FireBird Followup

Back in April, 2010, I reported on how FireBird fared against Houdini and that the results were pretty much even in long time controls.  Houdini gets a slight edge at faster time controls though.  It’s the long time controls that are important because that’s what you’ll use when analyzing.  Unfortunately, most engine vs. engine tests are actually at fairly fast time controls.   

Firebird has had many names over the course of its development. One of the early names was RobboLito.  People accused RobboLito of being a cloned copy of Rybka and because of that the program was banned from use on many sites and refused testing.  Despite all the brouhaha, as far as I know, its developers never had a case heard against them by the engine police.

Robbolito’s early development was fast paced and eventually the developers went their separate ways and as a result Firebird was born.  The argument was that Firebird was stripped down in its error checking code in an effort to make it calculate faster and the result was that at faster time controls, it was better that Rybka.  But in long controls, so the theory went, Rybka would make fewer mistakes and therefore be the stronger of the two.  In one independent test at a time control of 40 moves in 2 hours, after 32 games the result was tied at 16 points each.

Still, Houdini remains the most popular free engine.  The latest version now costs about $50, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, its rating is only about 25 points over the free version so right now there seems little point in parting with $50 just for 25 points.

FireBird is also considered to be one of the best programs in the world and it is free. There is also some controversy associated with Firebird as Vasik Rajlich, the founder and head of the Rybka team, has alleged that the programmers of Firebird copied nearly all aspects of Rybka in their design. It’s probably no surprise that his claims have not been been substantiated.

My own personal (and not very scientific) testing has pretty much lead me to believe that FireBird is the engine of choice when it comes to playing Advanced Chess at LSS. 

It was a little less than a year ago that I began using FireBird along with my game database and opening book consisting of top level CC and engine games.  Since that time I have completed 39 games.  Of course it is impossible to know what engines my opponents were using and how long they allowed their engines to analyze, so the results don’t really prove anything.  Besides that, you also have to take into account that probably half of my opponents, like myself, did not rely solely on engines to select moves, so that would definitely affect the outcome, too.  The point is that I have been using FireBird exclusively and I was interested in seeing if its use had a drastic effect on my results.

Prior to using FireBird my engine of choice was Houdini and I had compiled a record of 26-28 with it.  Using FireBird my record is 20-19.  The significance of the results doesn’t mean much in itself, but considering I have obtained a draw with an ICCF Senior Master and gained 76 rating points since using FireBird's assistance, I can’t be unhappy with the results.  Actually the results would have been better except they were somewhat skewed when in one event I (foolishly) used the Beginners Opening which resulted in positions so inferior no engine in the world would have saved me and ended up with the worst results I’ve ever had, losing 4 games and drawing two. 

I saw one report where the Engine Parameters were tweaked and it played even better.  I have never bothered with this though because it was done on the single processor version and whenever you tweak the parameters it seems that they always revert back to the default when you close the engine.  That means resetting them every time you restart and I’m not interested in doing that.

So, while the results using FireBird instead of Houdini haven’t been drastic, I think they are sufficient that FireBird will continue to be my engine of choice for analysis.

Queen Alice Again

Signing on to the Queen Alice Site this morning, I was greeted with the following message:

 The site has experienced a severe database corruption problem, I am working hard to bring it back online. Sorry for the inconvenience. I expect it will take me a couple of days to restore everything.

In view of this site’s continued problems it is with considerable sadness that I am removing it from my recommended correspondence sites.  For the last several years QA has been my site of choice for non-engine correspondence chess, but in view of the fact that in recent weeks they have repeatedly had server problems, which included the necessity of canceling games in progress, I can no longer recommend this site.  This is unfortunate because the site owner, “Miguel”, does what he does not for money but for the love of it.  Sorry.

English Lessons by Lev Khariton

Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, (August, 1911 – May 5, 1995) was three-time World Champions. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous players who achieved distinction in another career while playing top-class competitive chess. He also developed a chess-playing algorithm that tried to "think" like a top human player, but this approach has been superseded by a brute-force search strategy that exploits the rapid increase in the calculation speed of modern computers.

Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union putting him under political pressure but also giving him considerable influence within Soviet chess. From time to time he was accused of using that influence to his own advantage, but the evidence is unclear and some suggest he resisted attempts by Soviet officials to intimidate some of his rivals.

Botvinnik also played a major role in the organization of chess, making a significant contribution to the design of the World Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to dominate top-class chess during that time. His famous pupils include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.

Khariton’s Article:
It so happened that I made Botvinnik's acquaintance twice. The first time it was in autumn 1961 when I, among eight other Moscow juniors, played against the World Champion in a simul with clocks. Botvinnik made short work of everyone quickly, but in our game he was going uphill for a long time and it was only after four hours' struggle that Botvinnik managed to extricate himself.

KHARITON - BOTVINNIK
Moscow, 1961

In this position Botvinnik played 35...e5 and after 36.Nxb7 Qxb7
37.Qa6 Qb8 38.b6 exd4 39.Qa7 Be5 40.Qxb8+ Bxb8 as a token of draw he
shook my hand.

I shall never forget the moment when I stayed face-to-face with Botvinnik at the chessboard. On that November evening many chess fans came to the Central Chess Club of the USSR in Gogolevski Boulevard. Full of respect for the World Champion, I was trembling all over; besides, the game was drawing to a close in a mutual time scramble. Quite characteristically, Botvinnik was keeping an eye on my scoresheet, possibly fearing being cheated by his young opponent before the time control.  Sure, this game was not important for him, but if he was so suspicious even in such an insignificant encounter, it is easy to imagine the hard time he was giving to his far more serious opponents.

This sense of suspicion so typical of the people of his generation was accompanying Botvinnik throughout his long chess career. As is known, playing the World Champioship match against David Bronstein in 1951, Botvinnik was occasionally keeping away his sealed move from his second, fearing the "fifth column" in his camp, so that his second had to do a lot of guesswork after the adjournment.

Botvinnik's epoch was in no way easy for his opponents: actually, he was reigning supreme for almost three decades. It can be remembered that in the years of Stalin's personality cult there existed small cults almost in all domains of human endeavor ( Gorky in literature, Stanislavsky in theatre, Lysenko in biology etc; ). Therefore it was quite natural that Botvinnik was universally worshipped. For example, all World Championship matches were organized in such a way that every small caprice of the Champion was satisfied. Mikhail Tal in 1961 and Tigran Petrosian in 1963 wrote letters to the FIDE asking to postpone their matches on account of illness, but nobody would even budge to consider their requests.

Some years ago in a friendly talk with Bronstein I said quite unthinkingly that Botvinnik had broken him down in their match. The usually imperturbable David went berserk with anger: "He broke me down?! It's me who crushed him!" Really, it was Bronstein who first pierced through the armor of the apparently invincible champion, who later went down to other challengers.

Now that ex-Soviet chess players have become literally globetrotters playing in various international tournaments, we can remember that in the 30s Botvinnik was actually the only chess player and one of the very few Soviet people who were allowed to travel abroad. In other words, in the years of the "iron curtain" the trust of the authorities in Botvinnik was never put to suspicion. Having tied for first with Capablanca in Nottingham in 1936, Botvinnik wrote a letter to Stalin thanking "father and teacher" for his chess triumphs. At that time such letters were written by physicists and collective farmers, workers and academicians, and many years later Botvinnik confessed that the letter had been pushed over to him by the KGB agents for signature.

The loyalty of the Soviet champion was never put to doubt in the Kremlin, but it should be noted that there was never any "feedback": being a chess professional, Botvinnik never gave up his scientific research because he, as everyone else in the Soviet Union, did not feel secure about his future. In a state where sport and chess are the servants of political manipulations and ideology, the champion is just a pawn in the hands of bureaucrats; and a person with an iron-clad character, Botvinnik detested even the slightest hint of an unsteady or precarious life. He was fully aware that only day-to-day academic earnings could provide him and his family with a steady income.

It would be, however, unjust and one-sided to characterize Botvinnik as a wholly unimaginative, misanthropic man. He existed in two dimensions. On the one hand, he was living an everyday life in which "nothing human was alien to him". On the other, in the world of chess and chess players he had his own principles; I'd rather say, his own morality. What is more, he wanted these principles to be observed by all other chess players. May be, it was one of the reasons why Karpov and Kasparov who began their careers under Botvinnik's tutorship later found other teachers and trainers who were certainly inferior to him as chess players, but who were incomparably more tolerant. I paid attention to this duality of Botvinnik's character when I met him again 13 years later.

In June 1974 I received a telephone call from the USSR Chess Federation. I was asked if I could give some English lessons to Botvinnik who was to go to the USA and Canada to meet computer chess programmers. Botvinnik had been working for many years on the "silicon" chess player and in the Soviet Union he pioneered the idea of an "artificial intellect" at a time when genetics and cybernetics were considered as "two sold-out call-girls of capitalism". No wonder: even Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola were looked upon as dangerous capitalist inventions!

Of course, I enthusiastically accepted the offer to be Botvinnik's teacher and, certainly, I was very much excited when I pressed the bell and he opened the door of his apartment to meet me. I experienced very much the same feeling as my friend Yuri Razuvayev when he came for the first time to Botvinnik's chess school: all the famous diagrams from Botvinnik's games came dancing into my memory. I thought that this man had played with the legendary Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, that he was a legend himself.

Botvinnik met me with simplicity and hospitality. Without delay we got down to English lessons. I told him that I always thought that he knew English and German. Botvinnik just smiled: "Well, I am a typical child of the "brigade" method. In the 20s and 30s we studied in such a way that the best student of the group answered for the whole group, we all passed exams and got diplomas. Stalin adored figures and he wanted to "bake" as many people as possible with a higher education!" And I was so naïve as to think that Botvinnik knew everything, that he was the most educated man etc. This image was created by Soviet propaganda glorifying the champion, his education and his loyalty to the communist ideas. It is interesting that in everyday life, in a heart-to-heart talk Botvinnik himself laughed at this image, but when he made public appearances he invariably wore, may be by force of habit, the mask of an inaccessible man. But he liked a good joke, he was not indifferent to beautiful women, he enjoyed remembering good old days. In his apartment I noticed an old photograph: Marshal Blucher and Botvinnik, 1936...I don't really know how he managed to keep this photo, the picture of the famous marshal, who fell victim in the first wave of Stalin's purges, but I imagine that keeping such a photograph in Stalin's epoch, could cost the Soviet champion his life.

How did our studies proceed? Botvinnik was a highly organized man, he never wasted a minute. We met three times a week for two hours of studies, and after the first hour he always invited me to the kitchen to drink tea and eat sandwiches. Most of all I remember these tea breaks when, sitting at the kitchen table the first Soviet World Champion told me a lot of interesting things about himself, his rivals, his contemporaries.

Once he asked me to make a short interval in our lessons because he was to go to Tallinn for a few days. "Oh, Mikhail Moiseyevich, - I exclaimed, - you will meet Keres!" "Keres must not know about it!" - Botvinnik's voice was firm and categoric. Frankly speaking, I was more than surprised by this reaction because his rivalry with Keres had long before become classical history, but later I understood that even he chess world for Botvinnik was divided into two camps. In one camp are his former rivals - Smyslov, Bronstein, Tal, Petrosian- with whom his fight seemed to have never stopped, and in the other are all the other chess players who had never threatened his chess hegemony and whom he was always ready to help by word or by deed. Once we were talking about Lilienthal, and Botvinnik said: "He was a very strong player, and I always had difficult positions against him". He only forgot to mention that he had always beaten Lilienthal!

Botvinnik's apparent coldness and arrogance were, in my opinion, his defense not only at the chessboard, but in life as well when he had to prove his supremacy. But as a chess player, he brought up many pupils who became strong masters and grandmasters. Many leading trainers - M.Dvoretsky, A.Nikitin, A.Bykhovsky and others - have more than once relied on Botvinnik's advice and experience.

Botvinnik's modesty was proverbial. You felt it in his manners, in his everyday life (he was washing up and shopping himself!), in the simplicity of his apartment. Me first chess teacher the late and unforgettable Yuri Brazilsky who worked as an editor of chess literature of the Fizkultura and Sport publishers in Moscow, happened to collaborate with Botvinnik editing his chess books. Brazilsky told me with what trepidation and respect he used to watch Botvinnik analyzing chess positions. He was particularly amazed when Botvinnik admitted having made some blunders or mistakes in his commentaries. The courage and modesty showing not only a real chess player but an outstanding personality as well...

Once when were drinking tea in his kitchen Botvinnik began remembering Stalin and his times. "Stalin was a gangster, but a clever gangster", - he remarked. I was surprised to hear this popular phrase from him. When you hear such words from millions of laymen, who during the "thaw" of Khrushchev or in the reign of Brezhnev missed brutal dictatorship - to this I had got used more or less, but to hear the same words from the man who was an intellectual idol of many generations was, to say the least, very strange and disappointing! Possibly, looking in retrospect, this can be explained. The 30s were the years of Botvinnik's youth and chess triumphs, and every man, with years, feels nostalgic about his past.

When in 1976 after Korchnoi's defection almost all Soviet grandmasters signed the letter against the "traitor", Botvinnik was also asked to put down his signature. But at this moment Botvinnik really made the move of his life, the move explaining his supremacy in chess for many years. He said that he wanted to write his own letter denouncing Korchnoi. In my opinion, Botvinnik was well aware that for the bureaucrats of the 70s he was a figure of the past and nobody would ever give him this "privilege". And so, his name cannot be found under this shameful document.

Curiously enough, Botvinnik often liked to assume the role of a prophet, but his predictions very seldom came true. I remember him saying that Taimanov had much of a chance to beat Fischer in 1971. Incidentally, he always believed that Fischer was a mentally sick person; although, Tal or Spassky, for example, who had often met Fischer at the chessboard, would have never shared his opinion. Or Botvinnik was repeating that Karpov was about to lose his chess strength pretty soon, but only today have his results become somewhat shaky.

Some months after our English lessons I met Botvinnik strolling near his house on the bank of the Moskva River. He said that his English had become much better and helped him a lot in his talks with American scientists. I asked him about Gary Kasparov, his best pupil. "He has been taken away from me, - he said bitterly, - I am afraid that now he is lost for chess!" And again the "patriarch" made a mistake...

Which Opening to Play

Some chess openings are better suited to your personality than others. A violent King's Gambit will simply not suit a player who prefers a positional approach to the game.  Which opening is right for you? Is it the quiet Caro-Kann? The offbeat Grob Attack? Or maybe the flexible, transposition-loaded English Opening? Take the quiz to find out!

Which chess opening fits your personality? Your Result: Four Knights Game The Four Knights is fairly popular with beginners who strictly adhere to the opening principle "develop knights before bishops." It is occasionally played at higher levels, but most players consider the Ruy Lopez a better attempt for White to exploit the advantage of the first move. The Four Knights usually leads to quiet positional play but there are a few fairly sharp variations.
Ruy Lopez (Spanish Game)
Caro-Kann
French Defence
English Opening
Grob's Attack
King's Gambit
Sicilian Dragon
Evans Gambit
Sicilian Najdorf
Which chess opening fits your personality? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

ICGA vs. LOOP

The world is full of people who seem to make a living out of suing people.  I once knew a business owner who made most of his money suing people.  In fact as one of his customers I was once, on behalf of my employer, on the receiving end of one of his lawsuits which he later dropped.  I’m not much into USCF politics, but it’s been impossible in the last several years not to be aware of some of the pathetic dirt bags involved in US chess politics.  I personally knew a couple people involved over the years and some were really nice people who had the best interests of the chess community at heart.  Unfortunately the same can’t be said of all of them.  Then, too, there are politicians.  I’ve always wondered how you can have a job that pays $60,000 a year or so and become a millionaire several times over. 

I am not too familiar with the program LOOP but it appears that it was last offered free in 2007 and ended up in programs like Wii & Nintendo.  Anyway, I just read that the International Computer Games Association (ICGA), which according to their website is a site of prime interest to computer-game enthusiasts across a wide spectrum of games and headed by IM David Levy, has received a formal complaint from Fabien Letouzey, the programmer of FRUIT, regarding the program LOOP.

The allegation is that LOOP, which has participated in the World Computer Chess Championship, uses code derived from FRUIT, which placed second at the 2005 World Computer Chess Championship in Reykjavik.

The International Computer Games Association (ICGA) says, in part:

The email address that had previously been used by Dr Reul is no longer active, so on behalf of the ICGA I sent him an email via a friend of his who indicated that he would pass my email on to Dr Reul, did not respond to that email. The ICGA has attempted to contact Dr Reul in order to give him the opportunity of commenting on the allegation prior to the ICGA conducting a technical investigation into LOOP, but it appears to us that Dr Reul does not wish to be found

The ICGA is now planning to conduct an investigation into LOOP in order to examine the allegation about the use of code derived from FRUIT and once again invites Dr Reul, to contact the ICGA with his comments on the matter.

It was the ICGA who made accusations against the programmer of Rybka and now they appear to be on a witch-hunt against another chess programmer.

I do not have a problem with programmers making money on their work.  I was sorry to see Robert Houdart start selling the latest version of Houdini, but I understand why he did it and certainly can’t blame him.  But what I do have a problem with is suing every programmer you can and making them prove they didn’t do anything wrong.  So, did Dr. Ruel use Fruit as a basis for his program?  I don’t know.  What he did do was, as described by the US Patent Office, perfectly legal.

... any person who “invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent...”  

That appears to be what Dr. Ruel did; he found a useful improvement by adapting the program to work with a game console.

CC vs OTB

       I was watching a debate unfold on a forum about whether or not playing correspondence chess will help your over the board skills.  I think cc will help only to a limited extent.  After all they aren’t played the same way. In CC you don’t have to remember opening lines and endgames can always be looked up.  The same holds true for middlegames to some extent.  You can search out similar positions and play over a lot of master games to get a feel for how to handle similar positions.  And the fact that you have a lot more time to select a move is a big factor. Research and hours of analysis of a cc game won’t hurt you but fiddling with the pieces won’t help your powers of visualization …an important factor in otb games to be sure!  To hone that skill requires a totally different approach.
        I often hear of players who use cc in an attempt to enhance their otb skills.  Players who do this usually treat cc games as though they were otb games, but personally I think there are better ways to train yourself to play otb games.
       The biggest argument I hear is that using books, databases, and these days engines, shuffling pieces around in the analysis process, etc. is not a good way to learn anything.  For some reason a lot of players assume correspondence players are trying to hone their otb play or are trying to learn something.  I haven’t played in an otb tournament in decades because I realized I didn’t like playing chess at the rate of three games on Saturday consuming 12-15 hours and then coming back on Sunday playing two more for another 8-10 hours, finishing up late at night, arriving home near midnight then getting up at 5:00 am to go to work for 10 hours.  Fact is, I’m ‘chessed out’ after playing an hour or two; always have been.  With correspondence play I can spend as little or as much time on selecting a move as I want and then only when I feel like it.
       I’m not trying to learn anything!  I haven’t actually studied chess for years.  I play for fun.  I enjoy fiddling around with opening and game databases, doing research and checking out different move suggestions in order to find the best move I can.  Whether that means letting two or three engines analyze for a few hours then checking their recommended lines for flaws, running shootouts to see if the position really does favor one side, digging similar games out of databases and seeing how strong players handled the position or even (gasp!) experimenting with my own ideas to see if they are any good…that’s what I enjoy and it’s why I play correspondence chess.  I’ll leave trying to improve to the younger guys who play in tournaments and dream getting a high rating and becoming a Grandmaster.

Andrija Fuderer

Andrija Fuderer (13 May 1931, Subotica, Yugoslavia – 2 October 2011, Palamos, Catalonia was a Croatian–Belgian chess master.

At the beginning of his career, he won the Yugoslav Junior Chess Championship in 1947. He was the 1951 Croatian champion and was a regular participant in the Yugoslav Championship tying for 2nd in 1951 behind B. Rabar won), took 2nd, behind Dr. Peter Trifunovic in 1952, and won (jointly) in 1953.

In other tournaments, he took 4th at Bled 1950, shared 2nd behind Albéric O'Kelly de Galway, at Dortmund 1951 and finished  fifth at Beverwijk 1952.  Fuderer finished first at Saarbrücken 1953, second at Opatija 1953, fourth at the zonal tournament in Munich 1954, tied for 3-5 place at Hastings 1954/55 and tied for 14-15 at Gotheburg 1955 (interzonal). After that last failure, he left chess for a University career in chemistry and earned his PhD degree from the University of Zagreb, and became a famous inventor.

Fuderer played for Yugoslavia in the Chess Olympiads three times:

In 1952 in Helsinki (+2 –0 =3), won team bronze medal;

In 1954 in Amsterdam (+6 –1 =5), team bronze and individual silver medals;

In 1958 in Munich (+8 –2 =1), team silver and individual bronze medals.

He also played in the 1st European Team Chess Championship at Vienna 1957, and won team silver medal.

Fuderer was awarded the International Master title in 1952 and an honorary GM title in 1990.

Fuderer, who died at age 80, was also an eminent chemical engineer and inventor with more than 50 patents to his name.  When he died in October of last year few in the chess world noticed his passing, yet long ago in his twenties he had been one of the game's most gifted attacker outside the Soviet Union.

Fuderer was considered one of the most talented Yugoslav players of his generation with a style similar to that of Mikhail Tal but his results never quite lived up to this promise.  He made an impressive international debut at Bled 1950, where as a 19-year-old he finished fourth in a strong field and was praised for the style and elegance of his wins. A year later, he played for Yugoslavia against Britain in London and was paired with Jonathan Penrose, later ten times British champion and already the hope of English chess. He defeated Penrose in a sharp attacking game.

Noted for his friendliness, Fuderer faced a career dilemma early on. He was studying chemistry at Zagreb, played the piano and had the possibility of making it to the top in the chess world.  For several years he postponed the decision, as his chess career seemd to be going places. In 1954 he qualified for the world title interzonal, scored a fine victory over Ewfim Geller at the Amsterdam Olympiad where Yugoslavia took the silver medals behind Russian gold, and finished third to Vassily Smyslov and Paul Keres at Hastings.

Then came the 1955 Gothenburg interzonal. At halfway after ten rounds he was on 7-3, battling for the lead with David Bronstein and Keres. But the pairings were such that the six Soviets played each other at the start while in the second half Fuderer had to meet all six in successive rounds. Keres beat him in 18 moves and those last ten rounds were a disaster, four draws and six defeats. And so ended his chess career.

Fuderer took his doctorate at Zagreb, married in 1957, and after helping Yugoslavia to silver at the Moscow 1956 Olympiad gradually withdrew from chess. His last event was the 1959 Soviet Union vs. Yugoslavia match at Kiev where, at age 28, he showed what might have been by beating Bronstein.   In the late 1960s he left Yugoslavia, living in Italy and Spain and working as a chemical engineer in Antwerp.

Even in his best chess years there were games where he settled for quick draws against much weaker opponents. An obituary by his son Miha explained why. Fuderer felt his greatest passion was for chemistry, and he used his tournaments outside Yugoslavia to acquire consumer goods which when he got home he could resell at a profit to finance his university studies.

Royal Chess Circle Deurne published a letter from Fuderer's son detailing his life.

Andrija was born in Subotica, which was then part of Yugoslavia. Although ethnically German, he grew up in a town that was mostly Hungarian-speaking. That´s why I was never really sure of his mother tongue - it depended whom you asked. Separated from his parents in 1945, his family dispersed throughout the world.

Many close relatives now still live in the US. Andrija managed to escape the ethnic cleansing without having to flee Yugoslavia. Surely, he must have remembered a lot of friends of that time, but it is difficult to trace down any of them today.

Soon after the war, while still in secondary school, he attracted attention as a very good chess player. By 1949, he was known all over Europe; soon, several chess clubs were named after him and Fuderer fanclubs emerged all over Europe. These do not exist anymore, but I am sure that the members of that time will remember Andrija. Fans kept visiting Andrija up to the 1990s. By the 1990s, he was awarded the title of honorary grandmaster due to his remarkably unconventional style of chess in his past.

Also in 1949, he moved to Zagreb for his university study in chemistry engineering.
Towards the end of his studies, he met Pavica; they married in 1957. It is a great sorrow to announce Andrija´s death to his family-in-law - my aunts, uncle and cousins. Two sons followed soon - but due to the tragic death of Ivo in 1995, he will not share our sorrow today.

By 1968, the family moved out of Yugoslavia. Since Andrija was renowned in Yugoslavia, he was always under close political scrutiny - and although all interrogations by the secret police were very polite, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Andrija left Yugoslavia, but he left amicably. This brought his family first to Italy, then 15 months later to Germany, and after 20 more months to Belgium.

I am grateful to my father that he managed his family well through all these changes.

It is also my father who learned me the relevance of learning languages even before all these moves. From him, I also inherited the passion for physics and mathematics (Not for chess, though; Andrija did not have a real passion for chess, he just played well. That served him well, since his studies were actually paid by smuggling goods in while travelling to international tournaments. I am sure that his teammates will share the experience).

The stay in Italy and Germany was too short to make numerous friends, but I am sure that at least one Italian friend - and later companion - will vividly remember Andrija. Numerous friends and (former) neighbours in Antwerp will be with Andrija in their thoughts.

By 1976 Andrija took up the idea of planning for an almost autarchic retirement in southern Europe; this became Italy, and the house (and valley) called Cornaldo became his passion for more than 25 years - till he realized that, with increasing age, that project got less and less realistic. He was very happy that he could sell the place to a person who intended to maintain it with the same passion as he did. Although the place was remote, managing it was a lot easier with the help from the people from the hamlet of Bassi. They will certainly remember Andrija well.

Rather, by 1982, Pavica and Andrija chose for a different type of southern-Europe settlement.
After considering a number of countries and visiting many locations, their choice became the Spanish resort of Calella de Palafrugell. Very different than the place in Italy, their new apartment went with a swimming pool, a tennis court and a lot of other luxury that would have been inconceivable in Cornaldo.  For almost 30 years, Andrija spent a significant part of the year in Calella. He enjoyed the friendship from many other inhabitants of the apartment compound, and, above all, his tennis-partners. The help of his neighbours and tennis-friends was very valuable (to Andrija and to Pavica) during the last few weeks, days and hours of his life.

In general, Andrija was always in good spirit and in good health, and he enjoyed swimming and tennis.

Yet, in 2005, he noticed a problem: although feeling generally well, he was short of breath.
This got serious enough to interrupt his stay in Calella and to seek medical advice in Antwerp, where a melon-sized tumor was detected within his left lung. The tumor that was surgically removed proved to be a very rare type of cancer, which, as far as statistics were available, had a very low rate of recurrence once properly removed. With Andrija, the odds went against statistics (as was often the case with him). After four years, a regular checkup showed a number of new lung tumors; surgery revealed even more small nodules, which the surgeon was not able to remove at that time. This left my father with the prospect of even more surgery later on.

By mid-2010, it was decided to entirely remove his left lung. This seemed to go well, and Andrija kept up all the activities that the reduced lung volume would allow. Yet, his general condition started to deteriorate by October 2010. Doctors hesitated about chemotherapy because of the age of their patient, but also because Andrija himself was indecisive whether he would choose for such a treatment. By January, he was in a really bad shape.

In early February, he was admitted to hospital for chemo. When I asked about his condition,
he said "todo el mundo me trata bien" - an allusion to a Spanish language course; for a part, it expressed gratitude towards all people around him in general. But it was also an indication that, while he appreciated all the medical help that was given to him, he regarded it as somewhat vain, since he would not live forever anyway.

Actually, we would not expect more than a few weeks. Nevertheless, with difficulty, he said
"When you come to visit me in Calella next time, we´ll have lamb chops at Mas Pou" - which sounded like an overly optimistic statement.  But he recovered and went to Spain again in June, and then again in late August. The return flight was already booked for Sunday, October 2nd, in order to allow for the next round of treatment in Antwerp.

I visited Andrija around the 15th of September. He was in rather good shape. We went to Mas Pau. They indeed have delicious lamb chops there, and Andrija enjoyed them too. But it seemed as if this fulfilled his last promise. After that day, he started deteriorating quickly. There was hesitation whether to take an earlier flight back. By Monday, September 26th, he was taken to the hospital in Palamos, and released the next day, with a prescriptions of diuretics, since he was rather swollen. He did not bother to take these pills and his condition was now clearly deteriorating from day to day. On Friday, Pavica called me that it would be good to drive straight to the Antwerp hospital as soon as they would land on Sunday. By Saturday morning, Andrija´s friends were arranging special assistance at the airports. By Saturday noon, we were questioning whether he was fit to fly at all. In the early evening, Andrija was sent to the hospital in Palamos again. He got intravenous diuretics, which seemed to quickly give some relief. Todo el mundo me trata bien, he said.

By 11 in the evening, he called his neighbor to tell that they would not release him for the flight the next morning. Probably his last words. The idea was to book another flight a few days later.

Andrija probably did not even consider the possibility that he would not survive till then. Alas.
He died in the morning of October 2nd. He died without any loved ones nearby, which would probably have been his choice anyway.

Andrija leaves behind his wife, Pavica, his son Miha, Margriet, and their children Andreas, Lucas and Johanna.  Andrija was cremated on October 4th. On a later date, with a brief ceremony, his ashes will be thrown into the sea, where they can disperse throughout the Mediterranean and later over the whole world.

 The following game against GM Arthur Bisguier is pretty boring until Bisguier played 28.Ra1.  I’m sure Bisguier did a double take when he saw Fuderer’s reply which left Black with such an overwhelming position that Bisguier just resigned.

Instructive Bishop Ending

In the starting position of this game, I thought I might lose because of Black’s well-placed King and the limited scope of my B.  But it appears that my passed h-Pawn made all the difference.  The game should have been drawn, but my opponent made a fatal mistake of playing the seemingly logical capture of my e-Pawn but it was the wrong move because his King ended up blocking his own passed Pawn.  One thing I found interesting was that on move 44 he could have played the counterintuitive 44…Kg1 and still drawn.

Kurt Richter

Kurt Paul Otto Joseph Richter (24 November 1900, Berlin – 29 December 1969, Berlin) was a German International Master and writer.  In 1922, Richter for the first time, won the Berlin City Chess Championship. In 1928, he tied for 1st-2nd in Berlin. In 1928, he won in Wiesbaden. In 1930, he tied for 4-5th in Swinemunde. In 1930, he tied for 3rd-5th in Prague. In 1931, he lost a match to Gosta Stoltz (0.5 : 1.5) in Berlin. In 1931, he took 2nd, behind Ludwig Rellstab, in Berlin.

Nazi authorities and the local Munich Nazi leaders spared no effort to make the Munich 1936 Olympiad a resounding success for the "New Germany." Part of preparation was to have a new chess set designed in order to replace the Staunton sets invented in England and adopted by a still fledgling FIDE.

The result was the following design was used:

A few hundred of these sets were made and used throughout the Munich event.  These sets seem to have had a long life after the war in German clubs.

Richter played for Germany at two official and one unofficial Chess Olympiads: at fourth board (+6 –3 =3) at Hamburg 1930, fourth board (+7 –1 =7) at Prague 1931, first board (+8 –2 =8) at Munich 1936. He won two team bronze medals (1930, 1936) and one individual bronze medal (1931).

In 1932, he won in Hamburg. In 1932, he tied for 1st-2nd in Kiel. In 1932, he took 3rd in Berlin. In 1932, he took 4th in Swinemünde. In 1932/33, he tied for 1st-2nd in Berlin. In 1933, he took 2nd, behind E.D. Bogoljubow, in Bad Aachen. In 1933, he tied for 5-6th in Swinemünde. In 1933, he tied for 4-5th in Bad Salzbrunn. In 1934, he took 2nd, behind Gideon Ståhlberg, in Bad Niendorf.  In 1935, he tied for 1st-2nd in Berlin. In 1935, he took 2nd in Swinemünde. In July 1935, he won in Bad Aachen (3rd GER-ch). In September 1935, he played in Zoppot (GER vs SWE match). In 1936, he won in the Berlin championship. In 1936, he took 2nd in Swinemünde. In 1936, he tied for 8-9 the in Poděbrady (Salo Flohr won). In 1937, he tied for 2nd-3rd in Berlin. In 1937, he took 4th in Bad Elster. In 1937, he tied for 1st-2nd in Bad Saarow. In July 1937, he took 2nd, behind Georg Kieninger, in Bad Oeynhausen (4th GER-ch). In 1937, he took 3rd in Berlin (Friedrich Sämisch won). In 1938, he took 9th in Bad Harzburg (Vasja Pirc won). In 1938, he won in the Berlin championship. In 1938, he tied for 4-5th in Berlin. In July 1938, he tied for 5-7th in Bad Oeynhausen (5th GER-ch). The event was won by Erich Eliskases. In May 1939, he took 2nd, behind Bogoljubow, in Stuttgart (1st Europa-Turnier).

During World War II, Richter played in several strong tournaments. In June 1940, he won in Berlin (BSG), and took 2nd, behind Bogoljubow, in Berlin. In August 1940, he tied for 3rd-4th in Bad Oeynhausen (7th GER-ch). In November 1940, he took 3rd in Cracow/Krynica /Warsaw (the 1st GG-ch). In 1941, he tied for 3rd-4th in Berlin. In August 1941, he took 3rd, behind Paul Schmidt and Klaus Junge, in Bad Oeynhausen (8th GER-ch). In September 1941, he tied for 5-6th in Munich (2nd Europa-Turnier). The event was won by Stoltz. In September 1942, he tied for 3rd-5th in Munich (1st European Championship, Europameisterschaft). The event was won by Alexander Alekhine.

After the war, he participated in the Berlin championships. He tied for 1st-2nd (1948), tied for 3rd-4th (1949), tied for 2nd-3rd (1950), took 2nd (1951), took 3rd (1952).

Awarded the IM title in 1950. He was co-editor of Deutsche Schachblätter and Deutsche Schachzeitung. Author of several chess books.

Make a Correspondence Database

     I have mentioned before the necessity of having a database and opening book of first class games if you are serious about playing correspondence chess.  As I pointed out in a previous post, I made available my opening book, which is in Chessbase format, that contains 404,080 positions compiled from 15,620 correspondence and engine games (up to 30 moves deep) in which at least one player was rated over 2400. With this opening book you can be sure that you are playing the best moves in any variation because they have been analyzed by strong CC players who were most likely checking the moves with engines.

     In conjunction with the opening book you also need games by strong players.  You can download archived ICCF correspondence games that are in PGN format and are zipped for faster download.  Games dating back to 2003 are available. Another source is the archived games from the now defunct IECG site covering its activity period from 1995 to 2010.  An excellent source of otb games can be found at The Week in Chess.

     After downloading the games and putting them in a DB folder you’ll need to weed out those played by all except the best players.  You can decide on whatever rating you want for the cutoff point; I chose 2300.  It was from these remaining games that I made my opening book except I upped the rating to 2400 for the opening book. 

     After you’re done you will have a database of games from which you can search out positions and see how the best CC and OTB masters played a position.  What I usually do is select games that were won by whatever side I’m playing then run through them just to make sure that the win wasn’t the result of an opponent’s mistake later in the game.  Once I’m reasonably sure I have some games that are well-played where my side won, I can follow them.  Sooner or later it will be up to my opponent to find an improvement on the loser’s play.  Sometimes they are successful, sometimes not, but the onus of improving play is on them.  It makes for more successful results.

Chess Sets at the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Museum has some pretty interesting stuff on display. Here is a picture of Civil War General George B. McClellan’s chess set.  The box is covered with black paper and has his name inscribed on the top.  The set was made by Schuyler, Hartley and Graham in New York City.  A white Pawn and black Knight are missing.

Ray Charles’ peg set is shown here.  Charles was a pretty decent player who played a lot, but just for fun.  He was once interviewed by Larry Evans for Chess Life and came within one move of drawing their offhand game!

Rzeschewski on Tour in 1920

From the American Chess Bulletin:

Another private exhibition of Rzeschewski’s prowess was had on the evening of January 9, 1920 at the residence of Dr. Heny Keller, 143 West 86 Street, New York, lecturer on orthopedic surgery at the New York Polyclinic Medical School and instructor in orthopedics at New York University, as well as president and director of the Harlem Forum.  

Among the many guests were many physicians, specialists, neurologists, ministers and lawyers so that Sammy was the cynosure for the eyes of a very critical audience.  Seemingly unconscious of the galaxy surrounding him, the nine-year old developed the openings, laid his plots and caught his victims in his traps as though he were playing with children instead of five grown-up men.  Einar Michelsen of the I.L. Rice Progressive Chess Club and former Western champion was the fourth to yield and at 11:45 PM, when Leon Kussman, the Jewish dramatist gave in, there was prolonged cheering.

Dr. Marcus Neustaedter, noted neurologist, who has played considerable chess in his time, referred to Rzeschewski as a particularly precocious child, whose abnormality, he said, was fortunately bent in the right direction.  He regarded Sammy as very high strung and of a somewhat neurotic temperament.  Endeavoring to cross examine him a bit, he interrogated him as to his school work, but Sammy, never over-chummy with interviewers, tore him away with a curt, “I’ve got a teacher at home; that’s all.”

Dr. Neustaedter stated the boy’s growth is a bit stunted and that he was undersize for his age.  Ordinarily this might account for some malformation or sluggishness of the mind, but not so in Sammy’s case – rather the reverse.  His peculiar precocity, he added, made the child a phenomenon and one with a pronounced ego which in elder persons would pass for swelling of the head.  Dr. Neustaedter laid especial stress on his ability to concentrate and work out abstruse combinations.  “His genius,” the neurologist said, “shows itself in the fact that he is a classical player who develops problems.”

Dr. Keller commented on the prodigy as follows:  “He is three years ahead of his age in mentality.  Although a genius in one line, he is not abnormal in other things. He has a brilliant memory, is very witty and quick at repartee.  Altogether he is a very unusual child.”

Dr. Jacob Tarlau, rabbi of the People’s Synagogue of the Educational Alliance, who is not acquainted with the difficulties of chess, expressed his unbounded astonishment and commented upon the fact that Rzeschewski is most faithful in keeping up his Hebrew studies and punctiliously observes the requirements of the faith of his orthodox parents.

Here is one of the games from the simul: