An Unexplored Opening

     The defense I used in this game has no name: 1. e4 e5 2. d4 d5. I did find some games with it on the 365Chess Opening Explorer. I don't think anybody would be surprised to discover that no well known player has ever played it...probably for a good reason! It could have turned into a rare sideline of the Elephant Gambit had white played 3.Nf3.  But, in this game white, rated 1700-ish, played what appears to be the best line according to Stockfish. When he traded Q's at move 4 (!) he assured himself of a lasting static positional advantage, but I was surprised at how quickly things got tactical even with Q's off the board! 
     As often happens, white lost his advantage when, at move 9, he decided to go after a Pawn rather than finish developing his pieces. The chances were even, but then on his 11th move, lured by the possibility of a check, white made tactical error when he overlooked the fact that 11...e5 cut off the defense of the N which had just eaten the P. My 17th move was not the best, but in practical play it created a lot of problems for white who was running low on time.
 

My Grob Attack Gets Slaughtered

     I have pretty good luck with the Grob in online 15 minute games. I've reached the position after black's 4th move many times and usually manage to get away with grabbing black's b-Pawn. Not in this game though. My opponent never gave me a chance
 

Just An Online Game

the backyard

     Chess was pretty much on hold earlier this week. First, the inevitable happened...it got cold and snowed. It was no surprise...it's been doing that here every year that I can remember and that's over 60 years, but the first time is always hard to take especially when it happens like it did this year...we had nice, 60 degree weather up until Old Man Winter finally struck and it snowed and the temperature dropped to 12 degrees overnight. Naturally, when I went out to do the driveway and sidewalks a part on the snowblower broke.  At least me and the neighbor managed a hillbilly fix using some wire I had in the garage. I was thinking we don't get as much snow as we used to when I was a kid until I remembered I was was much shorter then so the snow seemed deeper. 
     I did play some online games and the following was one of the more interesting ones...maybe even a little instructive.
 

Fedor Duz-Khotimirsky

     Duz-Khotimirsky (25 September 1881, Chernihiv – 5 November 1965, Moscow) was a Ukrainian master. And he was awarded the IM title in 1950. See Wikipedia for a complete list of his tournaments and matches. An interesting excerpt about his first meeting with Chigorin taken from his autobiography can be read HERE. 
     When the 26-year old Duz-Khotimirsky arrived in Carlsbad in 1907 to compete in his first international tournament everybody predicted that he would fare poorly. After all, he didn't even have the master title. Chigorin, who was familiar with Duz-Khotimirsky's play, predicted that people would see for themselves that he a dangerous opponent. 
     Although Duz-Khotimirsky got off to a bad start, he ended up scoring 10 out of 20. Fifty percent may not sound impressive, but it tied him for 11th place with Frank Marshall and he was then recognized as a master. Chigorin himself only managed to tie for 16-18 with 7.5 points. 
     He learned to play chess at the age of 17 and two years later was one of the strongest amateurs in Kiev. In 1903 he competed in the Third All-Russian Tournament and in the same year he won the Kiev City Championship. He played in the Forth and Fifth All-Russian Championships in 1906 and 1907. But it was in two small tournaments in Moscow in 1907 that he demonstrated his prowess. In one of them he finished first ahead of the well known Georg Marco and in the other he obtained a plus score. 
     Professional players had it tough in Russia in those days and even top players like Chigorin and Schiffers had to depend on the whims of rich patrons. When the officials of Russia's chess organizations selected Duz-Khotimirsky for Carlsbad based on his impressive performances, they wished him luck and sent him off to Carlsbad, but gave him no expense money. By the time he arrived he was almost broke and almost starved. Eventually Chigorin and the other Russian masters noticed his predicament and helped him out. This may explain his results.  In the first rounds at Carlsbad he only manged 2.5 points, but in the second half he scored wins over Nimzovich, Salwe, Spielmann, Janowsky, Berger, Mieses, Cohn and Johner. 
     Duz-Khotimirsky was recognized as a brilliant and original master. In St. Petersburg 1909 he defeated Lasker and Rubinstein in sensational style. A serious test for him was in 1910 when he faced Frank Marshal, then at the height of his powers, in a match. The result was a 3-3 tie. 
     After what was known in Russia as the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 Duz-Khotimirsky began promoting chess in Russia by touring the country giving lectures and simuls. He also continued playing in tournaments and as a master of attack, he produced many brilliant combinations that were widely published. He was awarded the title of Honored Master for his extensive work in Soviet Chess. 
     In his later years he headed the Locomotive Sports Society's chess section. He also authored a book of his best games. Duz-Khotimirsky never made any special studies of opening theory, usually following his own ideas, but he did test a number of variations in the K-Indian which was his favorite defense with black. He also, on rare occasions, played the Albin Counter Gambit. 
 

Stockfish 7...which version?!

   As I mentioned in my recent post on Stockfish 7, it comes with several versions: 32-bit, 64-bit, 64-bit bmi2 and 64-bit popcnt, but I had no idea what the last two were.  The 64-bit bmi2 won't run on my laptop because it's too old.  Since then I discovered the following explanation on Chess2U which "explains" the popcnt version.  If I understand the writer correctly, if your processor was released in 2008 or later then you should use the popcnt version.  Although the popcnt version seems to run OK on my laptop, the processor is dated 2004 so I assume that for me, the 64-bit version is the best.
    A quick engine match using both versions running on a single core resulted in 5 draws, so  apparently it doesn't make much difference which version I actually use.  Maybe my laptop just does not utilize the popcnt feature...I don't know.
     In the following position from a recent online game white (me) is to move:

The results after 10 minutes: 

64-bit 
First Choice: 17.a4 
Evaluation: white's favor at 0.91 
Depth: 29 plies 
kN/s: 2536 

Popcnt 
First Choice: 17.a4 
Evaluation: white's favor at 0.85 
Depth: 30 plies 
kN/s: 2235

Komodo 8 (as a comparison)
First Choice: 17.a4 
Evaluation: white's favor at 0.77 
Depth: 23 plies 
kN/s: 2551

So, it does not appear that it matters a whole lot which version of SF I use on my machine. Any computer gurus have a comment?

Correspondence Ratings

     Registration for the preliminaries of the Lechenicher SchachServer “World Championship” is open for those qualified, of which there are 224 players who are eligible. Only active players who have met certain qualifications are eligible. 
     I played in one of these events once and failed to qualify for the next round, finishing fourth...only the top three places advanced. A Toshiba Satellite L855 with an Intel Core i3-312M CPU at 2.50Ghz with 4.00 GB of RAM using Stockfish 6 and Komodo 8 won't get you enough wins to get very far! 
     Out of curiosity I checked the LSS ratings of those who have titles with the ICCF and FIDE. It's interesting that most of their top rated players are no longer active and the highest rated titled (ICCF or FIDE) player eligible for this event is a FIDE Woman International Master with an LSS rating of 2170. She is a new member who has only completed four games. 
     I have not included a few titled players in the 1500-1600s simply because they have recently resigned or forfeited dozens of games which is why their ratings have plummeted, but here's what I found. In addition to the FIDE WIM mentioned, the list of titled players contains: 

One ICCF GM rated a little over 2100 
One ICCF Lady GM rated in the upper 1900s 
Nine ICCF Senior IMs rated from 1833 to 2166 
Sixteen ICCF IMs rated 1774 to 2029 
Two FIDE IMs rated 2040 to 2109 
Five FIDE FMs rated 1804 to 1945 

     What this shows is how meaningless correspondence ratings and titles are. Some of the ICCF titled players appear to be older guys who earned them before engines, but these days they can no longer compete at the higher levels. That's probably because nowadays top correspondence players are using Weapons of Mass Destruction (multiple high-powered computers) running for days, using multiple engines, and selecting moves because they are .01 better than the alternatives and a couple of things happen. One, once you get a correspondence rating, it's almost impossible to gain rating points or a title unless you invest in more powerful hardware. And, two, the ratings only tell you how good a guy's hardware is, not his personal skill level. 
     It used to be that strong correspondence players were strong OTB players as well and sometimes they annotated their games. Even when engines were fairly strong, a strong OTB player could tell when his engine was suggesting less than optimal moves and he could explain why an engine move was not as good as the one he played. That's what CC GM Robin Smith demonstrated in his book, Modern Chess Analysis. Smith published the book in 2004 and advised that processor speed was more important than RAM, stating that 256 megabytes of RAM was sufficient. And, he opined that programs like Chessmaster, Chess Tiger, Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Rebel, Shredder as well as others were good enough. Of course the book quickly became outdated to the point that it's pretty much useless today. 
     You rarely see top level correspondence players annotating their games anymore; they can't tell you why their top of the line computers running Komodo 9 suggested a move...it's just the one their computers and engines came up with. 
     I still play on LSS, but only in the “Rapid” events and only to mess around with openings. In the last 30 games I've played the following: 

White: 
Stonewall (3 draws) 
Urusov Gambit (1 win, 1 draw) 
Sicilian Closed (1 win) 
Sicilian 2.g4 (3 draws) 
Sicilian 2.a4 (1 draw) 
Sicilian 2.g3 (1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss) 
Four Knights Game (1 win) 
1.e4 d5 2.Nc3 (1 draw) 
1.e4 e5 2.g3 (1 draw) 

Black: 
Evans Gambit Declined (draw) 
Alekhine (1 loss) 
Modern Defense (1 draw) 
Ruy Lopez Schliemann (1 draw, 1 loss) 
Ruy Lopez 3...g6 (1 loss) 
Elephant Gambit (1 loss) 
Slav Defense (1 win) 
QGD Chigorin (1 win, 1 draw) 
QP Opening (1 loss) 
Modern Benoni (1 draw) 
K-Indian (1 draw) 
Budapest Defense (1 draw) 

Score: +6 -6 =18 

     That's interesting because with the exception of a Slav, a K-Indian, a Modern Benoni and a Modern Defense the games have all been unusual lines. Engines still are not considered up to snuff compared to a GM's evaluation of an opening position because they can't understand strategic ideas until the position is well established. So, while a GM may not have much trouble figuring out how to take advantage of some of the openings I've used, they're OK to play against engines. Or...is it possible that some of these offbeat lines really are as good as the Najdorf Sicilian or the Ruy Lopez Berlin Defense or the Nimzo-Indian?! 
     Correspondence chess these days is about super-hardware...which most of us don't have. We are using a puny laptop and Komodo or Stockfish and unlike the engines of a few years ago, even masters aren't good enough to find better moves than those suggested by the engines. 
     Correspondence chess is still a good way to play for those who are lower rated, but if you are above 1800-1900 and everybody is using an engine, there's little point in playing. Several years ago I saw a discussion on correspondence chess and one guy 'fessed up. He admitted to never having played tournament chess and thought he was about 1200 strength. But...he designed his own dedicated chess computer and, at least at that time, he understood the strengths and weaknesses of chess engines. That accounted for his 2400-plus correspondence rating. 
     Just as wearing a cowboy outfit doesn't make you a real cowboy, these days having a correspondence title or a high correspondence rating does not make you real master.

Postal Chess Nostalgia

  

Reshevsky

   Here are some cover photos of of Chess Review magazine by Al Horowitz. It made the present day USCF's magazine look like a rag. Chess Review was big on correspondence chess and it wasn't unusual to find yourself playing against OTB masters (there weren't many in those days), a couple of whom actually competed in the US over the board championship! Bobby Fischer even played in one of their correspondence tournaments...but that was before he got good, of course.  Read my post about it HERE.

 

Nancy Roos and Gisela Gresser

 

Bisguier and Reshevsky

 For postal chess, Chess Review sold move mailing cards. You had to keep track of a lot of information besides the moves (and position!). You had to record the dates sent, received, reflection time and total time. It cost $0.04 to mail a post card.

 

Mailing card front

Mailing card back

     Chess Review was located at 134 West 72nd Street in New York City. Today it houses a hair design shop. Chess Review sold the famous "Postal Chess Album" which consisted of six cardboard chess sets (5 x 5 inch playing field) bound with flexible plastic that permitted them to be opened flat. Score cards for six games were included. The pieces were printed in color on bits of cardboard, which were then inserted into a tight, single-slot on the correct squares. The price was $3.50 per album. That was a little pricey, about the same as the cost of a chess book...$28.50 today. On the downside the slots become loose with use and the pieces had a tendency to fall out. 

     Recording errors were not unusual. I once defeated a player rated in the top ten in correspondence chess when he made a recording error. But, because it cost him 100 rating points and he could only average a couple of points a win because he was rated so high, I did the decent thing and offered him a draw. The 50 points he lost still knocked him off the top ten list. 
     Eventually the Postal Chess Albums met a competitor...the Post-A-Log invented by Joe Viggiano who died on May 21, 1997. They were made of plastic with vinyl pieces that peeled and stuck to the board. Eventually the pieces lost their adhesiveness and the boards got gummy so they had to be replaced. 

Mikhail Tahl

     Mikhail Tahl (9 November 1936 – 28 June 1992) was the eighth World Champion, briefly holding the title from from 1960 to 1961. He was one of the best attacking players of all time and a highly regarded chess writer. The game Tahl vs. Klaman given here is a good example of the depths to which GM's can calculate. Tahl's opponent in this game, Konstantin Klaman (12-23-1917 – 10-5-85, 65 years old) was the Leningrad Champion in 1962-63 and in 1961 he helped train Boris Spassky. 

Garry Kasparov talks about Mikhail Tahl and Soviet chess history 
Mikhail Tahl: Triumph and Tragedy (Part I) 
Mikhail Tahl: Triumph and Tragedy (Part II) 
An interview with Angelina Tahl 

My Second Dragon...ever!

     Up until last week the only time I ever played the Dragon was back in a tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1962 which I lost. I know very little about the line, but managed to get through 11 moves of the “book” before varying. 
     A check of the Chessgamesdotcom site shows that its popularity spiked in the 1940s and again in the 1980s and has dropped off since then. According to their database of 6277 games between 1911 and 2015 the percentage results have been: 
White wins 42.5 
Black wins 28.8 
Draws 28.7 

     Statistically the Najdorf, based on 24,536 games between 1926 and 2015 the percentage results have been: 
White wins 36.4 
Black wins 31.9 
Draws 31.7 

     So, the Najdorf is the better of the two which accounts for its popularity, but there is a lot more theory on the Najdorf that you must be familiar with. Wikipedia has a good general guide to the Dragon. The Dragon looks to still be a pretty good defense for black IF one is willing to spend some time to learn the basic patterns. I Googled “Sicilian Dragon Amazon” and found a some good books that allow you to look inside.

 

Stockfish 7 is out!

     This release is reported to be around 60 ELO stronger than Stockfish 6, but that is only when playing against itself, not other engines. The SMP algorithm has been changed from YBW to Lazy SMP, whatever that means; I have no idea. 
     The download comes with the 32-bit, 64-bit, 64-bit bmi2 and 64-bit popcnt versions. As for the last two versions, I have no idea what they are either...something to do with each version being optimized for a particular type of hardware. 
     Bmi2 (which will not run on my laptop) is the fastest but only runs on recent Haswell CPUs. Again, I have no idea what the Haswell CPU is. 
     The popcnt version is supposed to be faster that the x64 version. It is recommended that if you have a new computer try the bmi2 first. If it doesn't work then go to the popcnt version, then the plain 64-bit and finally, the 32-bit version. 
     Download direct from the site HERE.

Armand E. Blackmar

     Armand Edward Blackmar, born in Vermont in 1826, to parents Reuben Harmon and Amanda (Cushman) Blackmar, was, with his brother Henry, the founder of Blackmar Brothers, a music publishing company.  Blackmar was also the same fellow with a gambit named after him.  He was quite an interesting fellow. 

Blackmar's tomb

     Blackmar attended Western Reserve College in Ohio. From 1852 to 1855 he was professor of music at Centenary College in Jackson, Louisiana. In 1858 he and his brother, Henry Clay Blackmar, started a music publishing company in Vicksburg, Mississippi. By 1860 they had moved to New Orleans. It become the most successful publisher of music of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, issuing about half the songs released during that era.  Blackmar himself wrote many of the South's best known patriotic songs.
     Armand and his brother were music teachers before entering the music publishing business. When the Civil War started the former Northerners thought the South should fight and sing songs and dance to their own music.
     After Federal troops commanded by Benjamin Butler occupied New Orleans, Henry moved to Augusta, Georgia behind Confederate lines to run the branch of the business that did most of the printing and distribution. Relying on an accent that confirmed his Northern background, Armand continued to operate the New Orleans store until it was raided. 
     One song, The Bonnie Blue Flag, was such a contentious song that publication brought about his arrest. All copies of the song were ordered destroyed in the city of New Orleans by Union Army Captain Butler who ordered Blackmar arrested. Following imprisonment for publishing this song, Blackmar continued to publish under a variety of names such as Armond and A. Noir. 

     During the Civil War years, he also worked as a lawyer in New Orleans. One of his songs, The White Man’s Banner, contained lyrics that played on racial prejudices, phrases that charged voters to “vindicate our Father’s choice, A White Man’s Government” and satirically saluted “Captain Grant of the Black Marines, the Stupidest man that was ever seen.”
     He remained in New Orleans until the war ended and the songs he wrote were published under a pseudonym and issued by his brother. After the war all their music was re-copyrighted under US law and they became well known music merchants. Blackmar's published works included, among others: Dixie War Song, Maryland! My Maryland!, Southern Marseillaise and The Beauregard Manassas.
     Following the Civil War, in addition to his chess exploits, Armond returned to New Orleans and reopened a music store there. Additionally, Henry operated an a music store of his own that was also located in New Orleans. 
     Armand popularized the Backmar Gambit during the years 1881 and 1882. Blackmar was also a very good violinist and pianist and a charter member of the Chess, Checkers and Whist Club of New Orleans. 
     As a citizen of New Orleans, Blackmar was a founding member of the Episcopal Church of New Orleans. The church was known for it's conversion of slaves to Christianity and for it's ministerial charity programs for those living in the local asylum. He was married to Margaret B. Meara in 1861. Blackmar's first child, born in 1861, was named Louisiana Rebel "Lulu" Blackmar. Further descendants were sisters Dorothy Blackmar, Margaret Mary Blackmar, and Mrs. Alicia Blackmar Anderson. All made their homes in New Orleans. The descendants of the Blackmar family maintained homes and properties in New Orleans into the late twentieth century.
     The following game shows why the Blackmar in its original form was not very effective.