In the Land of the Blind...

  An expression I learned from my father is “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Since I’ve never heard anyone else ever say it, I thought my dad thought of it himself, but when I researched the saying for this post it seems the saying goes back to at least the 1500’s. No matter where it came from, it’s a great all-purpose saying. I’ve used the phrase in a self-effacing way when complimented on being able to accomplish a task that seemed impossible but was easy for me because I possessed a tidbit of arcane trivial knowledge but I’ve also used it as a way to fend off someone who I think is trying to put down an accomplishment of mine by making a big deal out the obvious fact that knowing a little bit about something (and a little bit more than everyone else) does not make me an authority.

  I was the one-eyed man in the field of Electronic Data interchange (EDI) because 20 years ago I set up an EDI program so the coat manufacturing company I worked for could exchange purchase orders and invoices with their big customers like Sears, JC Penney, and Wal-Mart. EDI was one of the early attempts to standardize data exchange between companies. It was a set of vague standards that each company implemented differently. My company kept on hiring ‘experts’ who were really just one-eyed men who had managed pre-written EDI packages for small companies but floundered when trying to adapt their knowledge to a quarter billion dollar companies’ needs. I had left the company in 1990 but was hired back in 1993 to set up their program after 3 failed attempts by one-eyed men. Even though I knew nothing about EDI when I started, I knew all about the company’s other systems and was able to put together the entire program in a year. When I started writing retail software in Iowa, we were approached by Nike and New Balance to set up EDI programs between them and our customers. It was a task that a lot of bigger retail software vendors either couldn’t do or couldn’t do right or could do but had to charge a lot of money for, but I was able to set up a system where small mom and pop stores could send and receive orders and invoices with big companies easily. I wasn’t an EDI expert but since the other companies knew even less about it than I did, our company got lots of new customers because we were the only ones who could deliver a low-cost service. Thanks to the internet and E-Commerce, EDI has since gone the way of the dinosaurs, but I still get the occasional inquiry into my availability to apply for a job working on insurance or health-care companies’ legacy EDI systems thanks to being the one-eyed man.

  2 months ago, I received the latest copy of ‘The Chess Journalist’; the quarterly magazine of the Chess Journalists of America, which awarded this Broken Pawn their 2011 Best Chess Blog Award over the other self-nominated entry, making me a one-eyed man in the world of chess blogging. This issue had the CJA award winners listed, so I took a look inside to see if my blog and name was there. Not only was it listed among all the other award winners, there was even a picture of the broken pawn you see at the top of my blog. Having had my thirst for fame satisfied, I read the rest of the magazine and the first thing I noticed was an appeal from the editor Mark Taylor for contributors to the magazine.

  I’m more comfortable waiting for everyone else to refuse to help before I volunteer, but there was something about this appeal that spoke to me. I flashed back to when I had similar problems getting contributions for the church newsletter I put together for 8 years. I also thought that it would be fun to see some of my better posts in print, without resorting to publishing my own ‘Best Of’ book. The Chess Journalist goes out to the hundred or so members of the CJA, who would be a captive audience for my blog posts and since I have plenty of posts just sitting in the archives here at the Broken Pawn I picked out 2 of my favorites (On Any Given Thursday and A Winning Weekend), and sent an email to Mr. Taylor offering to polish them up for print so he could use them in the magazine.

  I received an email from Mark the next day thanking me for my offer but mentioning that while my posts were well written, they were likely too local for a national publication. Then Taylor asked me if I would be interested in writing a column in the magazine about chess blogging. I had to stop and think about that one. I enjoy writing about chess and other things but was I ready to be writing about writing? For writers? I’d be more like the blind leading the blind instead of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. I don’t even have any philosophical musings about blogging to share since I just write what I feel like writing about.

  Despite all my misgivings and the nagging vision in my head of being ‘Dorf on Blogging’, I decided to take Mark up on his offer and write the CJA column. If I fall on my face it wouldn’t be the first time but some of the best things I’ve ever done were the result of doing things I felt unqualified for at the time but later grew into. I wrote my first column as an introductory piece trying to point out how easy blogging is, that the subject of the blog isn’t as important as the passion brought to the subject, and my own particular hang up of sticking to a consistent schedule. I gave Mark a choice of 2 titles ‘Your Inner Blogger’ and ‘The Blogger Within’ and he chose the latter. I got the magazine last week and there was my column on page 11 in a national publication. I thought it read well and Mark put a killer masthead on top of the column that is one of the cooler pictures of me I’ve ever seen.

The heading for my column in the Chess Journalist magazine. Others may find it pretentious, but I think it's pretty cool. I especially like the fact that unlike my book 'The Adventures of Bulldog Beagle' or the 'Best Chess Blog' award, I didn't have to pay for it.

  I’ve been thinking about ideas for my next column on the hour long drive back and forth to work this week and yesterday I got an email from blogger Tim Brennan of http://tacticstime.com. He told me he liked my column and offered some blogging tips that I could forward to my readers. He also mentioned I would get more of the feedback I had asked for in my article if I included my email address (DORF on Blogging!). I checked out his site and it is beyond slick and tightly focused towards helping players improve at chess by increasing their tactical skill. Tim looks to be a real heavyweight blogger and promoter with 3,000 twitter followers and his own Facebook page for his site. I felt great knowing a guy like this enjoyed my column and I feel a lot better thinking I’m heading into this new adventure being at least the one-eyed man and not totally blind.

Stuffed for Success

  The Thursday before last, I had the opportunity to eat lunch at the ‘Something Italian’ restaurant in the Des Moines Skywalk with a customer from work. On Thursdays, I get into work an hour early and only have a half hour lunch so I can leave at 3:30 to go to chess club, but a working lunch made It OK to spend an extra half hour eating on a Thursday.

Timeless decoratations in the classic 'Rocky' style.

  Like most restaurants in the Des Moines Skywalk, ‘Something Italian’ was a place I’d never been to, even though it is less than a mile away from work. Like most of the skywalk restaurants, it caters to the working class lunch crowd and is only open for weekday lunches, although they also do catering and parties. When I walked in the restaurant it looked like there was a real effort to be ‘Italian’. There were pictures of famous Italians on the walls and a few old pizza signs but what caught my eye was the assortment of Rocky ‘action figures’ on a couple of the shelves. Now, that’s Italian!

  There was a large amount of pizzas, pastas, and sandwiches available. I knew I was going to be playing chess later in the afternoon and didn’t want to get filled up, so I decided on having a ‘Sicilian’ sandwich of Ham, Coppicola, Salami, Pepperoni, and Mozzarella on a roll with some water. The customer (who runs half-marathons in his spare time) had the house special which was a turkey sandwich, also with some water.

On the left is the stomach-friendly turkey sandwich, while the gut-busting supreme 'Sicilian' is on the right.

  I figured the sandwich would be big and I wasn’t disappointed, but as I started to eat it, I was unprepared for how greasy the sandwich was. The cold cuts were heated up on a grill with peppers and the cold cuts were coated with grease and more of the grease ran into the crusty hoagie roll. As I was eating it, I started to feel like one of those hot dog eaters on TV when they look like they’ll vomit if they stuff one more wiener down their throat. I had to take a break from eating for a bit and eventually finished the sandwich, leaving most of the peppers and bread behind. My dining companion fared much better with his turkey sandwich, which wasn’t heated and probably wasn’t very greasy anyway. While I was waiting for my stomach to make room for more greasy cold cuts, I looked around and saw several people with napkins folded up a half-inch thick sopping up grease from their pizza and sandwiches. I’ll give this restaurant 5 stars for atmosphere, but zero stars for their food. Maybe their pasta is better, but I doubt I’ll give myself a chance to find out. It was a sluggish afternoon for me at work, and then I went home to relax for a half hour before chess club. Kathy had made me a salad, but I was too full to even think about eating any food.

  I have no idea what kind of nutrition is best for playing chess, but I’ll bet a gut busting greasy Italian style sandwich isn’t on the top of the list (Here is an article from ChessBase.com on the subject). I’ve always preferred to have a light meal like toast and fruit juice before a tournament and yogurt, apples, trail mix, and apple juice during the tournament, but that’s because I’ve always read about apple juice being so easily digestible that there was no blood diverted to the stomach, leaving more blood for the brain to play chess and always brought apple juice for my kids. Most of the younger players seem to have no problem sucking down Mountain Dew or Red Bull during a tournament, while Dave the barefoot chess player brings his own concoction of red caffeinated soda type stuff. I find that too much caffeine gets me so wired up that I can’t play good chess over an extended period of time but a small cup of coffee or 2 is great for our Thursday night hour long tournaments. In the 1978 world championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi, challenger Korchnoi accused Karpov of receiving assistance in the form of coded yogurt during the games. Presumably, the color of the yogurt was to convey to the champ what his seconds thought of his position and how he should proceed. I think it is laughable that the champ would take or even want this sort of advice during a game from lesser players, however the match arbiter ruled that Karpov could only have blueberry yogurt unless special permission was granted.

  Our Thursday night chess club has been very poorly attended lately. Scott and Zack have been absent, Jerry has been working, and Jon had some hospital time and has been recuperating at home for the last 2 weeks. Only Joe from Waterloo has been braving the winter weather to come in from out of town (Joe is from Michigan and has been sneering at this year’s Iowa winter). Even Chandler’s brother, Dalton has been missing because he hasn’t been doing his math homework and his parents won’t let him go to club until it’s done. On this Thursday only Joe, Jaleb, Chandler, and me and my grease stuffed belly were at the club at 6pm for the start of our blitz tournament. Since I was the 3rd rated player I got to play Joe. Joe fell into an opening trap and I managed to beat him in a tournament game for the first time in our 6 contests. I was ready to take on Jaleb round 2 when Dalton showed up, having finished his homework, and I resumed my role as house player and sat out the rest of the tournament. Maybe all my thoughts about nutrition and chess have been wrong for 30 years and if I only had been shoveling down pizza, fried chicken, and double bacon cheeseburgers I’d have been a master chess player years ago. Eager to try out this theory, I took Kathy out to lunch on Saturday to Taco Johns and had a Stuffed Grilled Taco with an order of French Fries and a Dr. Pepper. When I got home I played 3 minute chess for a couple of hours and the results were encouraging. You might say I was 'oozing' with confidence. Here is a sampling of my games.

  This past Thursday, I was sorely tempted to walk over to ‘Something Italian’ for another gut-busting, grease-laden, and possibly chess improving Sicilian sandwich but I was so busy trying to get a project done I didn’t have the time. We had the same four players for Blitz and I took on Joe again. I had a good position as White using the Boris and was a pawn up in a Bishop vs. Knight ending but then my grease-deprived body let me down and with less than half a minute on my clock I lost my bishop to Joe’s knight fork, leaving me with this position, 17 seconds, and the move.   If I just play Kg6, I drive away the knight from its defense of the h pawn and with Joe’s king so far away 2 connected passed pawns and the king easily win, but without the proper lubrication, my brain seized and I could only think about trading the last pawn off to secure the draw so I played g4 and g5. I managed to beat Chandler in the next round and was ready to raid the Salvation Army pantry for something greasy to shove down my throat or mainline directly into my bloodstream for my game with Jaleb when Dalton showed up again after finishing his homework.

  It really stung to give away a half a point just because my body wasn’t properly prepared, but at least I have a great idea for a best-selling chess/nutrition book. There are chess books titled ‘Boost Your Chess’, ‘Perfect Your Chess’, ‘Reassess Your Chess’,’Sharpen Your Chess’, ‘Test Your Chess’, ‘Improve Your Chess’; but they’ll have to make way on the shelves for ‘Grease Your Chess: How to Lubricate Your Game!’

Hanging on The Telephone

  When the National Do Not Call List was implemented , a lot of people I knew joined immediately as some sort of protest and a way to stop getting calls during their dinner, but I never did. Most of the unwanted calls I get come from people I know who call just as soon as I start to take a nap. I have no problem hanging up on a telemarketer if I don’t want to talk, but a friend or relative is a different story. I feel obligated to talk to them and even if I tell them I was taking a nap and they hang up, it’s problematic that I’ll get back to sleep anyway. I normally don’t mind calls from telemarketers because they provide me a constant source of amusement and now this blog post.

  When I was writing shoe store software for a small company, I got a lot of offers in the mail for free computer magazines and I’d put down ‘MIS Director’ as my title on the forms. This led to me getting a lot of calls for free subscriptions to other computer magazines. I’d patiently answer all the questions from the telemarketers and then right at the end of the call when all I needed to do to confirm my subscription was say YES, I’d ask for the braille version of the magazine. I could hear the jaw drop on the other end of the phone and then I’d casually mention that I was blind and needed the braille version of the magazine in order to be able to read it. When I was told that there was no braille version, I’d try my best to sound crestfallen and say I was sorry, but there was no way I could subscribe to the magazine. It probably wasn’t very nice, but it sure felt good at the time.

  I learned a long time ago that telemarketers and customer service reps of big companies are rarely allowed to hang up the phone unless the customer hangs up first. Once I took Matt (who was all of 2 or 3 at the time) to the supermarket and he wanted some Kraft Macaroni and Cheese where the macaroni was shaped like the characters from the X-Men cartoon show. When Kathy cooked it for us, there was barely any Macaroni and Cheese for us to eat. I looked at the box a lot closer than I did at the store and it was only 5.5 ounces (printed in hard to see white against the yellow mac & cheese on the box), while the same sized box of the regular Kraft variety was 7.5 ounces (printed in black in the same position on the box).

  Luckily for me, also on the box was a ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back’ pledge and a phone number to call. I called the number at work during my lunchtime one day and was greeted by a customer service rep who said he would be happy to help me. I explained my dissatisfaction with my 5.5 ounces of Mac & Cheese in a 7.5 ounce box and said I wanted my dollar back (I bought 2 boxes for 50 cents each) like the box guaranteed. The rep told me that he couldn’t give me my money back just because I was unhappy with the portion in the box. I read him the pledge on the box and noted that it did not say ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed unless you were dissatisfied with the small portion in the half-empty box’. This went on for a few minutes and the customer service rep finally told me there was nothing he could do for me and if there was nothing else he could help me with, I could hang up. That’s when I realized he couldn’t hang up on me! I said “I would like my dollar back, please.” and that’s all I said for the next 15 minutes of repeated attempts to get me to hang up and awkward silences until I was transferred to a lady who took my name and address and told me I would get my dollar in a few weeks. Luckily, I had a speaker phone! A few weeks later I received a check for a dollar in addition to a packet of coupons for fine Kraft products.

  I’ve used this technique of repeating a simple request over and over whenever I have a customer service complaint and I don’t think the rep is allowed to hang up on me. One time the GM card people deactivated my card when I tried to buy my two boys a membership to the Internet Chess Club. I didn’t know 2 online transactions for the same amount was such a red flag and didn’t pay much attention when I had to use a different card for the second membership. I didn’t find out about the deactivation until 2 weeks later when I tried to use my GM card in a GM dealership to pay for an oil change for my GM car. My GM card was rejected, the clerks treated me like a loser, and I had to use another card while the clerk called it in to make sure I wasn’t using a stolen card. When I got back to work, my wife called to tell me that the GM card people had just called to say they had put a hold on my card 2 weeks prior. I called the GM card company and read them the riot act for making me look like a GM deadbeat at a GM dealership. No one could give me a reasonable explanation as to why I wasn’t told my card had been put on hold and as soon as I realized the rep I was talking to didn’t have any answers, I’d say the magic words, “I’d like to speak to your supervisor, please.” The fourth supervisor put me on hold for 20 minutes, and then told me it was just a mistake and they were very sorry and then asked if there was anything else he could do for me. I told him “Yes, I’d like $50 for my trouble”. He told me over and over that they couldn’t give me $50, but at this point I knew he couldn’t hang up so I kept repeating myself. After 20 more minutes I got a $25 credit to my account because I was such a loyal customer (and I asked to be connected to the division where I could cancel my card). Of course, this was before GM went broke and couldn’t afford $25.

  My favorite telemarketing call came when my sister-in-law and her daughter were visiting from Missouri to see Matt graduate high school last May. The phone rang and I saw on the Caller Id that it was the National Rifle Association calling. I put the phone on speaker and when the telemarketer introduced himself and told me he was calling for the NRA, I said in my best ‘Borat’ voice “YES, I would like 2 rifles very much, thank you!!” The telemarketer told me he didn’t sell rifles and I asked him “And you are call for who?”, whereupon he said he was calling on behalf of the National Rifle Association and I would try to order the rifles again. This went on for about 5 minutes with me mixing in the occasional question about how many people I could shoot and how far away I had to be with NRA rifles until our guests started laughing too loudly and the telemarketer realized he was being pranked on and starting laughing along with us.

  A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Wells Fargo. It wasn’t really from Wells Fargo, just from a company they sold my number to. The representative was trying to sell me Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance. I asked if I could get a special rate on the Dismemberment Insurance since both my legs had been amputated. The rep didn’t even have to think about it, but instead told me that the insurance was still a great deal and after all, I still had my arms, fingers, and toes that were eligible. I reminded her that my legs were amputated and that I had no toes, but there was still no discount. By this time, Kathy was giving me the evil eye and it was getting time to walk Daisy and Baxter so I played my final gambit to get a dismemberment discount from the rep. I told her I was scheduled to have surgery to have one of my arms removed and what kind of discount could I get then? There was still no discount so I sadly hung up and went for a walk with Kathy and the beagles.

  Someday the telemarketers will have their own ‘Do Not Call’ list and I’m sure I’ll be on it. I’ll probably never notice all the missed calls, but I’m sure I’ll miss the fun of getting even with the telemarketers and customer service reps of the world.

Super Thoughts

  The Tata Steel chess tournament in Wijk ann Zee, Holland just ended with a resounding victory by Armenian Levon Aronian, who won 7 of his 13 games while losing only 2. Despite beating Aronian in their individual encounter, world ranked #1 Magnus Carlsen couldn’t keep up the pace and could win only 4 games against 1 loss enroute to tying for second place with the Azerbaijani Radjabov (the only undefeated player) and former American now Italian Fabiano Caruana. Defending champion Hikaru Nakamura of America shook off a slow start to go unbeaten after his round 2 loss to Aronian and finish tied for fifth. It was a super performance by Aronian, who will now play a match with former champion Kramnik in April as both prepare for the upcoming candidate matches of the next World Championship cycle.

  Now that the first super-GM chess tournament of the year is over, I can turn my attention to the Super Bowl, which is a rematch of the 2008 contest between the Giants and the Patriots. I ran into my friend Dennis at the Hy-Vee drug store yesterday. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him in a couple of months. Dennis is a huge Packers fan and was still upset over their playoff loss at the hands of the Giants 2 weeks ago. I thought the Packers were going to repeat last year’s championship and even predicted it a few weeks ago, but they ran into a hot Giants team that was playing their 3rd playoff game in 3 weeks (including the season finale against the Cowboys in which the winner was in the playoffs as the NFC East champion).

  The Giants haven’t had much of a defense until the last few weeks, but the one thing they can do well is hurry the quarterback and even the best quarterbacks can look ordinary when they don’t have time to look over the field and make an unhurried throw. Packer QB Aaron Rodgers did not play up to his superhuman standards, but played well enough to win the game if the rest of the team had stepped up. Without an all-world performance from their all-world quarterback, the Packers weren’t able to overcome their receiver’s continual habit of dropping passes, and weren’t helped by their 4 turnovers (including a fumble and interception by Rodgers). Despite all their problems, the Packers were only losing 13-10 with 10 seconds left in the half, but their defense botched the Giant’s desperation pass on the last play of the first half and found themselves down 20-10 at halftime.

  I’m still not sure how the Giants managed to win the NFC championship game against the 49ers on Sunday. The 49er defense is of championship quality and their offense was top notch against the Saints, but except for allowing a couple of TD passes to All-Pro tight end Vernon Davis, the Giant Defense held the 49ers in check and were bailed out by 2 late game punt-return fumbles by Kyle Williams to escape with a 20-17 overtime victory.

  The Giants seem to be a team of destiny, replaying the same script as the Super Bowl champs of 4 years ago by barely slipping into the playoffs, beating Green Bay on the road, and winning the NFC Championship in overtime on the road. They are even playing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, albeit a 15-3 team and not the 18-0 version chasing immortality as last time. The Patriots looked quite pedestrian in barely getting past a Baltimore Ravens team that self-destructed in the final minute when Lee Evans failed to secure the winning touchdown pass (allowing it to be knocked out of his hands) and Iowa native Billy Cundiff missed a short game-tying field goal in the closing seconds.

  The odds makers are saying the Patriots are a 3 point favorite in the big game, but the sports experts I hear on the radio are split between the two teams. The Giants are the last team to have beaten the Patriots with a 24-20 win in New England in Week 8 of the regular season. The conventional wisdom favoring the Giants is not only are the Giants the team of destiny, the Patriots defense is suspect at best. I saw the Patriots get crushed by the Steelers and lose to the Giants in the last minute, but I also saw them beat Broncos and Ravens in the playoffs and I think that their defense is much improved from earlier in the season.

  Football games are often compared to chess matches. Most of the time I think it’s a stupid analogy. In chess, both players start with the same number and types of pieces and everything is out in the open, the winner being the one who ‘sees’ more than their opponent. In football, the teams have differing strengths and weaknesses and deception plays a huge role as both sides use personnel groupings and formations to disguise their plans and create mismatches. But in this case, the chess analogy seems to hold truer to me. New England coach Bill Belichick and Giants coach Tom Coughlin worked together when they were members of Bill Parcells' Giant staff of the late 80’s and they have a familiarity with each other’s styles. And since the teams have already played each other, I’m not sure either side will be able to spring too many surprises on each other, so like a chess game the winner will be who can best use the forces at their command.

  I’ve been wrong on almost every sports prediction I’ve ever made on this blog, but that won’t stop me from making a prediction. I think the Patriots are the slightly better team and that Belichick will be able to take away the Giants pass rush with quick passes, while on defense the Patriots massive tackles will stop the Giants running game without help and be able to load the defense with pass defenders. If the teams played 11 times, I’d expect the Patriots to win 6 times to the Giants 5, but since they will only play once, I'm picking the Patriots to not only win but cover the spread 28-24, but since I'm a lifelong Giants fan, I'd like nothing better than to be wrong.

The Numbers Game

  In organized chess, players are given numerical ratings by whatever governing body is in charge of the rating system for said organization. Ratings are a gauge of relative strength of chess players. In America, the United States Chess Federation (USCF) is in charge of assigning ratings for all players in USCF tournaments, The British Chess Federation is in charge of England’s rating system, and FIDE assigns international ratings. I have 3 USCF ratings: a 1663 rating for quick chess play (game in under 60 minutes), a 1706 rating for long play (game over 30 minutes) and a 1591 rating for extremely slow play by email or postal mail. I also have 8 ratings from the Internet Chess Club for games in 1 minute, 2 minute, bullet, blitz, standard, 5-minute, and other chess variants. In addition to these ratings, I have a rating on chess.com, my Tactics trainer iPod app, and a host of other tactic servers. Ratings are a source of pride for some chess players, and embarrassment for others, and an obsession for most.

  At my Des Moines youth chess tournaments, I have a rated and an unrated section. The thought of getting a rating fascinates many of the unrated players and on Saturday one of them asked me what ratings meant. I explained a bit about the numbers, but I made sure to close my discussion by saying that a rating is where you’ve been, not where you’re going and except for 2 people everyone has a worse rating (not exactly true since plenty of people have the minimum USCF rating of 100) than some and a better rating than others. And at least 3 times every tournament, a rated player will ask me what I think their rating will be after the tournament. There's just something about having this little number next to your name that appeals to chess players.

  When I say ratings can be an obsession, I mean it. When I’m at a tournament and a player pulls of a big upset, they rarely say ‘I beat Sam’ or ‘I beat Johnny’, instead they say ‘I beat an 1800!’ and most players don’t talk about losing to Billy, rather bemoaning how they lost to a 1100. I used to get upset when I lost rating points, but after watching my blitz rating oscillate over the last couple of years I’ve come to the realization that when my rating is low I gain a few more points (or lose a few less) from tournaments than when my rating is high (and the inverse is true when my rating is high) so my rating at any given point is much less important than how I’m playing. Whenever anyone starts telling me about their latest rating swing, I mention this. It normally makes the player who has just lost a lot of points feel better (and sometimes enrages the player who has just gained a lot of points and now feels belittled). The math and logic is indisputable, but I wonder if it is just a coincidence that I’ve only played in one regular rated tournament since I cracked the 1700 rating mark in 2009?

  The USCF and FIDE ratings are based on the calculations of Arpad Elo, a Hungarian immigrant. The theory behind the ratings are used from everything from table tennis to role playing card games (you can find the math here). There are a few cracks in the USCF rating system that lead to rating inflation. To prevent players from artificially lowering their ratings in order to get cash prizes, the USCF instituted rating floors. With a rating floor, a players rating can never fall 200 points below their highest rating rounded down to the hundreds. For example, a player rated 1865 can never have their rating drop to below 1600 unless they petition the USCF for a lower rating. Rating floors are also assigned when a large cash prize is won for winning a prize for a certain rating. For example, when Iowa player Tim Crouse won a huge cash prize for the best score under an 1800 rating at a big tournament in Chicago, he was assigned a rating floor of 1800 by the USCF to prevent him from winning another big under 1800 prize in the future.

  While rating floors are useful to protect the integrity of cash prizes, they lead to rating inflation when a player’s strength doesn’t match his floor due to age or simply not playing at the floored rating obtained from winning a large cash prize. When a player at his or her rating floor is in a slump and not playing at their rating level, lower rated players who defeat thenm gain rating points while the losing player's rating stays at their floor. The net effect is an increase in the total pool of rating points, leading to the inflation. Another cause of rating inflation is the bonus afforded to players who get a perfect score in a tournament.

  It isn’t uncommon for a player at my Marshalltown Thursday Night blitz tournaments to have a big day and gain a hundred points or more in a day. For example, on the January 5th tournament, Jerry Mason (rated 1155), won all 3 of his games against players rated 1087, 1304, and 1732 respectively. It was a great performance and Jerry’s rating shot up to 1324, a gain of 169 points, but the rest of the playing field lost 24 points combined. This means 145 points of Jerry’s rating increase didn’t come at the expense of the other players, but was just added to the system. This made me curious and I added the before and after ratings of all Thursday Night Blitz tournaments and found an increase of 4,453 rating points in the 106 tournaments since September 2009. For my technically-inclined readers, I’ll note that I did not include provisional ratings (the USCF counts ratings as provisional until 25 games have been played and allows the ratings to increase and decrease at a higher rate than non-provisional ratings) in this total.

  I researched the tournaments that caused the most disparities and they were all like Jerry’s big January 5th tournament. One player had a great tournament and gained a hundred rating points or more, but not at the expense of the other players. And when these lucky players came back to earth and lost some of their rating points back, the points tend to go to the other Marshalltown players because our blitz tournaments include a lot of the same players week after week. This ‘closed-loop’ effect was seen most clearly in the case of chess player (and convicted murderer) Claude Bloodgood, who attained a 1996 rating of 2700 (second in the country at the time) while only playing in prison tournaments.

  The main use I have for ratings is to keep the top players at tournaments I run from playing each other in the early going. Win TD (the pairing software I use) does this automatically for rated tournaments, but I’ve been having problems with my unrated tournaments. Since the players don’t have ratings, Win TD pairs the players randomly and sometimes will pair the best two players in the first round or give the defending champion a first round bye in case of an odd number of players. Because I have all the results in a database, I was able to spend some time on Sunday noodling around with various rating formulas to try to solve this and I discarded all my attempts as flawed. But when I started looking to see if I could ape the USCF system, I found it was nearly as flawed as anything I was coming up with and hundreds of times harder to implement.

  I’ve settled on an ‘unrated’ rating system that will take the winning percentage of a player’s latest 5 tournaments within the past 12 months scaled to 100, give a 5 point bonus for each tournament win, and add a point for each game played. The ratings will top out at 140 to 150 for a player who wins their last 5 tournaments and the lowest a player can have is a rating of 1 (playing only one game and losing it). I’m not sure if I’m going to let the players see their ratings since they will look low compared to the USCF ratings which start at 100, but I’m inclined to not only let the players see the ratings, but publish them on the Internet. After all, who doesn’t want to see that little number next to their name.

Spread the Word

  On Thursday I got an email from the IASCA scholastic director asking me what my plans were for a summer chess camp and would I like him to include it in his broadcast email? The last time the IASCA sent out a broadcast email concerning my chess activities, it was to recommend that people not go to my November tournament, so I curtly declined the invitation to spread the word. This led to another email from the IASCA scholastic director telling me he was trying to do me a favor in November because a lot of chess parents and the IASCA board members were so upset by my having the tournament in Des Moines on the same day as the IASCA Cedar Rapids tournament in November that he felt he had to mention it to stop all the negative talk about me and my tournament, but that it was a mistake to mention my tournament that way.

  I guess I can accept this explanation. After all, nobody’s perfect, especially me. And since one of my little imperfections is to hold onto my grudges like a kid holds on to their first chess trophy, I’ve had as little as possible to do with the IASCA over the last couple of months and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I can't control what other people say or do, but I can take care of the things I can take care of, like making sure I have my own means to spread the word about my chess tournaments and other chess activities. Because of my www.centraliowachess.com website, I have a place to post my news articles and upcoming tournaments and thanks to Ben Tessman’s advice, the site is already on the front page of the Google searches for Iowa chess. Sometimes I wish I was the type to just not tell the families who come to my tournaments about the scholastic tournaments the IASCA puts on, but that’s not one of my imperfections.

 

  Even in this age of the Internet, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc…, I think email is the best way to let people know about chess tournaments and that word of mouth remains the best way to grow attendance at chess tournaments, especially in Iowa. Maybe in a densely populated area like New Jersey it would pay to advertise in Chess Life, but not in Iowa where there are only a few hundred people who are USCF members and even get the magazine. I like to send out an email a few weeks before each of my tournaments to let the parents know about it and then I wait and see. It’s always kind of depressing the first couple of days after I send out the emails because I get more UNSUBSCRIBE emails than signups, but as the week goes on, I feel better as the signups start to come in.

  Yesterday I had my 13th straight monthly family Des Moines chess tournament at St. Francis. I got the date set up last month and I found out during the first chess club of the year that the local Cub Scout troop was having their pinewood derby at St. Francis on the morning of the tournament. I knew that was going to depress attendance in the morning, but since this was my 5th straight month with the morning and afternoon tournaments, any chess players that participated in the morning pinewood’s derby (or the basketball games being played in the gym next door) were just a minute or two away from the afternoon chess tournament if they cared to play.

 

  The morning tournament had 23 youth and 6 parents playing, about an average number if a bit on the smallish side. I was on target for another 30 players in the afternoon, but on Friday I picked up another 10 players and when the expected snowstorm didn’t dump the predicted 4 to 6 inches in Des Moines, another half dozen players showed up to play. After recruiting some siblings and parents to give me an even number of players for all the sections, I ended up with 52 players in the afternoon for a total of 81 players with 12 playing all day (including me, because I got to play a game in the parents section!).

 

  It was a great day of chess and while I was busy, I still had more than enough time to meet a lot of parents who had recently signed up to help with the clubs at their schools. They were asking me about starting chess clubs, instructing beginning players, and how would they know when the kids were ready for unrated tournaments. Some of the parents of the successful players in the unrated tournaments asked me when they should get their players into the rated tournaments. I told them to leave it up to the child and offered my assessment of what their rating would be when they started playing in the rated tournaments. The only big problem I had was with my new additions of trophy prizes for the unrated players. I had been giving them first through fifth place labels to put on their participation medals, but since September I’ve had more unrated players than rated players so I decided to add trophies to the unrated players prizes. A very talented 7-year old from St. Francis had a great morning unrated tournament (winning 3 out of 5 games), but he finished tied for fourth place and missed out on the last trophy by tiebreak. He thought he was going to get the trophy and was really upset when he didn’t. I’ve seen this enough with my kids and plenty of others to know that the bad feelings won't last, but it didn’t make me feel any better to see it yesterday. I had debated whether I should lower the unrated entry fee rather than ramping up the pressure by introducing trophies, but in the end I think the trophies are modest enough that it won’t lead to too many hard feelings.

  This was a unique tournament in that there were only 5 players that came from outside the Des Moines metro area. I had about a dozen new players, who were all told about the tournament by existing players or Jose Gatica, the professional chess teacher who works at all the other Catholic schools except St. Francis. One of the new players was Ronaldo Enamorado. The reason I mention Ronaldo is to illustrate the circuitous path by which he ended up playing chess in West Des Moines yesterday.

 

  Twice a year I send an email to all the schools within 3 counties of Des Moines to let them know about my tournaments. I rarely get any responses, but last January I got an email from Kelly Haase, the chess club advisor at Carlisle Middle School asking about the tournaments. Kelly let her club know about the tournament and her top player, Mathew Hintz, came to play in the unrated tournament last January. In February, Matt brought Sean Urban from the Carlisle Chess Club to play in the tournament. By April, Matt and Sean had both purchased USCF memberships and were playing in the rated tournaments. When I was setting up the chess camp for July, I let the parents know that I needed a nurse at the camp and was offering a discounted camp fee for the child of a nurse who would monitor the camp. Sean’s mom knew the Carlisle school nurse, Julie Reed, whose son Alex liked to play chess. Alex and Sean came to the camp and Alex started playing in the rated tournaments. Alex’s parents told a friend of theirs, Dell Spence, about the chess tournaments and last month Dell brought his 2 sons Seylan and Kylan to play in the unrated section. And this month Dell brought Ronaldo to play in the unrated section. And that is how Ronaldo Enamorado came to play chess in West Des Moines on January 21st, 2012. All because I sent a letter to a school in late 2010 and 4 different players liked the tournaments enough to get a friend to play. Now that’s what I call word of mouth!!

  And if I keep taking care of the things I can take care of, namely providing a positive fun family chess experience, it's only a matter of time before Ronaldo brings a friend, too!

Made in America

  The first super GM chess tournament of 2012 started on Saturday in Wijk aan Zee, Holland. This tournament is sponsored by Tata Steel and has the unique format of 3 14 players groups (A, B, and C) playing in a 13 round tournament. The ‘A’ section features 12 of the 21 top ranked players in the world along with Dutch player Loek Van Wely and last year’s champion of the ‘B’ tournament, Czech David Navara.

  Going into the tournament, the favorites were world numbers 1 and 2 Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian, and the defending champion Hikaru Nakamura of the United States. Nakamura made a big splash by winning last year’s Tata Steel tournament. It was the biggest tournament victory from a homegrown US player in at least 20 years. While there have been plenty of victories by US chess players in recent years, they have all been by émigrés from the eastern bloc countries who were already world class chess players when they arrived in the US, while Nakamura has lived in the US since he was 2 years old after being born in Japan.

  Nakamura has gotten off to a rocky start in the defense of his title, with 3 draws (2 as White) and a loss as Black to Aronian in the first 4 rounds to share next to last place. Nakamura’s results have been very erratic lately (last place at the Tal Memorial in November and a clear second in the London Chess Classic in December), so a comeback is still possible. Since winning at Wijk aan Zee last year, Nakamura was expected by many to challenge Carlsen for the top spot in the world rankings, especially once word got out that his sponsor (billionaire chess benefactor Rex Sinquefeld) had arranged for training with Garry Kasparov (the highest rated player of all time) prior to his victory. Carlsen had trained with Kasparov in 2010 before gaining the world number one ranking. Nakamura’s training with Kasparov came to an end sometime last year and probably not very amicably, with Nakamura saying that Kasparov’s main strength was getting good positions out of the openings and that other players were better than him in middlegames and endings. Carlsen said much the same thing, only much more delicately, even though as the top rated player in the world he would have the authority to take a swipe at Kasparov. Even if it true, by pointing it out publicly Nakamura is showing off his immaturity, although at 24 he is almost middle aged when compared to the top 20 players in the world.

  When chess players from the Eastern Bloc emigrated to the US en masse in the late 70s and early 80’s, there was a concern that an entire generation of talented young American grandmasters was being shut out of the already meager prize funds. To a certain extent this has been the case, but given the opportunities available outside the chess world in America, most of the homegrown US chess talent has always found their way to other professions upon reaching college age. In any event, enough homegrown American players have become able to make their way as professional chess players to be competitive in the US Championships, winning around 40% of championships held since 1990. It doesn’t bother me when chess players from other countries come to the US and dominate the national chess scene, but I have to admit I have a lot more national pride when home grown players represent our country instead of imports.

  Many of the foreign players have also had a difficult time making a living by playing chess and turned to teaching chess as a way to make a living. I wondered if this would lead to an increase in elite homegrown chess players. After a generation progress has been noticeable but slow. The huge push for chess in schools has led to exposure for many children who would never have seen a chessboard in years past and this has led to a huge increase in higher rated youngsters. For example the 100th rated 10 year old in the US is rated 1496, but when Matt cracked the top 100 list as an 10 year old in 2003, his rating was 1319 and he was in the 50's, not at the tail end of the list. There has been an increase in the number of strong young players, but I wondered if this increase has filtered through to the top levels of chess. I grabbed a list of the top 200 players by FIDE (international chess) rating born after 1991 and there were 9 Americans on the list. This is tied for 5th with Hungary and Spain behind Russia (37), China (14), India(14), and Ukraine(13). FIDE records only are available since 2009 so I have no idea whether 9 is high or low, but I suspect the US is underrepresented on the list since the USCF has its own rating system and very few US tournaments are internationally rated.

  Immigration is a hot topic in Marshalltown, Iowa and whenever someone rails to me about the large number of Hispanics that come to town (perhaps illegally) to work in the meat packing plant, I mention that I’ll worry when people don’t want to come to this country, illegally or not. It may be time for me to worry. When I was researching this post, I noticed that the foreign players at the top of the US ratings lists are the same ones that have been on these lists for years and years except for Alejandro Ramirez, a recent arrival from Costa Rica. This means that not only are the top Russian players not coming to America any more, the US isn’t a place of destination for the top chess players from China, India, South America or anywhere else in the world. And it gets even worse for the USA. When I printed out the FIDE list of the top 200 born after 1991, the top name on the list is Fabiano Caruana. Caruana is playing in Wijk aan Zee under the Italian flag, but is a homegrown American player, learning chess in New York in the 1990s. Because his mother was an Italian citizen, Caruana has Italian citizenship. He moved with his family to Europe in 2004 and hasn’t played in the United States since 2008.

  Not only is America not attracting the chess players from other countries, we can’t even retain the best of our home grown players. If this is happening in chess, I’m sure it’s happening in all professions and a clear sign that our country has lost a lot of its attractiveness to the rest of the world.