The Chess Test

                                                          Is there a danger we lose our top chess players?                                                                          Irina Krush- got her just reward. There was an interesting announcement made today when Irina Krush was declared winner of the Cairns Chess Queens award, which came with a cheque for $100,000. Rather eye-watering, don't you think? This is probably more prize money than I've won over my entire career. But what it reminds everyone of is that the United States of America (and specifically St Louis chess club, backed by the financial power of Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield) remain one of the heavy financial hitters in the chess world, if not the heaviest. That might explain why players of the calibre of Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Lenier Dominguez and others have joined the United States Federation in recent years. I would mention Fabiano Caruana as well but his ties with America were so strong to begin with, t

  The economic realities of the chess world now make two rounds a day tournaments commonplace. Magnus Carlsen is not happy with the level of preparation needed to take part in a world championship match, if you want to have a chance of winning it. He suggested that one possible solution would be to use a quicker time control and have two games a day. This would at least negate some of the advantages of excessive preparation, thus turning the battle against the workhorses. In the time I have spent as a chess professional (now over 25 years!) tournaments with multiple rounds in one day have become more and more commonplace. Weekend tournaments that began on friday would obviously have them, and that was accepted. But in FIDE rated international events it was rare, until Sean Hewitt decided to follow the American model of multiple rounds. Partly that was compelled by economic necessity as putting up titled players for nine rounds, as well as the cost of hiring the venue and other issues,

I have a theory about Vladimir Kramnik. I think when he retired, he perhaps realized he retired too early. These players are used to being the center of attention and Kramnik went from being one of the best players in the world at the center of everything to being fairly anonymous, in just a short space of time. That might explain why he is more active all of a sudden, why he is streaming, why he is compiling statistics and throwing shade on some of the regular money winners on Titled tuesday. Kramnik now seems exasperated by what he percieves as the lack of effort and care shown by Chess.com towards doing anything about this situation. The world's leading chess website has been put under the microscope by ex World champion Vladimir Kramnik. I personally applaud Kramnik and his efforts to try and clean up online chess and here's why: In my opinion cheating is often not taken seriously enough and is not punished as it should be. For example if you are a titled player and you are

                             Ashwath Kaushik could be the next super talent, but is there a dark side?  It seems every week there is a new tale of a child defeating a Grandmaster at chess and I myself lost to 9 year old Supratit Banerjere in the Hastings blitz event. I think during the course of my career I've rarely lost to someone that young, although I did become part of a record once when Murugan Thiruchelvam beat me in a Richmond rapidplay when he was only ten and at the time became the youngest ever to defeat an International master; although nowadays, such a result would be commonplace. I've mentioned recently that I think this generation of eight year olds is the most promising to emerge since the 1990 vintage of Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Ian Nepomniachtchi, David Howell and others.  Ironically it is Davids record of beating a GM that was the one to fall to Ashwath, and it is reasonable to assume that there will be many other records that will fall to this stella

I am currently reading Stephen Hendry's autobiography and there are some interesting insights into the career of a top sportsman. I can't possibly compare myself to Hendry, a multiple world champion, but when I read his book I found that a lot of what he was saying was reasonating. When he talked about how he ended up losing to people that shouldn't have been on the same table as him. About when he experienced negative thoughts during matches, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy and a domino effect would take hold. Eventually it became too much to bear and the Scotsman retired his early 40s.                                   In his prime, Hendry was one of the most dominant sportsmen of the 1990s. I also feel the same. While not a dominant winner like Hendry was, or even a champion, I have felt the pain as my rating has declined. I've gone from a peak of 2573 to currently running at a live rating of around 2414. Even allowing for the obvious deflation in the system, th

 People say Kramnik is paranoid, that he's past his best. That all his talk about facing engine cheats is the sign of a failing mental state.                                                 many people claim that Big Vlad has lost his marbles.  All of this ignores the simple truth- that Kramnik is a far stronger player than most of these posting on places like Reddit, Twitter, Youtube and other sources where he is widely ridiculed. Some people might claim that isn't important. I would claim that it is, because the stronger the player the greater the insight. In reality Kramnik has worked with engines for many years. He played a match against one in Bahrain, the fabled "Brains in Bahrain." I have discovered this myself- when you work with engines a great deal, you get a sense of when something is "off." Also importantly, I have played many types of players over the board, just as Kramnik has done (he obviously has even more experience than me of this.) Whenev