The Chess Test

  Is Kramnik cheating? No, he isn't. But he is accusing others of doing so. The most notable accusation is his fellow super Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura and Vlad's latest attack comes in the guise of a monstrously long 3 and a half hour interview with Eric Hansen that can be found on Youtube. This is considerably longer even than Ridley's Scott epic "Napoleon", which I saw the other day and stars Joaquin Phoenix. I liked the film, but it has been panned by critics. Admittedly it does have some flaws, for example some of the dialogue is stilted and it is hard to envisage Phoenix as a young soldier. I'm not sure who has the patience to sit through a three and a half hour video on chess cheating, especially at christmas time. It seems to me that Vlad's arguments can be broken down roughly as follows: Some players are over performing. Hikaru's runs where he beats a player over 40 times in a row, are statistically improbable. Chess.com aren't taking chea

  Playing through your old games  Playing through your old games can be quite eye-opening. Did I really make that move? Paul Raynes was kind enough to send me a database of my games, many of which I had forgotten about. It bought back some memories, some good some bad. The following position caught my eye: It's interesting that the engine says that White can go Nd1 here. From memory, this wasn't a move that I even considered in the game. The idea is to redeploy the Knight to d3, via f2. You then play c3, Bc2, and at the same time Black will struggle to find a useful plan (... e5 will weaken the d5 square, whereas ... d5 will just be met by e5.) Eventually in the game I did play Ne2, which was another way to reroute the Knight. But if I could identify a weakness in my game, it was my inability to find plans and identify enough candidate moves. This still carries on to this day. Perhaps through laziness, perhaps because I didn't train hard enough when I was younger, my weak

 FIDE have released the following statement on their Twitter account: It then goes on from there, but doesn't say much apart from the fact that it may look to prevent such incidences occuring in future.  This is in reponse to Alireza Firouzja currently playing several games in Chartres, France, with the express sentiment of getting Firouzja's rating up high enough, that he can qualify for the Candidates in 2024, in the rating spot. Personally I find FIDE's statement while hardly astounding, somewhat puzzling. For once you get a situation in chess where you have something that is exciting, where it is on a knife-edge, and all they do is question the integrity of the players? Sorry but who made the rules? It wasn't Firoujza. All he is doing is saying I want to qualify, I want to be there. Lets look at some of the specifics of the rating race:  Currently Wesley So is leading, but has stated on Twitter that he doesn't want to get drawn into such a race.  Other players l

                                          Does art and creativity help your chess? In that typically depressing and negative way that I have made my own, I have started to realize that I am running out of time in life to do something. To achieve something constructive. 😣 Who knows- I could be dead in a few years. Quite a few of my friends have fallen by the wayside in recent times. I have also come to the conclusion that I can barely tolerate my current life, so need to do as much to improve it as possible. Hence why I am posting on Youtube, streaming on Twitch, and in general attacking it as much as I can possibly can. I have also reignited a Gormally blog, which had some moderate success back in the day and lead to my being offered some book contracts, once people cottoned on that I was a half reasonable writer. Not that any of that ever lead to a dramatic change in circumstances. I still have very little money.  I have also started drawing again and showing some of these amateurish

                                          Is the European Chess  Championships a legitimate event?                                          Magnus Carlsen- arguably the best chess player of all-time, but not a fan of the                                         European chess championships.  The European Rapid and blitz championships takes part in Croatia this weekend, and I did consider playing in the event, as some people I know personally, are actually doing. However as things stand I don't have any money, so it was a relatively easy pass. 😔 I counted nine European chess players who are rated over 2700 on live ratings, that is it at the classical time control. None of these individuals are in Croatia and the top seed is David Navara from the Czech Republic, a lovely chap who is below 2700 on classical ratings (he has been above before) but is over 2700 at rapidplay. He also won both of these tournaments last year. But with all due respect to David, he isn't the best player i

                                                                    Gukesh has blown his chance. 😔                                       brilliant young talent Dommaraju Gukesh will have to wait. As I'm writing these words the brilliant young Indian player Dommaraju Gukesh seems to have blown his chance of qualifying the candidates.                                             The position was very tense, and apparently Black had to play 20. 0-0-0, when chances were fairly balanced. Instead Gukesh blundered with 20. ... 0-0? and after the alert reply 21. Ra4! Hans was already winning. The g4 pawn is dropping and Black is in trouble. All of which means Gukesh won't be getting the tournament victory he needs to qualify for the candidates, and Wesley So is likely to get the spot instead.  This is sad news for Gukesh as he is one of the brightest talents in chess. Which brings me to the next question- who is likely to take over at the top of chess and dominate now that Magnus is no

                                                 Have I cursed Daniel Fernandez?   Those familiar with the Stephen King book "Thinner" (originally written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman) might find the irony in this Facebook post of English chess Grandmaster Daniel Fernandez:  "Since being termed a “lucky player” by British chess soapboxer Danny Gormally , I have lost no fewer than 20 rating points, been rejected from 3 (real) jobs and placements, and fallen off my diet. Maybe he can reverse the hex somehow? On the plus side, I now have a cat." In "Thinner" the main protagonist Billy Halleck has the misfortune to run over the elderly daughter of an even more ancient Gypsy man, who seems to possess special powers. When the grossly obese Halleck is found innocent by a corrupt judicial system, the gypsy places a curse not just on him, but also on the judge and the cop who helped him beat the rap. Things go downhill from there for almost everybody invo