Thanks, Tofiq

I had a bad day yesterday. It rained incessantly, so much so that I decided to skip my usual visit to Tesco where, lacking any shopping needs, I would have bought my newspaper and had a coffee whilst reading it. As soon as I saw the rain I knew that, come the evening, I would get no satellite signal to enable me to watch Arsenal in the Champions League. Meaning I had to get the match on my phone and cast it to the TV - keeping myself away from other notification channels so that I wouldn't know when a goal was scored before it appeared on my - delayed by a minute or so because wifi streaming is behind the live action - screen.

I do realise this is very much a first-world bad day.

Then there's chess. I'm in the middle of a game against my son and I don't know what my plan is. Or I have too many plans and can't stick to one. Chess is like boxing, in two ways. The first is the Mike Tyson way: "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth". So I can't get too aggressive or that'll happen when I'm least expecting it. Which leaves me with the other option: rope-a-dope, made famous by Muhammad Ali. It’s a tactic where a fighter leans back on the ropes, covers up, and lets the opponent punch themselves out. The idea is to absorb or deflect blows, conserve your own energy, and then strike back once the other guy’s exhausted. Ali used it brilliantly against George Foreman in the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle.” Foreman threw himself into endless power shots while Ali just soaked it up and talked to him — “Is that all you got?” — until Foreman was spent. Then Ali knocked him out.

That's what I'm hoping Dan will try.

Anyway, I'm back on track today, in my usual post-shower routine: shop, drink coffee, read paper, catch up on my chess games, do chess puzzles (which doesn't seem to improve me), solve (hopefully) the Times Quick Cryptic crossword, solve puzzles on the New York Times Games app - Wordle (got it in 4 today), Connections (got it with just one error) and Strands (always successful but try to do it without hints).

That takes me to about noon.

Which is when I get to thinking about whether I have any inspiration to write a blog post. And today I want to tell you about Tofiq Bahramov.

Tofiq changed history. Every English man or woman knows that our crowning glory was winning the World Cup in 1966. Which happened because Tofiq made an error. He was a retired footballer and a qualified referee from Azerbaijan (then in the Soviet Union) who was the linesman in the Final, when England played West Germany. He ruled that Geoff Hurst's infamous shot had crossed the line and was therefore a goal. But it actually hadn't, as shown in modern replay analysis.

Today, Tofiq is remembered by Azerbaijan's national stadium being the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium in his honour.

If you think that our country is in a sad, sorry state today with widespread gloom and despair, just imagine how much worse it could have been if Tofiq had got his decision right 😧😧😧

Not such a bad day after all.

What would have made a good tournament?

A few days ago I wrote about Divya Deshmukh, 19yo Indian woman chess player playing in the Open section of the Grand Swiss tournament. Divya said

Even if I lose all the rounds, I think I will be fine if I learn.

And I promised to let you know how she got on. So here goes.

Clearly, despite her words, she would have not been happy losing a succession of games, even though her opponents were generally rated 150 and so points above her. And I've mentioned before that for top players it's not too difficult to successfully play for a draw if that's what you want to do. I can't see there would be any point in entering this competition if that's the limit of your ambition, so some wins would be good, together with a smattering of draws. Or the other way round.

The results:

Game 1: loss

Game 2: draw

Game 3: draw

Game 4: win

Game 5: loss

Game 6: draw

Game 7: win

In game 8, Divya played the current World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, rated almost 300 higher than her. Possibly her biggest challenge so far in her career, and a battle of the 19yo Indians. And got a draw after a long drawn out battle. At this point she has 4 points, ahead of the World Champion, who has just 3.5. Remarkable.

Game 9: loss, after a late blunder (yes, even Grandmasters do that!)

Game 10: draw

Game 11: draw

Divya Deshmukh scores 5 points out of 11 and 81st place out of 116 players. If 5/11 doesn't sound great, the winner of the event scored 8 out 11. She ends with a rating of 2497.6, having been 2478.0 at the start of the tournament. And she got a draw against the World Champion.

Also, it's only fair that I mention Aleksandra Goryachkina, also playing in the Open section. She has also already qualified for the Women's Candidates, like Deshmukh, so she also chose to play against the best men. She's 26, slightly higher rated, Russian born competing under a FIDE flag. Her results:

Game 1: loss

Game 2: draw

Game 3: draw

Game 4: win

Game 5: loss

Game 6: loss

Game 7: draw

Game 8: win, she's on 3.5, alongside Gukesh, with three rounds to go.

Game 9: win

Game 10: draw

Game 11: loss, so also 5 out of 11, in 79th place alongside Divya. She ends with a rating of 2541.1, having been 2528.0 at the start of the tournament.

I was unable to find any interviews with Goryachkina, so I can't tell you about her motivation or reaction to her performance.

Overall, a successful tournament for both players; they both played consistently above their ratings and proved they can compete with higher rated Grandmasters. Perhaps they'll be joined by others playing in Open sections in the future.

Someone reads my blog

In June I wrote a blog post about women in chess and in particular why competing only in women's sections of major chess tournaments might inhibit players' progress:

I'd like to see some of the talented young women - and there are many - electing to play Open tournaments rather than taking the "easy way" against their fellow women. And some tournament organisers issuing invitations to women to play against men in a single section rather than a separate section.

And perhaps someone took note. This week and next, a major tournament, the Grand Swiss, is taking place in Samarkand. Which is in Uzbekistan - I had to look that up. That may seem out of the way but not in the chess world - the country has 24 Grandmasters. The "Swiss" by the way refers not to the country but to the tournament format; I've mentioned it before as familiar to croquet players - you play a match then for the next round get paired against someone with the same results/score; eventually the cream rises to the top. Rising young Indian (of course) star Divya Deshmukh, 19 years old, already a Grandmaster and recent winner of the Women's World Cup, elected to play in the Open section.

The Indian Express newspaper reports Divya saying:

Even if I lose all the rounds, I think I will be fine if I learn. Every loss hurts a lot. When you play stronger players continuously, you learn so much even if you lose. You learn about yourself, you learn about what you should and should not do. For me, the result is not that important, more than what I take back from this tournament. This is definitely the strongest open tournament that I have played, I don’t want to say that I am used to getting beaten by these players. I truly enjoy playing in open tournaments, As much as they are difficult, I think it’s a must-have experience and it makes you much, much stronger when you play against people who are way stronger than you to begin with. You learn so much about yourself at such events: like where you’re lacking, where your weaknesses are and how you can improve on those.

Remarkably, Divya is only ranked 14th of the world's top women players but this is clearly a breakthrough season. Having won the World Cup, she has already qualified for the Candidates, the preliminary tournament to decide who challenges reigning world champion Ju Wenjun in 2026. The Grand Swiss is another qualifying competition so I'd guess that normally she'd have played the women's section to attempt to qualify. But she doesn't need to do that so can take this bold step. I'll let you know how she gets on.

The wonders of the House of Lords

As reported in today's Times, Lord Wei proposed an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, on its way through the House of Lords.

Lord Wei is described as a "social entrepreneur", although there is no evidence put forward as to what that means or who (perhaps himself?) describes him as such. Anyway, his amendment addresses the Bill's requirement for the UK's children to register as home-schooled if their parents opt to do so rather than sending them to school. It's surprising that such a requirement doesn't already exist; although schools have to notify the local authority if a child is withdrawn from school to be home-schooled, there is no such requirement if a child is never sent to school in the first place.

I'm going to set aside considerations of home schooling (not something I would have relished as a parent) and focus on Lord Wei's amendment, which states

"A child who has achieved chess grandmaster status shall be considered to be receiving a suitable education and shall be exempt from registration under section 436B."

Section 436B outlines the new requirement for all children of compulsory school age ((basically up to 16) to be placed on a register if they are not attending school. Lord Wei, who was not present in the House to propose his amendment in person - perhaps home schooling his kids? - sent a message:

“This amendment recognises that children who attain chess grandmaster status demonstrate exceptional intellectual achievement. It automatically treats them as receiving a sufficient education.”

This is obviously a bit weird and begs the question of how many of these geniuses are there? Something the Times reporter hasn't bothered to explore - or maybe it got cut out by the sub-editors for lack of space. I, however, am like a dog with a bone and I did ask.

At the time the amendment was discussed in the House on 1st May (something the Times article today didn't point as therefore old news, I'm disappointed to say) the answer was: one. Shreyas Royal (born 9 January 2009, so currently 16 years old) officially earned his Grandmaster (GM) title in 2024 at age 15 years and 7 months, becoming the youngest British GM ever. 

However, Shreyas ceased to be of compulsory school age on the last Friday in June, so the current answer to the ("how many?) question is: none.

So Lord Wei was seeking to create a legal opt-out for one person at the time. This seems an odd way to make law. I naturally asked ChatGPT whether it could find any connection between Lord Wei and Shreyas - that's the cynic in me - and the answer came: no. And no connection to any chess bodies that I could find.

I checked out Shreyas' FIDE (the world chess federation) data. His FIDE rating is 2501, one point above the GM threshold (ratings go up and down as you win or lose matches but you only have to get to 2500 once to get the title). He has competed around the world in tournaments and I suppose that means home schooling (perhaps travelling with a parent) is an appropriate way to get educated.

Perhaps, if we'd like Britain to become a chess powerhouse to compete with the pesky Indians and the powerhouse Chinese, Shreyas and his contemporaries need to be supported.

But I still don't see why you would want such a person to be exempt from a national register which seeks safeguarding through oversight, reporting, and potential interventions. What's the problem, Lord Wei?

Anyway, good luck to him  (Shreyas, not Lord Wei). I've added him to my Favourites list on the Take Take Take app, so I'll let you know if he's in a tournament; I'm sure you'll want to know.

Indian, Singaporean or Brazilian?

I woke up at 5am, went to the loo and checked my phone. My chess opponent had made a move. In the middle of the night? No, he's from Kazakhstan and it's 9am there. I go back to sleep and later - around 11am - make my move. I eventually checkmated him at 4pm Kazakh time.

I don't actually know whether he's from Kazakhstan, or even a 'he'. Here's his chess.com profile:

In common with many online games, you can select your own attributes to build your profile - choose your flag, upload a photo of your dog, whatever. For all I know I could have been playing a 10yo Swedish kid, although the time zone thing suggests his country may be correct.

Here's my profile:

Resplendent in my Ipswich Town gear, ready for the start of the new season on Friday. When I joined chess.com I didn't bother to set my profile so I had the default USA flag for a while. Didn't make me play any better,

I'm thinking of changing for a bit. This morning I watched  the fantastic ending to the England v India cricket series. When I was younger I followed cricket avidly but there was a period when the England team were a pretty unpleasant bunch of spoiled brats and the Australians were the world's leading sledgers and so I stopped. This test match has lasted four and a bit days and I switched on by accident - searching for something else- and I was gripped by a thrilling finish, which India won. That, combined with the fantastic results being posted by India's men and women chess players, makes me feel I should identify (we can all do that now, right?) as Indian for a while. Although I wouldn't be getting up at 5am to make a chess move. Maybe it'll confuse my opponents and I'll gain an edge.

But I'm also thinking about Brazilian. There's been a recent upsurge in my blog views from around the world:

I don't really know what this means. I suspect these aren't real people, since I've not received any Brazilian or Vietnamese comments, but even if they are bots scraping the web, why now and why Brazil? I tried to get some help from Google Analytics but - possibly because I've been nasty about Google recently - it was of no help. Nevertheless, I think I should perhaps identify as a Brazilian for a day - they did give us Pele, after all - to help the blog along.

There was a recent upsurge in "views" from Singapore, so maybe that should be an option. Although I'm a bit worried I might get deported if I'm no longer British. But a free flight to Bangalore wouldn't be bad, right? And the UK has a new trade deal with India, which includes visas, so I could probably get back in.

What do my regular contributors think - should I try Indian, Brazilian or Singaporean? I'm not really feeling English today, after the cricket.

Things I didn't know #3

The Lewis chessmen. Never heard of them until now. 78 12th century (chess is a very old game played at the top level by the very young) pieces, 67 of which are in the British Museum, the remainder in the National Museum of Scotland (which I'd also never heard of).

They (at least some of them) are going on their travels as part of a cultural loan exchange between the British Museum and the French, which will see the Bayeux Tapestry come the other way.

The chessmen are made of walrus ivory and whale tooth, probably made in Norway and found on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831. The Hebrides were part of Norway - Viking invaders -

 [from the Bayeux Tapestry]

from the 9th century until 1266 when King Alexander III of Scotland paid Norway 4,000 marks and 400 marks p.a. for sovereignty in the Treaty of Perth. The annual fee was supposed to last forever but it has apparently been forgotten about - perhaps Scotland didn't have any marks left after a while.

There's obviously an argument that we should be lending the chessmen to the National Museum of Norway rather than the French.

Rinse and repeat

I remember exactly where I was when President Kennedy was shot. In the bath (me not him). My mother came into the bathroom and told me. I was 19 and a bit protective of my privacy so I was a bit shocked.

Memory is a funny thing. I can see that in my mind from 62 years ago but I can't recall what I had for dinner last night.

I don't remember when we were told we couldn't call Peking Peking any more, it had to be Beijing. I can remember it happening but not when. Maybe it just crept into our consciousness. Or perhaps the Chinese leader (I don't know which one, just that it wasn't Chairman Mao) phoned the BBC and said "we've issued an edict that filthy imperialists must address us respectfully".

Is that what happened with Kiev? I've lived with my childhood love of geography for 70 years and suddenly the old atlases are wrong? Who decided? I know, it's about derussification but I say again: who decided?

The latest (and I'm probably coming a bit late to this party) is - no more Czech Republic. I'd just got used to forgetting the Czechoslovakia that shockingly won the European Championship in 1976. I remember that I was sitting in my car listening to the commentary on the car radio, and that I felt great joy at the underdog winning the penalty shootout with Antonin Panenka chipping the winning penalty down the middle - a technique now forever known as a Panenka. More so that they beat the Germans. Who at that time were West Germany. Anyway, it's now Czechia. Which I'm uncertain how to pronounce (not Chechnya, that's a different country - pay attention at the back!). In any case "the Czechs have just scored a third goal past the hapless England goalkeeper" will probably do for past, present and future. Unless we change our name. Or goalkeeper.

Tonight they are playing us (England under 21s) at soccer. They being Czech Republic. Which is apparently what we have to call them when it's an official occasion, as opposed to a holiday destination. Hope our goalkeeper's OK.

And on a completely different note and referring back to a recent post:

Hou Yifan's back! In a team chess tournament in Londinium, at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith, which used to be Hamersmyth. Although that was in 1294, so I can be forgiven for not remembering that.

By invitation only

The highest rated woman chess player in the world is China's Hou Yifan. She has an official rating of 2633 and is ranked equal 100th in the world. World number 1 Magnus Carlsen is rated 2837.

Yifan is a four time women's world champion, winning her first in 2010 aged 16. However she has played only spasmodically since 2018 and no longer competes in international tournaments. She is a professor in the sports department of Peking University, having previously held a professorship at Shenzhen University, where she became the youngest-ever full professor at the age of 26, heading the institution’s chess program within the School of Physical Education. Chess can be studied at uni, who knew?

Current women's world champion Ju Wenju,

also from China, is rated 2580 and ranked 292 in the world. And just in case you think I'm copying this from Wikipedia or worse still from ChatGPT, I've been watching Wenju play live on YouTube for the last few days in the Norway Chess Women's tournament in Stavanger (it's better than gardening in the rain and I might improve my chess play, although I do admit it's a bit weird).

BTW it's perfectly possible I've got Chinese names the wrong way round. If so, I hope my Chinese readers will forgive me.

There doesn't seem to be any logical reason that girls/women should be any better or worse than boys/men at chess, so why aren't they doing better than they are? According to Wikipedia "Hou claimed that there are many reasons for the lack of female contenders at the chess top-level. She says there is a physical aspect to long chess games that might advantage men, and that men generally work harder at chess than women growing up. She uses Chinese girls as an example and points out that most prefer a balanced life, prioritizing things such as university and family life at the cost of working on chess. But she claims there also are external factors: girls playing chess growing up are only encouraged to compete for the girl's title, which might lower their motivation."

I'm not at all sure about the physical aspect. A championship game of classical chess can last 5 or 6 hours but don't women run marathons? Run governments working 12 hour days?

Judit Polgar from Hungary is the only woman to ever get into the top ten in the world; her highest rank was number 8 and her peak rating was 2735. She got into the top 100 in 1989 at the age of....12! So it can be done. But a key point of difference is that, once she became good enough, she competed against the top men. She would play in the Open section of tournaments rather than in the Women's section. In the Chess Olympiad, competed for every 2 years, she chose to represent her country in the Open section rather than the Women's and was very successful, playing "top board" ahead of her male compatriots.

Top chess tournaments commonly select many, often most, of their competitors by invitation. The recently completed Norway Chess was a 6 player tournament where the invited players were the current top 5 in the world plus 8th place Wei Yi (I think he was number 6 when the invitations were issued). If women don't play against men they won't get invited.

Then there's prize money. The 2023 World Championship Open had a prize fund of $2 million [which is about what you'd pay to sign a talented 15yo goalkeeper in football]. The Women's World Championship prize fund was $500,000. I suppose you could argue that the temptation of competing for 4 times as much would encourage more women to consider that but, when you realise there are 100 times more men playing chess than women, the half a million seems easier to compete for. Interestingly Norway Chess had equal prize money for the Open and Women's sections but this is rare and, possibly, simply upholds the present differentials.

I'd like to see some of the talented young women - and there are many - electing to play Open tournaments rather than taking the "easy way" against their fellow women. And some tournament organisers issuing invitations to women to play against men in a single section rather than a separate section.

There's an argument that having separate women's Master titles inhibits women's development. A woman can become a WGM - Women's Grandmaster - with a rating of 2300 but to be a Grandmaster (GM) you need 2500. There are are around 41 women who have earned the full, open Grandmaster (GM) title, out of over 1,700 total GMs worldwide, so roughly 2% of GMs are women. Is it possible some women are satisfied with reaching WGM and continuing to play in women-only sections? Obviously I don't know; I'd like to know what they think.

The sport of chess needs a new Judit Polgar, a new Hou Yifan. Who will step up?

Not sure why

After two years and three weeks, I've decided to get back to blogging.

If I start with football, I lose half my audience. But it's been a bad football few days and getting it off my chest will hopefully improve my gloomy mood. Maybe later.

I recently stopped playing computer games. My much-loved Civilization VI game was superceded, obviously by Civilization VII, and I was excited in anticipation of the February launch. Until it turned out it wouldn't run on either my laptop (expected) or my desktop (unexpected). So a choice of spending substantial money on a new PC or an upgrade or examining whether I wanted/needed to play turn-based strategy games any more. I chose - for the moment - to live without computer gaming.

This decision was in part influenced by my new obsession - chess.

I've played on and off for much of my life - off more than on - at the level of knowing how the pieces move. There was an English chess player named Nigel who became a Grandmaster at the age of 19, eventually ranked number 3 in the world and played a world championship match in 1993 against the legendary Garry Kasparov. That however wasn't me (there are plenty of other well-known Nigels but I'm not going there at the moment) - it was Nigel Short. Of course as a young man I followed the famous Bobby Fisher vs Boris Spassky cold war match, in the same way I followed Ali v Liston in boxing and other iconic sporting battles. Later I followed Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov in 1985 - I was a sporting nerd. Actually a sporting spectator nerd.

One of the things Fischer was famous for was his queen's gambit opening leading to a stunning world championship victory and this inspired the 2020 Netflix series of the same name - also referencing the cold war - based on a novel by Walter Tevis. This caught my attention and that of millions of others, particularly as the world was in Covid lockdown at the time. Enter (historically) Deep Blue.

Deep Blue was a computer program developed by IBM, which defeated world champion Kasparov in a game in 1997, thus signalling the end of the world. Gradually chess 'engines' improved to today's level where the top Grandmasters simply cannot beat them.

In 2007 the chess.com website was launched and became the 'go to' online platform for ordinary humans to play each other over the internet. So when the dreaded lockdown occurred in 2020, and The Queen's Gambit screened, the stars aligned to create a major "chess boom". I, of course, ignored it as I was starting blogging.

In late 2023, at the Sea Farmers Dive Taproom in Whitstable, a seminal chess match was played. A 13 year old young man, distantly related to me, asked if I played chess. I obviously mentioned I hadn't played for years but knew how the pieces moved. I don't exactly remember why there was a chess board there but anyway we played. I'm going to spare the young man's blushes and not mention the result but the main outcome was that my son (who had been watching) and I decided to join chess.com and we have played each other (and occasionally others) online ever since. Here's the state of our current game:

That's me at the bottom (playing as black) in my Ipswich Town celebratory gear (if it's possible to celebrate relegation). It's my son's move. No helpful suggestions in the comments please - that is officially cheating!

The question remains whether I have the patience to continue blogging regularly. I hope so but comments are very welcome and I'm hoping family members in particular can spread the word. Bye for now.