American Chess Magazine, Issue #4
The latest issue of the United States' best chess publication, the American Chess Magazine, is available. While it was the best American chess magazine, now it's the best American chess magazine. Before it was somewhat like New in Chess Magazine with a U.S. flavor, but now it really and clearly is a periodical dedicated to chess in the United States.
This issue covers the goings-on in St. Louis, of course (with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov covering the Sinquefield Cup and Ivan Sokolov writing about the Rapid & Blitz), but that's about it for international events. Other major events, including Norway Chess in Stavanger and the Grand Chess Tour events in Paris and Leuven, are mentioned only en passant without any narrative near the end of the issue, with only results and the occasional lightly annotated game. (But none from those super-tournaments.)
Two other major events are covered again - both from 2016: the Baku Olympiad and the Carlsen-Karjakin match. Both events had so much material they've been revisited in multiple issues - I think this is the third time the world championship has been covered. (At least it is being covered deeply, by the usually 2700+ GM Ernesto Inarkiev, currently rated 2693.)
On to the new. A number of U.S. players are profiled, most especially Awonder Liang, currently the world's youngest GM. He is interviewed, and some of his best games from this year are presented. Other profilees are GM Sam Sevian, Maggie Feng, and new IM Bryce Tiglon. More broadly, the issue also takes a look at the very successful chess program at Webster University in St. Louis.
There are columns by chess legend Vassily Ivanchuk and endgame specialist Karsten Mueller, and there's an interesting column with Jacob Aagaard (who for no obvious reason - to scare small children and animals? - is posed like the "Breaking Bad" guy) on decision-making in chess. There are also columns by American GMs, including the experienced quartet of John Fedorowicz, Joel Benjamin, Alex Fishbein, and Michael Rohde.
Carsten Hansen presents short reviews of 10 new books, Jon Edwards offers a brief discussion of endgame tablebases, and there is more besides, including an eight-and-a-half page summary of events in the U.S. taking place in the U.S. from this past June-September.
There are a few other columns as well, but this survey of the highlights should be enough to help the reader decide whether or not to buy the magazine. It seems to me that the publisher has a challenge here, to make the ACM attractive to U.S. audiences while not making it so parochial that international readers find it uninteresting. My suspicion is that it might be leaning a bit further to the parochial side, but I'm sure the publishers know better than I do - they can look at the receipts and feedback. My suggestion would be an explicit column on the openings, and less time spent looking back at older events (i.e. no more Baku or Carlsen-Karjakin). But I'm just one voice, and of course they should listen and try to accommodate as many opinions as they reasonably can.
Full - and amusing - disclosure: I may end up writing an openings column for ACM.
Reader Comments (2)
"Full - and amusing - disclosure: I may end up writing an openings column for ACM."
I look forward to you getting the assignment. You deserve it.
[DM: Thanks!]
Granted, you can't explain or authenticate everything in American Chess Magazine, but perhaps you could answer this inquiry regarding something in Issue #4, which I just received.
Karjakin stated that he'd spent $1 million (!) in his preparation for his match against Carlsen. Just where did all that money go?! Even for a world championship match, that still seems like an astronomical sum---and, on top of that, Karjakin ended up losing (albeit by a narrow margin).
Perhaps you could enlighten us---especially since you are obviously knowledgeable about opening preparation.
[DM: Some of it may have gone to renting time on super-computers. I'm sure he used a super-computer to check his/his team's preparation; the reason I say "may" is because it's possible that the Russian chess federation or even the Russian government might have taken care of that expense for him. But most of the money would have gone to his team. They would have worked with him for months, including one or more training camps. That means that they would have been inactive for a good chunk of that time, giving him their novelties (and not using them in their own events), working on what he wanted, traveling with him to the training camps (which means travel and rent expenses) and the match itself, etc. Plus he may have brought a cook with him, a masseur, and other non-chess helpers as well.]