Nat'l Inter-Province chessfest set April 1-5 in Aklan

Nat'l Inter-Province chessfest set April 1-5 in Aklan
THE National Inter-Province chess team championship, an annual event n the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) calendar, will be held on April 1-5 at the Cabagnot Training Center in Kalibo, Aklan.

This was announced by NCFP president/chairman Prospero “Butch” Pichay and Aklan Gov. Carlito Marquez, who finalized the agreement for the staging of the prestigious five-day competition pitting top players from different provinces in the country.

A guaranteed cash prize of P100,000 and trophy await the winning team in this annual competition open to all titled and untitled players.

The runner-up and the third placer will receive P70,000 and P50,000, respectively.

NCFP executive director Willie Abalos said the participating team can field field four regular players and one alternate. Teams, however, can only field one titled player – GM, IM, FM or NM -- who will play on top board.

The other cash prizes are: P30,000 to the fourth placer, P20,000 to the fifth placer; P10,000 to the sixth placer; P9,000 to the seventh placer; P8,000 to the eighth placer; P7,000 to the ninth placer; and P6,000 to the 10th placer.

The top individual performers from boards one to five will also get P2,000 each and medals.

For details and request for formal invitation, call the NCFP secretariat at tel. 02-3817224, or cell 0949-1760889 and 0929-2266210, or email at NCFPsecretariat@yahoo.com/ hambalosin@yahoo.com,

Interested participants can also get in touch to NCFP regional director and Aklan sports coordinator Willie Neri at 0920-5636732.

Meanwhile, the NCFP also announces the staging pof the National age-group on April 15-18, National Juniors on April 20-26, Asian Youth on May 14-22 in Subic, ASEAN Zonals on May 24-30 in Tagaytay City and the Pichay Cup on June 1-9 in Subic.

PANAGBENGA CUP (BAGUIO CITY)

17TH BCM NON-MASTER CHESS TOURNAMENT “PANAGBENGA CUP”
TOURNAMENT DATE: MARCH 5 & 6, 2010

REGISTRATION:
1. EARLY REGISTRATION FEE ARE P150.00 FOR OPEN CATEGORY AND P150.00 FOR KIDDIES DIVISION
2. EARLY REGISTRATION STARTS ON FEB 1, 2011 AND DEAD LINE IS ON MARCH 2, 2011 @ THE BAGUIO CENTER MALL CHESS GALLERY FROM 10AM-7PM.
3. LATE REGISTRATION FEE ARE P250.00 FOR OPEN CATEGORY AND P200.00 FOR KIDDIES DIVISION (FROM MAR. 3-5@ 10am or before posting of pairings)
4. PARTICIPATING PLAYERS ARE REQUESTED TO FILL – UP THE REGISTRATION FORM AND SUBMIT THE SAME TO THE CHESS ATTENDANT.


ELIGIBILITY: THE TOURNAMENT IS OPEN TO ALL UNTITLED CHESS PLAYERS

TOURNAMENT SYSTEM:
1. THE 17TH BCM NON-MASTER CHESS TOURNAMENT WILL BE PLAYED IN 7 ROUNDS SWISS SYSTEM.
2. THE TIME CONTROL SHALL BE GAME 45 (45 MINUTES EACH PLAYER TO FINISH A GAME).
3. THE FIDE LAWS OF CHESS, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED IN THESE RULES, SHALL GOVERN THE TOURNAMENT.
4. THE SWISS MANAGER PROGRAM SHALL BE USED FOR PAIRINGS.
5. RECORDING OF MOVES IS MANDATORY.
6. TIES SHALL BE BROKEN BY SWISS MANAGER TIE BREAKERS IN CASE AFTER THE 3 TIE BREAKERS HAS BEEN APPLIED AND THE PLAYERS ARE STILL TIED, THE CASH PRIZES SHALL BE SHARED EQUALLY AMONG THE TIED PLAYERS. PLAYERS WHO WIN TWO PRIZES SHALL RECEIVE ONLY THE LARGER ONE.


FOR INQUIRIES PLS. CALL / TEXT
MR. ROMEO SAMSON @ 09284575142
MR. TEDDY SARMIENTO @ 09107731000
MR. ARNIE IGNACIO @ 09162170477 / 09104106767

HOUDINI world strongest chess engine

After 40 marathon match Houdini 1.5a out played Rybka 4. The time control is 150 minutes + 30 seconds added per move, for the whole game. This makes each game last an average of approximately 5 hours. If an engine loses on time for various reasons the result will stand - hence the game will not be replayed. Also noteworthy is that if the computer fails at any time during a game, that game will be restarted from the position after the opening book unless the position is won for either side, then it will be manually adjudicated by the tournament director.

Each engine is allowed to use up to ~4 GB of hash and is allowed to use up to all six cores of the processor, if this is supported. Typically all "deep" versions of engines today supports multiple threads, or cores. Pondering or "permanent brain" is not allowed so it is always disabled. An engine binary that supports the SSE 4.2 instructions, or pop_cnt, are preferred, the same applies to 64-bit binaries over 32-bit ones. Large pages are always disabled since there is not enough RAM in the computer for this to work for two engines simultaneously.

All engines are configured with the default settings, so parameters like "contempt" or similar are not adjusted. Many engines have a prefix like "deep", but this has been omitted from the engine names to make the names shorter, but the "deep" version of an engine is always used if the engine exists in this version. In general, most commercial and free engines are available.

All opening moves are randomly fetched from a PGN master file which contains 9.106 different openings that are fixed to 10 moves / 20 plies. All the openings have been automatically analyzed by a top engine on a dual-core laptop for approximately 24 seconds. Some openings are very even out of book or even slightly favoring black, but the majority of the openings are normal in the sense that white has a decent position.

As of December 17, 2010, Houdini 1.5 was ranked #1 on the leading IPON computer chess rating list, 50 Elo ahead of Rybka 4 and 100 Elo ahead of Stockfish 1.9 and Critter 0.9.


Final Standing
Name Points
Houdini 1.5a 23.5
Rybka 4 16.5

Typical mates with enemy pieces

The so-called back-row mate by the rook(or queen) is one of the most typical mating patterns.

Of the fairly large number of typical mates with queen and pawn this one is given first. Black is to move; he cannot escape mate, since he is threatened by 1. Qh6 and Qg7#. If he plays 1...Kh7, then 2. Qh4+ and Qh6, etc. If Black had a pawn on h7 he would have the defence 1...Kh8 2. Qh6 Rg8.

This is he position from the book(1512) by Damiano, a Portuguese apothecary, one of the first author in the literature of European chess. White mates in five moves. 1. Rh8+ Kxh8 2. Rh1+ Kg8 3. Rh8+ Kxh8 4. Qh1+ Kg8 5. Qh7#
The rook sacrifices were naturally introduced to make the essintial point clear: the queen must reach the h-file with gain of tempo.



The pattern of Damiano's mate can be seen more clearly in the following examples.

1. Qh5 Be7 2. Qh7+ Kf8 3. Qh8#
In this case a Bishop has been placed on f8 and also a pawn on d6, with the result that the Bishop can only move on e7, where it blocks the King's escape. The general theme of Damiano's mate, the pattern of which is characterized by a black pawn on g7 and a white pawn or bishop on g6, can be subjected to numerous variations

Mating Patterns

Typical mates without enemy piece

There are a very large number of typical mates of this kind and most of them are elementary, so we shall consider only few examples. In the first position White, to move, has a choice between two typical mates:

a) 1. Bg6+ Kg8 2. Qh7+ Kf8 3. Qf7#

b) 1. Bf5+ Kg8 2. Be6#













In this position there are again two possible mates, depending on how Black replies

If 1. Nf6+ Kh8, then 2. Rh7# ( the so-called Arab mate, because it is recorded in Arabic manuscript of the 9th century)If 1. Nf6+ Kf8, then there follows 2. Rf7#, a mating pattern which is worth remembering.

Draw for Wesley Aeroflot 2011 (1)

Free training course in Peshka Interface

”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” training course released for free!
This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. In honor of World Champion, ChessOK releases a free training course ”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” in Peshka interface.

Learn to play like the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik in 350 most interesting and instructive positions from his games!

This course also features 1.069 games played by Botvinnik from 1924 till 1970. The games are deeply annotated by GM Alexander Khalifman, FIDE World Champion’1999 and IM Sergey Soloviev.

Carlsen-Short London 2010