Saturday
Aug202011
Ongoing American Events
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 10:23PM
A couple of readers have mentioned a pair of American events, so while I hadn't intended to cover them I'll at least relent to the point of offering links.
So: on the west coast, in L.A., we have the Metropolitan International (top seeds Michael Adams and Loek van Wely); on the east coast, there's the Manhattan Open (the top seed, I think, is Jan Gustafsson). It isn't the World Cup (which starts in about a week), but for those needing a chess fix it's worth a look.
HTs to Daniel Parmet (for the first) and JT (for the second). JT also wants people to check out the schadenfreude special from round 6, Kacheishvili - Zhao.
Reader Comments (3)
Dennis... whats your opinion of the stalemate rule... should it be a loss for the zugzwanged side?
[DM: As I recently wrote in a post addressing Shipov's proposal on draws, I don't really think there's a serious draw problem in chess. So if the point is to reduce draws, this seems to me wholly unnecessary. If you're just asking in general - for instance, if I were on a hypothetical rules committee centuries ago considering the stalemate rule, I'm not sure. It is a somewhat strange rule, but it's also strange that a bare king should win against a king and a pawn. (For example, W: Kh8, ph7 vs. B: Kf7.) This can't be fixed by a rule that a bare king automatically loses, because we could add to the previous example a white pawn on a4 and a black pawn on a5. Chess rules simply aren't the rules of reality!
P.S. to all: Please send off-topic remarks and questions to me via the contact link (on the lower right sidebar). The comments section of posts is for material pertinent to those posts. That includes this comment - responses on the stalemate question will be deleted.]
Kacheishvili - Zhao is just gross, but instructive on two points: (1) Fight on to the bitter end - the other guy might let you off the hook, and (2) Don't get complacent in a winning position!
I agree with you that the whole draw controversy is overblown. However, I do like Greg Shahade's idea of giving the recipient of a draw offer the option of switching sides and playing on. It would be interesting to see a tournament with that rule implemented.
[DM: I doubt that would make any difference in top level chess, but it would be interesting to try it out at the club level - but only to try it!]