LMAO

<TheSlid> quite a turn of phrase you have, my <radioactive behmoth>...

I'm not a real rugby fan -- but the current team exudes this aura of professionalism, insisting that they're a proper world-class team, quite unlike the warriors of old who went at it with raw passion and gutsy naivety ... so it's ironic really that the Irish wind up in the traditional position of *nearly* winning something. Triple Crown aside, heh heh.

Actually, I've named a chess opening after a rugby team: The Munster, or 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.a3...

It came about as follows. First, it occurred to me that a3 after 1.Nf3 made some sense. It's like the difference between Larsen's Opening 1.b3 and the Nimzo-Larsen 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.b3 -- in the latter case White first prevents ...e5 by black before embarking on the queenside maneuver.

Ditto with 2.a3 -- it can be played as a reversed Indian, or a type of Orang-Utan with early b4.

So I checked the databases for previous examples -- they tend to be categorized either as 1.Nf3 (Reti, miscellaneous) or Anderssen's Opening 1.a3 (by transposition).

The first two examples I found were played in Cork, Munster, Ireland and Munster, Germany (both won by White inside 20 moves, btw). Throw in the success of the Munster rugby team (my local team, European Heineken cup champions) plus a hint of the monster-comedy TV Munsters... and the name was obvious.

Frogspawn will no doubt get around to a theoretical feature on the Saint Paddy variation of the Munster Attack... one of these days.

PS. Due to Gallic Perfidiousness at Rugger, Frogspawn will be called Toadspawn for the next 24 hours. And we may even talk about stuff other than the French Defence. A bas, les grenouilles.

It transpired that the actual players were Phillip Short (who became an FM and whom I've played a few times) and somebody else, one J.Short.

sigh...Quoting <Stargate> again...

Did I read correctly? You will post your ground-breaking <dragon> analysis today?

Of course, if <you> want to take Frogspawn into the stratosphere, I'll be delighted to cheer you on...

It will do whatever you, as <Grand Piano>, commands....

I crossed swords with RookFile almost every day during the World vs Nickel game: we had disagreements, even some are-you-crazy insults, but it always stayed friendly and civil. Well, nearly always.

That Botvinnik/Keres games is quite interesting too -- and since it's a French, I claim it as Frogspawn territory, plant the Twisted Tricolor and claim it -- "Vive La Reine! Vive les Grenouilles! Viva La Republique!"

I didn't email CG about the multiplying Kurtzes, but I used the 'file a correction' feature... and then I corrected the correction... and I told them I'd happily dig up more info if needed. But I suspect they have enough now, and just need somebody with the time to put the Mystery Short games back in the right boxes.

It reminded me of possibly the single weirdest chess tournament I've ever played in, over 20 years ago. First, we got lost in the hills while searching for the venue, a town near the border with Northern Ireland. Then we had a car crash -- the friend who was giving me a lift was worried that we'd be late -- he also had the then Irish champion in the car and didn't want to miss the 1st round. So we speeded up, and hit a wall.

Nobody hurt. We drove on, found the place. In six rounds, I played against five international players, and made 50% -- I lost the first two, then beat the Irish women's champion, and finished with a win against Wallace and a draw with P.Short, both well over 2200 at the time.

I think the accident actually helped. Another time I won a tournament half-blind, wearing dark glasses and squinting -- turned out I had some horrible eye condition, photophobia, and wound up in hospital immediately afterwards.

Nothing like a little stress in one's private life to get the chess juices flowing. Sometimes, anyhow. There are cases where this has worked in reverse, like being mugged between rounds and losing the rest of my games.

You seem very insistent on curing me of my Stargate addiction. You're not perchance that Amanda Tapping in disguise, are you?

In the Stargate Universe, she plays Carter, officially the Smartest Woman in the Galaxy. While in the Chessgames Universe you play Chessica, officially the...

An experiment with, and meditation upon, the variation of the Dragon, Yugoslav Attack (B67), as played between <Jessica> and <samikd>. This is not an exhaustive analysis – I just focus on a couple of moves and possible plans around the point where theory is left behind. And then I’ve got the score of a game between two engines, which only proves that the one playing White wasn’t as good as the one playing Black.

The line begins: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 0-0 8.Qd2 Nc6 9.0-0-0

[9.Bc4 is the major alternative for White here; although Ivanchuk and Svidler, for example, have played 9.0-0-0]

9…Nxd4

[and here Black has a major alternative with 9…d5 – a move that led to some stunning successes as far back as the 1960s, eg in the hands of Dragon Artiste Eduard Gufeld; but White found resources – like 10.Qe1, or the line 10.exd5 Nxd5 11.Nxc6 bxc6 12.Nxd5 exd5 13.Qxd5, which has helped put this line out of circulation at higher levels. Opening ‘fashions’ aren’t always about new moves: they also involve new plans. Here, 9…d5 traditionally led to a very sharp and complex game; 10.Qe1 was a novelty, but along the same lines, merely upping the complexity. But the current 10.exd5 line, with mass exchanges, heads for an ending where White has a clear advantage – and White has won the majority of top-GM games in this line (Ivanchuk-Fedorov, Rubinstein mem 2000 is a good example). All of this helps to explain why 9…Nxd4, samikd’s move, is currently seen as Black’s best winning try.]

Gufeld wrote two books about the Dragon, plus many articles. Among his writings is a history of the variation from the 19th century onwards. As Gufeld wrote: “The whole history of the Dragon may be likened to the contest between shells and armour”. Back to the game…

10.Bxd4 Be6 11.Kb1 Qc7 12.h4 Rfc8

All fairly standard, though White has a good alternative with 12.Nd5. Practice has shown that the defensive move Kb1 is vital for White.

13.g4 Qa5 14.Qg5

By this stage, depending on your resources, precedents are starting to dry up. A general book like DeFirmian’s MCO (2004) doesn’t have the line with 13.g4 at all. Opening Explorer has 14.Qg5, but only has the replies 14…b5 and 14…Qxg5. <samikd> played 14…Qc7 – is this a novelty? No. I found, in various databases, 35 games with 14…Qc7, and I suspect some more could be traced. All are dated between 1994 and 2005, with the main surge of popularity around a decade ago in 1996-97.

In the Dragon, such drop-offs sometimes mean a line has been busted. But not always. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the Dragon at all, but only means that a completely different variation, like the Sveshnikov, has become the focus of theory. One must be careful – perfectly playable lines have dropped out of sight for bad reasons, like a very public loss. It’s interesting, for example, that the most recent Dragon in the Burgess/Nunn/Emms collection of 112 ‘greatest ever’ games (The World’s Greatest Chess Games, 2004) was played way back in 1974. Karpov crushed Korchnoi with a novelty in Game 2 of their 1974 Candidates match: Korchnoi switched to the French for the rest of the match. Despite valiant efforts into the 1980s by players like Mestel and Gufeld, and latterly by Fedorov, the Dragon hasn’t been quite the same since at the Elite level.

Of course it remains eminently playable among ordinary mortals, but – like the Slav or the Winawer French – homework is advisable.

After 14…Qc7, what then? White should have the edge here, for these reasons: the king is relatively safe on b1, and Black’s queenside counter-attack hasn’t really got going yet; meanwhile White’s own kingside assault is well-advanced. It’s very direct: push pawns, open the h-file, line up the pieces, play for mate. Graham Burgess, in his general chess book (an excellent starter kit) has a section on this called ‘The h-pawn hack’.

Position after 14…Qc7. White to play. Do you pick (a) 15.Qd2, (b) 15.Bd3, (c) 15.a3, (d) 15.h5, (e) 15.Rh2 … or something else?

click for larger view

It’s worth noting that Black has wasted time with his Queen, going c7-a5-c7, and this is the kind of position where tempo counts.

Yet, looking over the database games, I found 13 where White played 15.Qd2. Practically a draw offer: in fact several games have been drawn at once either by agreement or repetition after 15.Qd2 Qa5 16.Qg5 Qc7 17.Qd2 etc. This is crazy – who gets into a sharp Dragon and then goes for a draw? I admit to not understanding people who play like this. I draw plenty of games myself, but not by chickening out in the middle of a sharp theoretical position.

Other 15th moves for White are 15.Bd3, 15.a3, 15.Rh2, and 15.h5.

15.Rh2 is promising: I’ve found only one game, but it was a White win.

15.a3 – a move that often features somewhere in this line, trying to slow up Black’s pawn advance …b5-b4 and create luft for the king – is double-edged. Games have gone either way. I suspect it’s over-cautious, maybe a tad loosening, and not strictly necessary.

15.Bd3, as played by Jess, looks like the strongest move, along with the relatively untested 15.Rh2. I found 10 games with 15.Bd3: 4 white wins, 4 draws, 2 black wins – these include some correspondence and email games, and the two most recent were White wins.

The remaining move, 15.h5, is, I think, a mistake. It looks like the kind of move White ought to be playing, but it allows the reply 15…h6. White retreats the Queen, Black closes the kingside with …g5, and suddenly everything is different – now the game will be about Black’s attack on the white king and whether it can be resisted. Nonetheless, I found 5 examples of 15.h5, and white even won two of them.

It, 15.h5, was also played in the experimental game I whipped up between two engines: Crafty playing White and Fritz as Black. It’s actually quite interesting: White’s play is so ugly in an engine-y kinda way I had to forcibly remind myself that this beast has beaten me in a fair fight in the past. It plays like a clueless moron, and Fritz runs rings around it.

This can be explained. The newer engines, like Rybka and Fritz, combine brute force with a more human-like planning ability. Here, Fritz sacs a pawn and is in no hurry to get it back. Earlier engines, like Crafty, are strong tactically but drift in closed positions. Once the kingside closes up, White has no attack: Crafty can only shuffle pieces around until the blow finally falls.

No human would do this. You’d sac a piece for initiative, you’d try to blast the kingside open somehow (23.Bxg5!? may not be quite sound, but it beats the pusillanimous shuffle). Because you know that sitting tight in the Dragon is not an option. By ceasing to press, white makes his doom inevitable – and Fritz executes it efficiently, in a much more ‘human’ manner. By the time the tactics arrive, Crafty can see what’s going on: but by then it’s much too late.

White: Crafty
Black: Fritz 8

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 0-0 8.Qd2 Nc6 9.0-0-0 Nxd4 10.Bxd4 Be6 11.Kb1 Qc7 12.h4 Rfc8 13.g4 Qa5 14.Qg5 Qc7 15.h5 h6 16.Qd2 g5 17.Nb5 Qd7 18.Be3 a6 19.Nd4 Rc7 20.c3 b5 21.Nxe6 Qxe6 22.Bd3 Rb8 23.Rhe1? [White could still mix things with the unclear 23.Bxg5!? hxg5 24.h6 Bh8 25.Qxg5+ Kf8; instead he meekly ‘centralizes’ – the beginning of the end] 23…Nd7 24.Be2 Nb6 25.Bxb6 Rxb6 26.Rc1 Rbc6 27.Rcd1 b4 28.c4 b3! 29.axb3 Rb6 30.Qc2 Be5! [odd, but watch him later on!] 31.Rd5 Rcb7 32.Ka2 Qc8 33.Bd1 Qc7 34.Re2 e6 35.Rd3 a5 36.Qc1 Rb4 37.Ka3 a4 38.bxa4 Rxc4 39.Qe3 Bf4 40.Qf2 Rc1 [white could resign now…]
41.b4 Ra1+ 42.Ra2 Bc1+ 43.Kb3 Rb1+ 44.Rb2 Bxb2 [forcing mate] 45.Qd2 Rxb4+ 46.Qxb4 Be5+ 47.Ka2 Rxb4 and mate in 3.

This has only scraped the surface of the surface of the surface of move 15 in this one line. I may provide more details at a later stage, if anyone is interested. Disagreements or other contribs welcome. The Jessica-samikd game with 15.Bd3 (1-0) may be seen in full in Jessica’s forum.

The End -- for the momento.

Not entirely sure what the point of it is, but it contains a potential quote of the day from Maria Manakova:

<'Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.' - John Ruskin>

Just so, sir. I call this The Theory of Marginal Futility.

To be treated in full in a later episode or send MONEY now for a sneak preview on PGN-DVD-GSOH-VC (and bar).

PS. I sometimes wonder if Ruskin -- with his <Lilies & Peacocks> -- had, ah, sampled life's opportunities to the full. A peacock, swung violently around one's head, makes a useful weapon in an emergency. And lilies have reputedly played a part in hush-hush necrophile date-rape ceremonies. But we'd better not go there...

Plus, of course, Mr Zimmerman's <Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts>. And Captain Peacock in Cluedo. There's nowt so innocent or incongruous that our voracious culture hasn't seized on it and transformed it with meme-splicing.

You were up late last night!! I hope yer getting enough sleep.

I don't want to have to organize ANOTHER <intervention> for your own sake...

<Patti> was just inducted into the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME a few days ago.

What struck me in this Dragon Line was the number of points where White has tried anything up to ten different moves, or even the five options I examined on move 15. That simply doesn't happen on the Black side.

There are divergences, like 9...d5 versus 9...Nxd4, but in such cases *both* moves lead to playable lines. At other points, the Black move is almost automatic, though one might think there are several options.

For example, in the position after 12.h4, 99.9% of black players respond with 12...Rfc8 (which isn't *that* obvious to the naked eye). I think I found just one game where a different move was played.

Why does this happen? We could theorize about White having some initiative, more options, a range of possible choices and plans, etc. But it wouldn't account for the disparity.

I suspect the real reason is that the White players tend to leave the book -- their personal knowledge of the moves -- before Black does.

The Black players are Dragon specialists. They've had the position many times before. They *know* that ...Rfc8 (or whatever) is best, play it, and save energy for the real novelty further on. But White, often, I think, could be out of his depth already at that point (remember this is non-GM stuff -- the databases I sampled had a lot of players with ratings around 2100-2200 or less).

This might also help to explain some memorable black wins, even at the higher levels -- it's Black's turf, and the players of Black usually know it better.

Not going to say <good morning>?

IT'S BECAUSE I'M A DUMB BLONDE ISN'T IT????

I'm filing a report with INTERPOL...

There's laws against this now ( I think)

"I felt like I discovered Montreal... obviously I didn't, but I came and I went, holy @#$%, I never even looked at this place on the @#$%ing map, and there's this great weird city, and it's full of arts and culture, and I was so shocked..."

Win Butler of Arcade Fire

(I just knew those art-rocker types had access to a secret "@#$%ing map" of the world... prob'ly comes with a <grouper appendix>... no, hold on, that's a fish...)

a good venue for <FROGSPAWN>

At <Cafe Pi> on St. Laurent street, many, many chess games all day and all night-- many of them for money.