Events & Books

World Junior, Bullet Championship, and more. Plus: remembering some Soviet greats (one of whom is still living).

Two of the events covered in recent posts have finished, and another is winding down; meanwhile, a fourth event is underway.

In the finished category, we start with the World Junior Championship, which wound up going to Kazybek Nogerbek of Kazakhstan. He defeated Mamikon Gharibyan of Armenia, who had been the sole leader, eking out a win in a drawn ending. (I’ve briefly analyzed it, here.) Gharibyan’s countryman Emin Ohanyan won his game against Filipino Daniel Quizon to tie with Nogerbek, but he finished second on tiebreaks. Gharibyan finished fourth on tiebreaks, pipped by Serbian GM Luka Budisavljevic; they, along with Tobias Koelle of Germany finished half a point behind the top two.

Also finished, Chess.com’s Bullet Chess Championship, which had a surprise ending. A recurring theme on the day was some sort of bizarre server malfunction. It kept happening to Alireza Firouzja in particular, and he was never penalized for it. But I wonder if it initially happened to Sam Sevian, who took two losses on the chin that had absolutely nothing to do with the quality or speed of anyone’s chess moves. If Sevian’s issue is the same as that which repeatedly happened to Firouzja, the result is brutally unfair. I further wonder if this Chess.com glitch is what happened to Vladimir Kramnik in his online games with Jose Martinez. If any of you know more about this, please let me know in the comments. Anyway, the last day’s broadcast can be viewed here.

In the winding down category, there’s the UzChess Cup. I had mistakenly claimed in my last post that there was only one round left; then, there were two, but now it’s just one to go. The last round should start before this post is finished.

Getting started: the Cairns Cup, the women’s counterpart to the Sinquefield Cup. Also held in St. Louis, the 10-player field includes three former women’s world champions (all of whom won in round 1 and one, Tan Zhongyi, is also the challenger for the women’s world championship match against champ Ju Wenjun later this year) and three of the strongest U.S. women. Nine of the players have been well-established in women’s chess for years, so the most interesting participant to me is the youngest and second-lowest rated, 14-year-old IM Alice Lee. Regardless of her result this will be a great experience for her, and hopefully it won’t be all learning experiences for her. (Round 1 was tough, a loss to Tan, but a loss to the top seed could happen to any of the participants.)

On to books. I came across an article online reviewing a new book on Boris Spassky. The author was only moderately excited about the book, but in the course of his review he mentioned a number of other books. I’ll note two of them. First, there’s a book by Andy Soltis that doesn’t only cover Boris Spassky but Tigran Petrosian, Viktor Korchnoi, and Mikhail Tal as well. It looks terrific - have a look at a substantial excerpt here (click on “Free Sample” once you’re on the page). (This book seems to be something of a companion volume, also by Soltis, covering Vasily Smyslov, David Bronstein, Yefim Geller, Mark Taimanov, and Yuri Averbakh.) The other Spassky book is by Hungarian IM Tibor Karolyi, covering the first part of Spassky’s career from 1948 to 1968. Karolyi’s works are characteristically rigorous, so if you’re looking for YouTube quality “analysis” you won’t want this. If you’re looking for something that gives a world chess champion his proper due, then check it out. (Disclosure: I used to interact with Karolyi on a regular basis, so while I think I’m being objective my bias, if there is one, is going to be in his favor.)

This next book is completely unrelated to the previous ones, except that it, like Karolyi’s book on Spassky, is published by Quality Chess. The book is on chess problems - of the mate in two, mate in three sort, not endgame studies. While I’m generally as interested in those sorts of problems as politicians are in financial restraint when they’re in power, the book’s sample pages entertained me and piqued my interest. I’m not sure they’ve piqued it enough for me to purchase a copy, but the sample puzzles were fun and a good workout.