crazy = Fox

I don't watch Fox News, obviously, but they have this commentator, Glenn Beck, who appears to be just out of control. Watch this video where he calls Obama racist:

"This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people ... this guy is, I believe, a racist."





and then, if you share my sense that he is an irresponsible journalist, sign this petition asking companies to withdraw their advertising from his show. thanks.

I'm a choker

Battsetseg,Tsagaan - Vicary,Elizabeth [B19]
uscl , 09.08.2009

1.e4 c6
2.d4 d5
3.Nc3 dxe4
4.Nxe4 Bf5
5.Ng3 Bg6
6.Nf3 Nd7
7.h4 h6
8.h5 Bh7
9.Bd3 Bxd3
10.Qxd3 Qc7

So I switched to the caro a few months ago, but this is my first game in the classical variation. (I've had 1 two knights, 1 advanced, and the rest were panovs.) I teach it to kids a lot though, so I felt I know it ok, plus it's so simple. I'm intending to play the 0-0 lines but haven't learned them well enough yet, plus I know she is a good attacker and those lines are much sharper. I also thought it made sense situationally -- she's supposed to beat me, so it makes sense to be super-boring and see if she freaks out.

11.Bd2 e6
12.0–0–0 0–0–0
13.Ne4 Ngf6

I chose the move order here completely at random, but I guess there might be a slight difference between playing ... e6 first or playing ... Nf6 first, in the sense that with ... Nf6 first you can take on e4 and play Nf6 and when the queen moves it's your turn. With ...e6 first, white has the choice to take you. On the other hand, d3 isn't a great square for the queen, so maybe it's unimportant.

update! I was just looking at a Leko - Anand game which reached this position and the annotator Lukacs says 14. Nxf6 is inaccurate and 14. g3 is better.

14.Nxf6 Nxf6
15.Qc4 I've never seen this weird looking queen move before, but white can't play pawn to c4 with the queen there, so I decided it was time to neglect development and go pawn grabbing with ...Rd5.

15...Rd5
16.Qa4 If white tries to save the pawn with 16.Ne5 I get good counterplay because her center isn't so stable: 16...Bd6 17.Bf4? c5 - +

16...Kb8

17.c4 Rxh5
18.Rxh5 Nxh5
19.g3

This position is a little annoying for me. Of course, I'm up a pawn, which is wonderful, but I need to finish development and get my knight back from the outer boroughs. Unfortunately, nothing looked simple--

... Bd6 is bad because of c5 and then Rh1, hitting the knight, and when it moves, Bf4.
...Be7 blocks the queen's defense of the f7 pawn and white will play Ne5.
... g5, intending to develop with Bg7, loses a pawn to Rh1 and N/Bxg5.
Finally, I thought at the time that bringing the knight back with 19...Nf6 20. Bf4 Bd6 21. Ne5 looked unpleasant, but probably it's ok-- Computer says I can continue 21... c5 and be quite happy.

19...Ka8
20.Be3


20...b5!? or ?!
Sadly not the best move, but fun. It tries to get me the d5 square, which is of course a beautiful thing, but it's also insanely loosening. I played it mainly out of fear-- I felt like she would play c5 and my bishop would be shut out of the game and she'd do some rook lift and checkmate me. But that's silly because I can simply play ...a6 whenever I want to, which I did not consider. Rybka just wants to play 20... Nf6 or 20... Bd6.

I knew 21. Qa6 was her best response, and was looking at variations like 21.Qa6 bxc4 22.Ne5 Bd6 (not the awful 22...c5? 23.dxc5 Qxe5 24.Rd8+ Qb8 25.Qc6#) 23.Nxc6.



My first thought here was that I was doing ok after 23... Rc8, but then realized that hangs to 24. Nxa7. Then I started considering the weird 23...c3 or the boring 23...Nf6, but ended up thinking "no." That's all, just "no."

At the point where she moved, I was deciding to play 21...Qb7 instead, and which leads to 22.Qxb7+ Kxb7 23.cxb5 cxb5


and (I thought) 24. Ne5. I didn't trust my lack of development in this position, notice that my pieces are so awkward that I can't even kick the knight with 24... f6 because of 25. Ng6 Rg8 26. g4! But maybe I can give up f7 and be ok. Rybka suggests the even-more-accurate opening of the position with 24.d5!

back to reality....
21.Qc2 bxc4
22.Qxc4 Bd6
23.Rd3 Nf6
24.Ne5 Rc8
25.Qa6

I was torn between 25.. c5 and 25... Nd5 here. I think I had maybe 20 minutes to her 3 or 4, and I didn't want to spend too much time, because I play terribly when I'm low on time. I figured she would answer 25... c5 with 26. Rc3, so I play Nd5 to stop that first, but the hungry computer thinks 25... c5 immediately just wins another pawn: 25...c5! 26.Rc3 Nd5 27.Rc4 (27.Rc2? Nb4) 27...Nb4 28.Qa4 Bxe5 29.dxe5 Qxe5

25...Nd5

26.Bd2 Bb4 wow, rybka seems to think this move throws away my advantage. Anyone understand why? It wants me to simply take the knight and trade queens 26...Bxe5 27.dxe5 c5 28.Ba5 Qb7 29.Qxb7+ Kxb7. I guess I'm in a good knight-bad bishop ending with an extra pawn?

27.Qc4 Rybka really likes 27.a3 --- I'm thinking maybe the point is that by playing a3 and forcing me to take the bishop, white's rook gets to the c file safely if I play ...c5: 27...Bxd2+ 28.Rxd2= c5 29.Rc2

27...c5

28.Kd1 f6 I was also thinking about trying to play ...Nb6 and ... c4 somehow, but it wasn't quite working: after 28...Nb6 29.Qc2 c4 30.Rf3, hitting f7, is annoying.

29.Nf3 Qb7

This opens up my rook on her queen, and touches f3 and maybe, in my dreams, h1

30.Rb3 cxd4

31.Qxd4 e5

32.Qg4

There are some cute tricks: 32.Qe4?? Nc3+! or 32.Qd3? e4 33.Qd4 (33. Qxe4?? Nc3+) exf3 34.Bxb4 Nxb4 35.Rxb4 Qc6

32.Qg4 a5 32...Qc6! is better and probably my most real chance to win this game, but after 33.Bxb4 Qc2+ 34.Ke1 I just didn't see 34... Rc4

33.a3 Qc6
34.axb4 Qc2+
35.Ke1 f5


Of course, I hadn't seen that my rook on c8 would hang if I took on b3 instead. So stupid! I went as far as clicking on the queen and hovering it over b3 (I was playing on the computer at this point). It didn't occur to me at the time, but after the game I wondered if I had some touch move responsibility there. If I did, then sorry to Tsagaan and Baltimore!

36.Qg6 Qxb3
37.Qa6+ Kb8
38.Qb5+ Ka7
39.Qxa5+ Kb7
40.Qb5+ Ka8 I wasn't thinking clearly here. I initially had intended 40...Nb6, but was panicked by something. It's all a horrific blur.

41.Qa6+ Kb8
42.Qb5+ Ka7
43.Nxe5

43...Nxb4 desperation.. I already thought I was lost and was about to flag, but the computer think's it's just a draw after 43...Qa2 44.Nc6+ Ka8

44.Be3+ Ka8 it's polite to play to mate when it's easy, right?
45.Qa5+ Kb8
46.Qb6+ Ka8
47.Qa7# 1–0

I was somewhat upset to lose this, mostly because I felt so stupid, like I can play openings and early, quiet middlegames, but as soon as anything becomes complicated, I fall apart. It's like I have a healthy little baby, and then I stab it to death. over and over again.

But then I got home and both the computer and Greg said it was an ok game, and it's funny how much this made me re-imagine it.
　

team star: Andrei Zaremba

board two: Yury Lapshun


our kind host, and my fellow fourth board and fellow blogger, Shaun Smith

Dmitry Shneider makes his first move, resolutely.


Andrei: happy he won again.


a picture I forgot to include from last post: USCL Commissioner Greg and his girlfriend Susan in the park

Queens Team Meeting

Queens had its team meeting at the Wall Street Baths on Sunday. GM Pascal Charbonneau came along to spy for the NY Knights, and brought his lovely sister, Anne Marie.

IM Dmitry Shneider and GM Pascal Charbonneau

A few carefully chosen words from my teammates on our upcoming match against Baltimore:

board three FM Andrei Zaremba: "I don't know my opponent, but he probably knows me."

board one and team captain, IM Dmitry Shneider:

"I'm just going to take it one move at a time. I think it's going to be a tough match, but we have chances to win."

Pascal and Andrei are having a who-can-not-laugh-first contest.

Pascal keeps his cool, but Andrei is clearly already under pressure.

Andrei lost maybe 6 times in a row.

Pascal and Anne Marie playing tandem

against Andrei and Dmitry

I went directly from the baths to Philly to visit League Commissioner Greg Shahade and his lovely girlfriend Susan:

League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade

In other news, I'm reading a great book Greg lent me called "The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty," an excerpt of which is available here. It's led me to a great website, Give Well, which evaluates charities on how effective they really are. It's also inspired me to realize that I'm spending my money on ridiculous luxuries when people around the world are suffering terribly. I've committed to start by donating $50/ month to Greg's charity project. I'd like to ask you guys to also contribute, if you can, either to Greg's project or to some nonprofit of your choice. thanks!!

death bubbles, unjust descriptions, bold pictoral predictions

coming up next... economic death bubbles? This way, the next economic crisis will hit when people start dying more slowly than the current models predict. What do you think the remedy for that will be?
If you feel sick now, try a long, cool dose of sanity from Paul Krugman.


In other news, on Tuesday, I'm debuting for Queens and playing my new arch-rival, Tsagaan Battsetseg. I played her once before, in the 2007 US Women's:

Frank Berry U.S. Women's Championship 2007 White: Tsagaan, Battsetseg* Black: Vicary, Elizabeth
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 e6 4.O-O Nge7 5.b3 a6 6.Bxc6 Nxc6 7.Bb2 f6 8.c3 d5 9.exd5 Qxd5 10.d4 cxd4 11.cxd4 Bb4 12.a3 Ba5 13.b4 Bc7 14.Nc3 Qd6 15.Re1 O-O 16.Ne4 Qd5 17.Rc1 b6 18.Nc3 Qh5 19.Ne4 Bb7 20.Qb3 Qd5 21.Qxd5 exd5 22.Nc3 Rfd8 23.Na4 Kf7 24.Rc2 Rac8 25.g3 g5 26.h4 h6 27.Rec1 Rd6 28.Kg2 Bd8 29.hxg5 hxg5 30.Rh1 Kg7 31.Re2 Ne7 32.Rhe1 Rc7 33.Bc1 Bc8 34.Nxg5 fxg5 35.Bxg5 Ng6 36.Bxd8 Rxd8 37.Nxb6 Rc3 38.Re3 Rxe3 39.Rxe3 Kf6 40.Rc3 Be6 41.Rc7 Rd6 42.Na4 Bd7 43.Nc5 Bb5 44.f4 Ne7 45.g4 Rc6 46.Ra7 Nc8 47.Rh7 Nd6 48.Rh5 Bc4 49.Nd7+ Kg7 50.Rg5+ Kh6 51.Ne5 Rb6 52.Rg6+ Kh7 53.f5 Nc8 54.f6 Rb7 55.g5 Nd6 56.Rh6+ Kg8 57.g6 1-0

The game was summed up by CLO in this way:

"Battsetseg showed off her great fighting spirit with the following win over Elizabeth Vicary. It seemed like a drawish game for a while, but Battsetseg found a way to sacrifice a piece for three pawns and hand Black an extremely unpleasant defensive task."

That really isn't anything close to my impression of the game at the time, but .... let's just say I hope to improve the quality and consistency of my play in our second encounter.

maybe something more like this:

(where I am the fearsome red-eyed dog!) Further, I predict the overall match result will resemble this:

(where Queens is the man of color in the red loincloth!)

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a bizarro ruling from the US Women's Open in Oklahoma:

for a while it looked like Chouchan would be the only perfect score 2/2. However, her round 1 game, which she won with checkmate, was ruled a draw after round 2 was completed. During that round 1 game, her flag had fallen. But her opponent, Julia Jones, had not kept score since move 32. At the same time, Chouchan kept score (omitting only one move) and was getting far behind on the clock because of the time it took to write her moves. Chouchan's flag fell around move 43. Therefore, the floor TD ruled that Chouchan should get 30 seconds on her clock and Julia should start keeping score. At the end of today (Saturday), however, Frank Berry made what he called a King Solomon decision, and gave each player .5 for the game. This reversed the recorded result of the game, and over-ruled the floor TD's action.

huh?

The reporter (Alexey Root) leaves out a couple pieces of important information: the time control is 90 minutes for the whole game with a 30 second increment, and when you have the 30 second increment, you are legally required to keep score the entire game. But even knowing this, do Berry's actions make sense to anyone? If you take the position that the floor TD was wrong, shouldn't Jones simply win?

*sic, although, to be fair, this happens frequently with Mongolians. Anyone preparing for Chimi, for example, needs to look at the games of both Batchimeg Tuvshintugs and Tuvshintugs Batchimeg.

so that's what they really do at the FIDE congress

From this month's Chesscafe column, An Arbiter's Notebook.


Question

Hi Geurt, I did a post on my blog about a question you addressed in your July 2009 column:
“A game begins with a reversed white king and white queen and play continues 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 d6 3.Kh5, when Black responds 3...g6 mate.”



We’ve had a little back-and-forth on it and it would be interesting to get your feedback on the arguments presented thus far. There are discussions of quite a few aspects of the situation.

Leon Shernoff (USA)


Answer

I am quite happy that the two persons who posted responses on your website share my opinion. As I wrote before, I am not happy with the situation that result of the game 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 d6 3.Kh5 g6# stands. I will discuss it during the next FIDE congress. Article 4.3 deals with touched pieces and it begins with the following sentence:
Except as provided in Article 4.2, if the player having the move deliberately touches on the chessboard:
Essential is the word “deliberately.” In my opinion, White had in mind to play the queen to h5 and not the king. I will keep you informed.


Oh Ilya, I missed you

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

so I'm back from Thailand, it's 5 am and I'm wide awake because there's a 13 hour time difference. I have to go into work tomorrow for a meeting at 2 pm. I'm going to be a mess.

So first of all, it takes 22 hours to get to Thailand, not counting plane changing time. Consequently, I discovered some new ways to sleep on airplanes:

1. Simply lying down on the floor. This is by far the best way, but requires that the person sitting in the third seat doesn't mind that you steal their legroom, although it is also possible to tuck your legs under one of the seats. I got 12 hours of sleep on the outbound trip using this method.

2. Lying on your back with your head under the seat in front of you, knees and hips bent 90 degrees, and your calves and feet lying horizontally on your seat. If I had a slightly shorter torso, this would have worked perfectly. It has the extra advantage of being dark.

3. Kneeling on the floor in front of your seat, bottom resting on heels, head resting on arms on the seat itself. This is good when you have three vodka tonics in rapid succession after not eating for twelve hours.

I should mention that in general, I had a very healthy holiday: very little alcohol, meat, coffee, processed food, or dairy products, and lots of vegetables, water, rice, exercise, sunshine, and sleep. I felt terrific and perpetually cheerful. I didn't freak out at all, except for one pms-related crying spell in the Chaing Mai airport, but I think that was hormonal and thus doesn't count. I also started dreaming every night, which I haven't done at all* in several years.

The first few days we spent in Chiang Mai, staying at a guesthouse recommended in my guidebook. I'm a big believer in not over-planning vacations -- you should just buy a plane ticket and a guidebook and go. It's way more fun. I spent those days walking around the city, visiting Wats (=temples), getting massages, and shopping.

Massages were 200-300 baht/hour (=$6-$9), so we tried to get several a day. You could usually choose between oil massages, Thai massage (you change into loose fitting pants and a shirt they give you and it's more like shiatsu-- they lean on you and bend you around), a foot massage, and a head-shoulders-back massage. Getting a massage is very common-- Thai people seem to do it often also, and the quality varied between good and really terrific.

I'm not normally much of a shopper. I think it's bad for me to get pleasure from spending money, plus it's bad to spend money, but everything is so cheap in Thailand, so I caved. I got a bunch of presents for friends and an entire new work wardrobe for myself. Plus some awesome t shirts and a necklace.

We spent one day on an excursion, which consisted of riding an elephant, going to a mountain village and meeting some Karen people (Burmese refugees), hiking in the forest, swimming under a waterfall, and rafting down a river. This was all great fun, and there are a bunch of pictures of it in the Picasa album.

After four days in Chiang Mai, we went to Phuket to spend a week in a resort there. Don't ask why I have a timeshare -- it's a touchy and very bad subject-- but I do and so the week was part of that. It turned out to be glorious-- we had a whole enormous 2 bedroom apartment with kitchen, living room, deck, laundry room, 2 bathrooms, enormous tub, etc. Truly, I felt like a king. Also the resort itself (Marriott!) was incredibly tastefully decorated, was right on the ocean, and had many swimming pools, gardens, restaurants, etc. They also had nice activities for adults: yoga classes, pilates, introduction to Thai massage, biking trips, trapeze classes, etc. I'm going to try to sell you guys a week of my time share in a later post, so we'll come back to the details then.

I spent my days in Phuket mostly reading by the pool and going to activities. You could get massages on the beach itself, still only $12/ hour, so I did a lot of that too. Once I went to Phuket Town to wander around. Another day we spent on a snorkeling expedition, which was pretty fabulous. The fish and the coral reefs there are spectacularly colorful. Alan got very ill for most of that week, but I was fine. Books I enjoyed included: Lush Life (Richard Price), Beautiful Children (don't know the author, gave it to someone in Phang Nga), The Hospital for Bad Poets (JC Halliman), and The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (Warren Fellows).

For the last couple days, I decided we should go to a nearby town, Phang Nga, and go on a sea-canoeing expedition. I managed to figure out how to take the local bus there, and we stayed in a small guest house. Phang Nga had a hilarious tourist center, staffed by extremely friendly, chatty high school girls. It's a tiny town with no real tourist facilities, so they had no helpful advice, and also couldn't really speak English, but were very cheerful and welcoming. I found the Cave of Heaven and Hell, which wasn't listed in my guidebook at all, but was on a map I got at the bus station. It had some great gory statues (again see photo albums).

Canoeing in Phang Nga was one of the best parts of the trip. There was a guy who took you around in a small boat-- you didn't actually have to do anything yourself-- and the day included swimming in the sea, picnicing on the beach, exploring caves both on foot and in a canoe, and a lot of sitting in the boat, looking at the beautiful weird island seascape.

It was a wonderful trip and I definitely recommend Thailand to everyone. The people are amazingly friendly-- it's not like a lot of countries where every stranger who speaks to you is trying to rip you off somehow. Maybe it's because most people are Buddhist, but everyone there seems happy and genuinely kind-hearted. Plus it's cheap (except Phuket) and the food is great.

Next up: back to work (I'm even looking forward to it and miss the kids), trying to keep up my exercise routine (I went to yoga or pilates every morning in Phuket), playing for Queens and blogging about it, I have a couple USCS articles to write, and I'm going to try to learn 1. d4.


* I know they say you always dream, you just don't remember it.

huge photo album from Thailand

album one

album two

favorite photos from Thailand (more soon!)

I'm off to bed before I post anything for real, but here're a few of my favorite. Later they'll be stories, captions, and a link to a huge album.

but while you're waiting, any guesses what the last picture is?