Hibernation is defined as a period when mammals spend the winter moving very little and sleeping a lot in order to save energy. Substitute ‘estivation’ for ‘hibernation’ and ‘chess players’ for ‘mammals’ and you get the general picture for most chess clubs after Easter. Not so here at Broadstairs where we have another two and a half months to go which involves several remaining matches in the club championship, three more rounds of the Summer Swiss, the semi-finals and finals of the knockout competition and the Broadstairs Blitz on July 2. If that is not enough, there is also the 49th Thanet Chess Congress to look forward to in August to which everyone is invited. Details and online booking can be found at http://www.thanetchesscongress.co.uk. Entry is free for GMs and IMs, and only £5 for U16s.
No such rest for the world’s top players who have descended upon Stavanger for the Altibox Norway Chess tournament, an all-play-all competition featuring ten of the top players in the world. Rather than list those attending, it is easier to name those of the leading thirteen who are not (Kramnik, Giri, Grischuk). To give you an idea of the standard of the tournament, Vishy Anand is the weakest player with a pathetic FIDE rating of 2760. Round 1 featured an intriguing rehearsal for November’s World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, and it was the only game with a positive result.
White: Magnus Carlsen (2843) Black: Fabiano Caruana (2822)
Altibox Norway 2018 Round 1
Stavanger i
s described as the oil capital of Norway and is an attractive city well worth a visit. If your idea of a fun evening is watching Scandi noir serials on tv, you might be forgiven for thinking that Norwegians lack a sense of humour but don’t you believe it. On a visit there last year, your correspondent came across a Mexican restaurant outside which there was a sign displaying the following recommendation in perfect English: “Mexican food so authentic that Donald Trump would build a wall around it.” If a visit to the oil museum is not your cup of tea, try tracking down the dozen or so Antony Gormley statues liberally scattered around the city in the most unlikely places including one inside a shop. Meanwhile, as none of the ten stars currently appearing at the Altibox tournament has yet replied to my request for them to opt in to my updated post-GDPR privacy notice enabling me to display their photographs, here is a picture of Stavanger instead.
Congratulations to the Broadstairs team that has retained the Team Buzzer shield won last year. David Faldon reports: ‘Only two teams turned up for the 2017/18 Thanet Team Buzzer Tournament so we made the best of it and played an eight-round match with each of the four Broadstairs players taking on each of the Margate players twice. The outcome was a 13-3 win for Broadstairs using a scoring system of two points for each round won. Broadstairs were represented by Nick McBride (6/8), David Faldon (6/8), Paul Carfrae (6½/8) and Richard Clement (4/8). The Margate players were Peter McGill, Colin Gregory, Leon Garfield and Cameron Plater.’
On May 25 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect, replacing the 1998 Data Protection Act. Currently, personal data i.e. information relating to living individuals however it is processed, collected, recorded, stored or disposed of must comply with the Data Protection Act. This is being updated next month under the new regulation and will have implications for all organisations that store information on individuals including chess clubs, leagues and congresses. The ECF has been considering the implications for some time and has just produced this helpful guide:
https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GDPR-County-and-Club-Guide.pdf
Club and league secretaries together with congress organisers are strongly advised to read the guide and act upon it sooner rather than later. While it may seem unlikely that authorities would pursue humble chess clubs that fail to abide by the law, fines for failing to do so could be considerable. The changes under GDPR relate specifically to information collected and stored by clubs and organisations and how it is handled. Therefore, officials need to explain to their members or entrants the following:
- what data is collected
- how it is stored
- to whom it is passed and for what purpose
- for how long the data is kept
- what individuals can do to limit how their data is used
One of the key differences between current and new legislation is that it is insufficient for a club or organisation to assume that individuals are happy for their personal information to be used in any way stated by the club or congress on websites, emails or printed leaflets or entry forms – consent needs to be established i.e. ‘opt in’ will become the default setting and not ‘opt out’.
At Broadstairs (and the Thanet Chess Congress) we are preparing for GDPR and an update will be provided in due course. Congress organisers might be interested to see how the British Championships have approached the new regulations and this may provide a useful template for other congresses:
https://www.britishchesschampionships.co.uk/conditions-2018/2/
More information on GDPR is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/
The 49th Thanet Chess Congress will take place from August 17th-19th 2018 and details are now available on the congress website http://www.thanetchesscongress.co.uk where online registration is available or from which a pdf entry form can be printed if players so wish. This year the Congress has a new venue, St George’s School, just a stone’s throw from the university that has been home to the Congress for the last few years.
Thanet regulars may remember that St George’s was home to the Congress before we moved to the university but may not recognise it from the picture on the left. As you may have gathered, the former school was demolished and this bright new edifice, risen like a phoenix from the ashes, opened in 2010. Entry fees have been kept the same as last year, there is still free entry for GMs and IMs, £5 entry for all juniors (U16 on Aug 1 2018) and we are repeating the innovation of a charity bookstall. This year our chosen charity is the RNLI so please bring any of your unwanted chess books with you which can be sold with all proceeds going to this worthy organisation very active in this seaside area. Further information about the work of the RNLI can be found here. Last year the Congress was well attended and we hope to see you all again in August and please bring your friends – and the sun – with you.
It was tempting to label the game reproduced here as Game of the Week but that would be a gross understatement alongside our more modest examples from Broadstairs Chess Club. The FIDE Candidates Tournament is currently taking place in Berlin to decide who will play Magnus Carlsen later this year in London for the World Chess Championship. There has been some terrific chess played in the opening rounds and the following Round 3 game between Lev Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik has attracted most of the attention. Already christened the Berlin Immortal – it was a Berlin Defence played in Berlin – Kramnik claimed afterwards that he had been waiting to play this for two years but did not think he would get an opportunity in a Candidates Tournament, especially against Aronian who last opened with 1. e4 over a year ago in the Sharjah Grand Prix. The background to this surprise is that the opening move was made – as often happens in big tournaments – by a guest, the pianist Francesco Tristano who, without any apparent consultation with Aronian, played 1. e4 The players do not have to accept this as a legitimate move and Kramnik said later that he expected Aronian to move the pawn back to e2 and play 1. d4 but he didn’t. While it might be absurd as some amateur commentators have done online to suggest that 1. e4 was Aronian’s losing move, 7….Rg8 was certainly a surprise. Nigel Short went a little further, tweeting: “I love Kramnik’s 7…Rg8! It is like the sort of crap I play in blitz.” The result was a spectacular win for Kramnik and it would be interesting to know when was the last time Aronian was beaten in 27 moves playing White.
White: Levon Aronian (2794) Black: Vladimir Kramnik (2800)
FIDE Candidates Tournament 2018
After the game leading players were unstinting in their praise for Kramnik. Alexander Grischuk, one of his fellow competitors in the tournament, described it as “one of the best games I have ever seen,” while Short, having recovered from the shock of 7….Rg8, said “Simply brilliant chess by Vlad Kramnik! I take my hat off to him. Outstanding. Love it!” Soon after the game finished both players appeared at the press conference which is well worth a look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_9EmctslAo
Aronian was gracious in defeat but said little while Kramnik was modest: “Frankly the game was flashy, but it was not extremely difficult.” See if you agree!