Assorted Interesting Articles

• I finished reading The World Is Flat this weekend. I thought it was good book. So I found BBC's brief comparison of China and India (as well as the US), which shows things like GDP, population, literacy, etc. with projections out to 2050, interesting.


• The Chess Olympiad started this weekend in Turin. I can't find any results on the "offical" website, but an Austrian site has a good level of detail - Team Canada Results shows them at 1-1 after 2 rounds and the individual results are given for each round.


• New York Times: Slim Margin Seems to Signal Montenegro's Independence. The EU and Serbia & Montenegro decided to use 55% as their threshold for separation. This reminded me about the whole debate surrounding 50% + 1 during Quebec's last referendum.


• Slashdot has an article Bloggers are the New Plagiarism complaining about bloggers who quote large blocks of text and don't add value. Sometimes I do that [1], but most of the time I do not [2 and 3]. My thinking is that I only quote blocks from the original article, when I think it's an valuable article, but it's from a news article that is likely to disappear (i.e. Checkout all the broken links to the LA Times in [1]). Without a copy of the pertinent parts of the article the post has no context or value. Is that a reasonable rationale?

White To Play And Win

From my game today:



52. Rd8! Re8+
53. Rxc8 Rxc8
54. d7 Rxc7
55. d8=Q+ Kg7
59. Qxc7 +-

[In fact, 53. Rxe8+ is also winning since after both 53...Kxe8 54. Bc6+ Kf8 55. d7 and 53...Rxe8 54. d7 White wins the rook and promotes a pawn too].

To Do List

I can't believe that 2005 is almost over. With work being so crazy busy, I doubt I'll be able to do anything big outside of work before Christmas. So, here are some things that I want to do in 2006:

• Learn how to ski: I use to live where there was lots of snow, but no mountains. Now I live where there is no snow, but lots of mountains. So I should take the opportunity to go skiing at least once. I've only been downhill skiing once and that was when I was in grade six and on a ski hill. (Emphasis on hill). Last year there was little snow in the mountains, but this year is suppose to be a good winter. (Some of the ski resorts are open already).


• Visit Europe: I haven't really gone on vacation this year. My masterplan is to visit Europe again next year. Probably Copenhagen, London, and a couple other cities.


• Learn how to scuba dive: One of co-workers goes scuba diving and gives lessons once in a while. I should join one of his classes.


• Go to another chess tournament: It's been a while since I've played in a chess tournament. (Although I'm playing a game every week or two at work and doing well).


• Visit Crater Lake: I read that Crater Lake has the deepest blue water in the World. It's in eastern Oregon and I'd like to going camping and hiking there some weekend during the summer.

World Chess Championship

I was going to add the crosstable as a comment on my previous post, but apparently I can't use <pre> tags in comments.

WCh-FIDE San Luis ARG (ARG), 28 ix-16 x 2005             cat. XX (2739)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Topalov, Veselin       g BUL 2788 ** == 1= 1= 1= 1= 1= 1=  10.0  2889
2 Anand, Viswanathan     g IND 2788 == ** == 0= =1 01 1= 11   8.5  2811
3 Svidler, Peter         g RUS 2738 0= == ** 11 1= == == 1=   8.5  2818
4 Morozevich, Alexander  g RUS 2707 0= 1= 00 ** =1 =1 == ==   7.0  2743
5 Leko, Peter            g HUN 2763 0= =0 0= =0 ** =1 1= 1=   6.5  2706
6 Kasimdzhanov, Rustam   g UZB 2670 0= 10 == =0 =0 ** == 01   5.5  2668
7 Adams, Michael         g ENG 2719 0= 0= == == 0= == ** ==   5.5  2661
8 Polgar, Judit          g HUN 2735 0= 00 0= == 0= 10 == **   4.5  2606
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: TWIC

World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is being held in Argentina. It's the first "legitimate" championship in about a decade. FIDE - the world chess organization - has feuded with the top players, such as Garry Kasparov, and mucked around with the championship's format, so recent World Championships haven't included the top players. However, FIDE has finally put together a tournament with most of the best chess players in the World.

The tournament is a double round robin with eight of World's best 16 players. I don't really know the details of how they picked who would get to play. (Kramnik, Ivanchuk, and Shirov are the only notable absentees). Kasparov retired earlier this year, so the championship is up for grabs.

Anand, ranked second in the World, behind Kasparov, was the favourite to win, but halfway through Veselin Topalov (ranked third) is 6-0-1 and has a large lead. I'll have to look over some of the games later this month.

TWIC has daily coverage.

Second Place!

I was playing someone rated higher again. This time I had Black though, and I tried to defend with the King's Indian Defence. Unfortunately, it didn't end up seeming too defensive as he got a massive attack. He sacrificed too much though, and I should have been able to hold for a winning position. Alas, defending against a strong attack is easier said than done and I fell to a tactical oversight in time pressure. Nevertheless, I had a full point advantage prior to the last round over the pack that was tied for third. So when the dust settled, I was in a four-way tie for second in my section with 6.0 points (5-2-2). They haven't updated the crosstable yet, but I suspect that they'll do so soon.

Moving Day

Today was the second last day of the tournament. So this was the day that you needed to move up in the standings if you wanted to be a somebody. I started the day with 4.5 points (4-1-1), tied for second with one other person (in my section) and a full point out of first. My first game I played Black and ended up defending with a Sicilian Defence again. Unfortunately I dropped a pawn, but I managed to rally back and equalize to obtain a draw. For my second game of the day, I was paired against someone rated higher than me for the first time. (My section seems to be dominated by all the young people who have mostly lower ratings). The game ended up being very crazy and with each of us very low on time, I found a nice tactic to give myself a winning position. (Or more precisely, a mating net). All in all, a draw and a win made it a very good day. Being high in the crosstable to start the day, I didn't move much in the standings though! Currently, I'm alone in second place, only half a point back from the leader. But I've already played him. (He's the person who beat me back in round 4). So, I'll need to win (or draw) and get some help from his opponent if I am to catch up with him.

2 More W's

I won both my games today. :-) So I'm at 4-1-1 after 6 rounds. There are still 3 more rounds. But I'm guaranteed now to at least break even for the tournament. (i.e. finish at .500 or above). The standings are here.

No! Don't Move There!

I managed to get myself into a slightly inferior position in my first game today, which deteriorated into a losing endgame. By some miracle, however, I managed to salvage a draw. For my second game today, I got into horrible time trouble yet again. (Recall that if you run out of time then you lose). I made my first significant screw up of the tournament and lost a piece as I didn't enough time left to properly think about my move. The position was total chaos, but I think if I played properly then I would have ended up with the better position. Oh well, such is life. So I'm sitting at 2-1-1 and currently tied for 6th of 22 in the U2000 section. (There are five sections, U2000 being the middle one). Perhaps tomorrow will bring better luck.

A Good Start

Not very many people showed up Wednesday night for the blitz tournament. (For the uninitiated, that means you get 5 minutes to make all your moves. If you run out of time you lose). Barely more than 10% of those playing in the tournament proper played. I went 6-7-1 to finished tied 9th-13th of 18 players. Needless to say, the Grandmaster won.

Today was a little more successfully. I won both my games. I'm tired beyond belief now. I need to search the Internet to see if I can find cheaper parking at the University of Guelph, have a snack, prepare for tomorrow's first game and then get some sleep...

8 Days Of Chess

Yesterday was the first day of my eight days of chess. It was the third round of the summer round robin at the local club. I won. :-) But I seem to have reverted back to my old habits. I almost ran out of time. Today the Guelph Pro-Am International starts. While, there is just the "opening ceremonies" (whatever that entails) and then a blitz tournament. It starts for real tomorrow and run through to Monday. (Nine rounds in total). Then next Tuesday will be the fourth round of the tournament at the local club. I think I'll be really tired by then. I think I found the website for the Guelph tournament. Perhaps there will be updates during the tournament. (For reference, I'll be playing in the Under 2000 section).

Round 2

Last night was the second round of the chess tournament that I'm in at the local chess club. Somehow I misplayed the opening and ended up at a slight disadvantage. There wasn't too much choice on what to do after that - I managed to force trading off lots of pieces to (more or less) equalize. The result was a fairly unclear endgame. I accepted a draw offer at that point as it seemed like a decent result. (Although, it probably would have been a good experience to play out the game and see what would happen).

I've finished posting all my photos from my trip to Europe. (While, technically that's not all the photos I took, but it's all the photos that I'm going to post here).

I'm Back...

After a two year hiatus, I've started playing chess again. Last night was the first round of the summer tournament at the local chess club. It is a double round robin with various groups of four. (So you should end up playing six games). I'm in the second group and seeded first (by a fair margin), so that adds a bit more pressure to do well. I played a decent, but conservative game to fetch a win in 53 moves, so I'm pleased that things are off to a good start.