From The Chessville Forum Who Are the Top-10 Chessplayers of All Time? 1081.1 Philidor Larsen Variation Opening Statistics French Defense Curry 998.32 Sicilian Blues What Are the Best French Books? More Doubts About Fritz Fritz Opening Book and SCID DB 1070.1 Chess Goals: 2002 Review, Setting For 2003 1080.1 Solitaire Chess FICS Interface Fictional Story Idea 1055.1 Smerdon at World Jr Championships Kasparov v Karpov Rapid Match 1053.1 ChessBattle Update 902.15
Dan Heisman's
December Novice Nook: 10 Biggest Roadblocks To Improvement Dan's Training Exercise Variants A Means To Improve?
GAMES Rapid Match Round 2 1. e4 e5 1. d4 Nf6
Past issues of The Chessville Weekly can be viewed at our archives. |
Volume 1 Issue 29
December 22nd, 2002 In This Issue Position of the Week New At Chessville NEW: FantasyChess!! The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia Poll: Who Will Win at Wijk ann Zee? Pablo's Chess News New On The Net From the Editor... This time of year is special for many of us, and we at Chessville wish you and yours a most happy holiday season, and above all else, Peace. Now, more then ever, we all need to pray and work for peace throughout the world. [FEN "8/7p/1kP2K2/8/8/1p2p3/1P2P3/8 w - - 0 1"] White to move and draw - Find the
Solution Problem of the Week: Test Your Tactical Prowess FantasyChess: Play Fantasy Chess, starting with the upcoming Corus Super-Tourney at Wijk ann Zee! Annotated Game: French Defense, Alekhine-Chatard Gambit Accepted! Jose Soza annotates his win from the ICCF's Champions League.
Review: e-Book
The Caro-Kann 3.f3!? by IM Jan
Pinski & NM Rafal Przedmojski, reviewed by
Peter Dove.
FantasyChess Hi and welcome to the wonderful world of Chessville's Fantasy Chess! "What is FantasyChess?" I hear you say. Ever heard of Fantasy Football, Fantasy Baseball or any other Fantasy Game? Well, now you know what it is, except Fantasy Chess is of course, based on your beloved board game! For all those who have never heard of Fantasy Games, they take real life sports and games, such as baseball etc. and then let you pick your own team of "all-stars" to be your "fantasy" team. Then, based on how those players do in real life, you score points for your fantasy team and compete against other fantasy managers who are trying to do the same thing. The fantasy team with the most points at the end of the season is declared the winner! So how does FantasyChess work? We take the top tournaments in the world, such as the upcoming Corus Tournament in Wijk aan Zee (January 10-26, 2003), and let you pick your very own FantasyChess Team to represent you during this tournament. You have to choose players based on who you think will do best in categories such as "White wins", "Black wins", "White Losses", "Black Losses" and three "Bonus Players". You then score points based on the actual tournament and how accurate your selections were. For instance, if you choose "Ponomariov" as your "White wins" selection, you score two "fantasy" points for every win that Ponomariov scores with the white pieces. The same applies for the other win/loss selections. For the "Bonus Players", you score points based on their actual final points standing in the tournament. If I choose "Anand" as my "Bonus Player 1" and he finishes on 12˝ out of 13 (a very good performance!) then I would score 12˝ "fantasy" points for this selection, and so on for all of the selections. "This sounds too easy, I'm going to choose Kramnik to win everything, and Radjabov to lose everything!" Well, we have a small rule that prevents you from doing just that. You are only allowed to choose a player once. This means you are not allowed to choose Kramnik in both the "White Wins" and "Black wins" selection. It also means you may have to choose players that you are not too familiar with, especially when it comes to the "losing" selections when you may have to choose players from closer to the bottom of the rating list! FantasyChess only takes two minutes to participate in! Visit www.chessville.com/fantasychess and you will see the tournament details for the Corus Tournament. There, you will also find an entry form where you make your particular selections. Once you have made them, and double checked to make sure you didn't choose the same player in more than one category, hit the "Submit" button and you're away! Within 48 hours, your name should make the list of "Current Entries" and then it's a case of sitting back and waiting for the tournament to begin. Remember of course to root for your players during the tournament, meaning you will be wishing certain players to win, and certain players to lose! I hope to see
your entry
soon, and Good Luck! -
Chris Bird Poll: Who Will Win at Wijk ann Zee? Last week's poll asked the question "What's the best online live-play chess server?" While the Internet Chess Club (ICC) led for most of the week (leading 2nd place FICS by a roughly 2-1 margin), presumably a call was put out to Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) aficionados, as a late surge lifted FICS into the lead. Final results:
This Week's Poll: Who will win the Corus Tourney at Wijk ann Zee in January? Scheduled to compete: Kramnik, Anand, Topalov, Bareev, Ponomariov, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Shirov, Karpov, J. Polgar, Timman, Krasenkow, van Wely, and Radjabov.
The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia Still Going Strong: At the age of 90, Edward Lasker took part in the telex match held between London and New York on September 11 1976, making him one of, if not the oldest person to compete in a major international chess event. For Medicinal Purposes Only: Mikhail Chigorin had a bottle of brandy next to the board, which he drank from, when he played Wilhelm Steinitz for the World Championship title in 1889 and 1892. Submit your trivia to the
Mad Aussie!
Chessville
other online chess news resources
The Chess Cafe Andrianov's and Silman's On-Line Scholastic Chess Magazine Silman's Introduction To Great Players, Move-By-Move. The spotlight is on: Louis Charles Mahe de la Bourdonnais IM John Donaldson reviews Meeting 1.d4, Secrets of Chess Intuition, The Classical Dutch and Understanding the Sacrifice Chessbase - Tactics training: 18.12.2002: Junior WCh Goa World Chess Network John Henderson: The Scotsman Larry Evans On Chess: The Saavedra Position Steve Lopez's T-Notes - Rapid Transit About.com Chess Match Wits With Bobby Fischer Part 2 Russians on Olympus Pakistan Chess Player Lev Khariton's 200 Words: The Mis-Treatment of Bobby Fischer Road to New York by Abdul Karim Chessopolis Randy Bauer Reviews: Chess Brilliancy by Iakov Damsky New Links Added Mechanics' Institute Chess Room IM Donaldson's Newsletter #118, Dec. 18th, 2002 Seagaard Chess Reviews Can you be a Positional Chess Genius (Dunnington) RusBase Part Two - Added More From 1950, 1978-1980 USCF National Scholastic K-12 Grade Championships The Pan-American Amateur Championship Bermuda January 27th - February 5th, 2003. My Chess Site - Smith-Morra Gambit Annotated Games Chessbase - Karpov-Kasporov Rapid Match, New York 2002 Chess Siberia - Aleksandrov - Adams Bled 2002Robert Byrne (NYTimes): Shabalov- Bengtson, Philadelphia 2002
Lubomir Kavalek (Washington Post): Byvshev Bishops, as seen in... Puzzles & Problems
Chessville -
Problem of the Week Tell us about your favorite site that you would like us to
keep an eye on for you. Write:
Newsletter@Chessville.com Position of the Week: Solution
What became of M. Zinar?
"Harold van der Heijden and I wonder whatever became of M. Zinar (no first name known) who, from 1974 to 1990, published around 300 studies, almost all king-and-pawn endings, and many of high quality. He was, perhaps still is, a worthy successor to N.D. Grigoriev - a modern Pawn Wizard. In the diagram left, White loses his c-pawn, and stopping Black's h-pawn seems to give Black access to White's fortress: 1.Kg5 Kxc6 2.Kh6 Kd5 3.Kxh7 Ke5 4.Kg6 Kf4 and Kg3 etc. And after 1.Ke5 Kxc6 2.Ke4 Kd6 3.Kxe3 Ke5, Black wins easily with his outside passed pawn. Only the stunning 1.Kg7, almost pushing the h-pawn into the race, works. 1...h5 After 1...Kxc6? 2.Kxh7 Kd5 3.Kg6 Ke4 4.Kg5 White is in time to stop Black - and even wins, but that is beside the point. 2.Kf6 Having given the passed pawn a free march, White now executes a Réti manoeuvre to catch it after all. 2...h4 If Black doesn't run, he loses. 3.Ke5 h3 4.Kd6 h2 5.c7 h1Q 6.c8Q and Black cannot escape a perpetual, e.g. 6...Qd1+ 7.Ke5 Qxe2 8.Qb8+ Kc6 9.Qc8+ Kb5 10.Qb7+ Ka4 11.Qa7+ Kb4 12.Qa3+ or even Qe7+ etc.: draw. Anyone know anything about Zinar? PS: Thanks to the readers who found out the following about Zinar. His first and father's name are Mikhail Afanasyevich, he was born in 1951, and in 1990 he published a book in Kiev titled Harmony in Pawn's Studies. The question remains: why did he stop composing in 1990?" If you have information
about the author of this study, please write to
Tim Krabbé.
Tim's Open Chess Diary is a part of his excellent site,
Tim Krabbé's Chess
Curiosities, well worth checking out! |
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GAMES XV Carlos Torre Wimbledon, Merida Mexico Rd 1, 12/13/02 Ehlvest v 1. d4 Nf6
Mitkov v 1. e4 c5
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