It will be broadcast live on the Fritz7 Playchess server and on Kasparov Chess. This comes after experienced Grandmaster Boris Gulko, Elo 2605, lost his match 3:5 points. Will Smirin do better? He is an Elo 2702 Super-GM and the world number 15, and he has experience playing computers. Ilya shares his thoughts on the forthcoming match with us here.

He jes' keep rollin' along

4/10/2002 – List after list, year after year – for almost the entire lifetime of some of his rivals – Garry Kasparov has sat on top of the rating list. This time he has only one "crown prince" by his side – Vladimir Kramnik, 29 points below him. Then a big 57-point gap, where a sagging Vishy Anand is being pressed by three other players. You will find the top hundred here.

Garry Kasparov: A History of Profesional Chess

4/8/2002 – At the end of February Yasser Seirawan presented a detailed proposal for sorting out the chaos that current afflicts top-level chess. Soon after that Garry Kasparov replied directly to Seirawan's proposal. Michael ("Mig") Greengard, who had spent the weekend interviewing the world's number one player in New York, also got a full chronology of the GMA and the PCA from Kasparov. He now passes ít on to the chess public in an extensive keynote article here.

Eric van Reem – Impressions of Dortmund

4/7/2002 – On Friday we reported on the press conference that was held in Dortmund, which provided full details of the Einstein Candidates' Tournament that will be held in July this year. Our contributor Eric van Reem visited the conference and supplied the pictures. In the meantime Eric has sent us a report with his impressions of the press conference and the plans of Dortmund and Brain games. More

Dortmund hosts world championship qualifier

4/5/2002 – This year the traditional Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting is not just a super-strong tournament. It doubles as the Einstein Candidates' Tournament, and the winner earns the right to challenge Vladimir Kramnik for the Classical World Chess Championship. Eight players have been invited, according to their standing in the ratings lists (Kasparov and Anand have refused). In a press conference today all details were revealed to the public. You will find them here.

Doctor Viktor Kortschnoi

4/4/2002 – He is unquetionably one of the great chess players of all time, twice world championship challenger, a top GM with great international successes, even today at the age of 71. Now Viktor Kortschnoi has been awarded the title of Doctor honoris causa by the Independent University of Moldova. He also inaugurated a new sports complex of the university, which bears the name of one of our favourite ChessBase contributors. More

There is such a thing as a free lunch

4/4/2002 – Fritz7 allows you to join a global chess community and play chess on the Internet. You can download a ten-day trial version of the program. This can be used to run a bunch of free "engines" which are available in our download zone: Crafty, Comet, EXChess, Faile, InmiChess, BamBam, Goliath, or the latest UCI engines Pharaon and Sjeng. Don't miss the chance – it is all completely free of charge. More

New pictures of the chess babe

4/2/2002 – Look who's on the title of the popular Russian youth magazine Yat. It's Alexandra Kosteniuk, chess's answer to Anna Kournikova, hitter of the yellow ball. Alexandra has just returned from Singapore and Jakarta, where she demolished the Junior team 6:0. As a special service we provide our visitors not with the games of this match but with rushes from the photoshoot in Moscow. In thumbnail and wallpaper. No pushing and shoving now. The pictures are available here.

Fischer moves – a cruel hoax!

4/2/2002 – Yesterday we posted a report on a new rule proposed by Bobby Fischer and under consideration by FIDE. To our horror we have discovered that this was a cruel hoax, perpetrated by an evil prankster in the ChessBase team. Apparently he was practising a pagan ritual know as "April Fool". We apologise to the visitors who for who found the spurious article distressing, and thank everyone for the many letters we we received. You will find some excerpts here

Just one of 17,823,400,766 positions

4/1/2002 – Imagine this: a relatively simple endgame position, six pieces on the board, with a study-like win. The problem is that White must find 262 accurate moves in order to achieve his goal. In most cases the slightest inaccuracy leads to an immediate draw. We refer to the longest known six-piece ending, as calculated by the endgame databases of Ken Thompson and Eugene Nalimov. Take a deep breath before you proceed to the details here...

New Fischer moves

4/1/2002 – Although the reclusive ex-world champion Bobby Fischer has not played much chess in the last 30 years, he has introduced a number of important innovations into the game. After the Fischer Clock and Fischer Random Chess he is now proposing a further change, the "Fischer move". It was presented to FIDE and will come up for a vote at the Executive Council meeting in Dubai. More...