THE WEEK IN CHESS 226 - 8th March 1999 by Mark Crowther

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Contact The Week in Chess Mark Crowther E-Mail mdcrowth@netcomuk.co.uk Tel or fax 01274 882143 [Bradford England] Mobile 07957381719 http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html Contents 1) Introduction 2) XVI Ciudad de Linares 3) FIDE Championships to be in Caesar's Palace Casino 4) Myanmar Ratings 5) Karpov-Piket Match 6) Category 15: Enghien les Bains 7) 4th United Insurance International. Dhaka 8) Manhattan Chess Club March International 9) 6th Metalis Open 10) First Saturday, March 11) 117th Varsity match 12) Estonian Chess News 13) Regional Championships of Peru 14) Icelandic Team Championships 15) Forthcoming Events TWIC CD is scheduled for the 3rd week of March.

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Games section

XVI Ciudad de Linares                       20 games
Karpov-Piket Match                           2 games
Category 15: Enghien les Bains              25 games
4th United Insurance International. Dhaka   18 games
Manhattan Chess Club March International    15 games
6th Metalis Open                            53 games
First Saturday, March                       14 games
117th Varsity match                          8 games
Estonian Chess News                          1 game
Regional Championships of Peru             241 games
US Amateur Teams, East                       1 game

1) Introduction

My thanks to Patrick Rasenberg, Club Kasparov, Europe Echecs, N Ahmed and bulletin editors Jamilur Rahman, Kh. Kayes Hasan, Mizanur Rahman, Shamim Khan and M. Ashiquzzaman, Geurt Gijssen, Laszlo Nagy, net64, Paul van Linde, Ian Rogers, Leonard Barden, Jussi Tella, Milan Novkovic, John Fernandez, John Henderson, Mart Tarmak and all those who helped with this issue.

There are a number of big stories this week. Kasparov is threatening to smash all sorts of records at the Linares tournament if he adds wins to his already huge score there.

FIDE look set to announce Caesar's Palace as the venue for their World Championships starting on July 26th and throw the entire chess calendar out of kilter.

The largest series of articles in this issue are on the ratings of players from Myanmar (Burma). A number of the experts who write have not been shy of calling it fraud. I don't understand enough of it to know, if it isn't fraud then the ELO system has certainly been comprehensively found out. The level of real performance required to score norms at the recent event in Yangon was probably amongst the lowest ever. The whole thing needs investigating in a hurry. The next proper meeting of the FIDE ratings committee is, I understand, 18 months away. That will be far too late.

Hope you enjoy this issue

Mark

2) XVI Ciudad de Linares

The Category 20 XVI Ciudad de Linares will run February 21-March 10th. This Category 20 event is likely to be the strongest of the year.

We left Kasparov at the half-way stage of the Linares event last week. He had a one point lead over the field. He then proceeded to score 4.5/5 to wrap up the event with two rounds to go. The feature of his play has been a new level of opening preparation which has taken him way beyond Kramnik and Anand, just when they threatened to catch up. In particular his preparation of the Sicilian has rendered it almost unplayable here, it is significant that he was only held by Kramnik with white when he switched to 1.d4, even there, Kasparov's preparation seemed very deep, just not winning. Against Anand he got a winning position (Kasparov even knew that the game should be a forced draw with best play) only for Anand to find an amazing way to play on with 27. Nc3, had Kasparov seen that he would have probably played all the game from prep. As it was the ending proved slightly tricky and Anand got a drawn position only to fail to find the quite simple 47.Nc3 winning the final pawn and going down to a loss. Kasparov has had some luck, with his win against Adams coming from a lost position and he has misplayed some of his winning positions slightly. However it is well known that when you play a lot of preparation its hard to get into the correct thinking mode when you do eventually have to play. This has sometimes been over 90 minutes into the game for Kasparov.

The final two rounds will see a battle between Anand and Kramnik to see who will come second and whether Kasparov will be able to add anymore wins to his already huge score.

Oh and Topalov played the Cochrane Gambit against Kramnik's Petroff Defence. An astonishing choice for this level of chess and drew quite easily.

Official site: http://linares.teleline.es/default.htm OR http://194.224.53.74/default.htm

Round 8 (March 2, 1999)

Anand, Viswanathan  -  Ivanchuk, Vassily   1/2   45  B19  Caro-Kann
Leko, Peter         -  Adams, Michael      1/2   26  C89  Ruy Lopez
Topalov, Veselin    -  Kramnik, Vladimir   1/2   31  C42  Petroff defence
Svidler, Peter      -  Kasparov, Gary      0-1   42  B53  Sicilian

Round 9 (March 3, 1999)

Kasparov, Gary      -  Ivanchuk, Vassily   1-0   36  D26  QGA;
Kramnik, Vladimir   -  Svidler, Peter      1-0   33  D85  Gruenfeld indian
Leko, Peter         -  Anand, Viswanathan  1/2   44  C82  Ruy Lopez
Adams, Michael      -  Topalov, Veselin    1/2   24  B90  Sicilian; Najdorf

Round 10 (March 5, 1999)

Anand, Viswanathan  -  Kasparov, Gary      0-1   50  B80  Sicilian
Topalov, Veselin    -  Leko, Peter         1/2   22  C65  Ruy Lopez
Svidler, Peter      -  Adams, Michael      1-0   33  C92  Ruy Lopez
Ivanchuk, Vassily   -  Kramnik, Vladimir   1/2   22  D37  Queen's gambit

Round 11 (March 6, 1999)

Kramnik, Vladimir   -  Kasparov, Gary      1/2   35  D88  Gruenfeld indian
Leko, Peter         -  Svidler, Peter      1/2   25  C45  Scottish
Topalov, Veselin    -  Anand, Viswanathan  0-1   43  B12  Caro-Kann
Adams, Michael      -  Ivanchuk, Vassily   1/2   37  B26  Sicilian; Closed

Round 12 (March 7, 1999)

Kasparov, Gary      -  Adams, Michael      1-0   65  C88  Ruy Lopez
Anand, Viswanathan  -  Kramnik, Vladimir   1/2   21  C42  Petroff defence
Svidler, Peter      -  Topalov, Veselin    0-1   36  B35  Sicilian
Ivanchuk, Vassily   -  Leko, Peter         1/2   13  C65  Ruy Lopez


XVI Ciudad de Linares (ESP), ii-iii 1999             cat. XX (2735)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Kasparov, Gary      g RUS 2812 ** == =1 =. 1. 11 =1 11  9.5  2958
2 Kramnik, Vladimir   g RUS 2751 == ** == =. == 1. =1 ==  7.0  2794
3 Anand, Viswanathan  g IND 2781 =0 == ** == =1 =. 1. ==  6.5  2759
4 Leko, Peter         g HUN 2694 =. =. == ** == 0= 0= 1=  5.5  2705
5 Topalov, Veselin    g BUL 2700 0. == =0 == ** == =1 =.  5.5  2707
6 Adams, Michael      g ENG 2716 00 0. =. 1= == ** =0 1=  5.0  2676
7 Svidler, Peter      g RUS 2713 =0 =0 0. 1= =0 =1 ** 0.  4.5  2649
8 Ivanchuk, Vassily   g UKR 2714 00 == == 0= =. 0= 1. **  4.5  2656
-------------------------------------------------------------------

3) FIDE Championships to be in Caesar's Palace Casino

In a decision said to be only awaiting rubber stamping at a FIDE meeting on 14th March, FIDE are to organise their World Championships in Caesar's Palace Casino, Las Vegas. The dates will be July 26 - August 28. The schedule has been slightly accelerated but it is unclear how at the moment. The dates are amongst the worst possible, throwing a number of high profile and lesser events into chaos. Having cleared June/July dates the July/August dates will clash with some events that have been moved, this includes for instance the high category Dortmund event. In addition there are clashes with Polanica Zdroj, Biel, Amsterdam (a new high category Lost Boys closed tournament was planned for August), Lost Boys Open in Antwerp, British Championship, Koszalin, Dutch Open in Dieren, Martigny and probably many more.

The only doubt is that Karpov, speaking during his match against Piket, said he has an agreement with FIDE which states he must be consulted over the dates. As he has agreed to play in both Dortmund and Polanica, he says he will definitely sue FIDE if they go ahead with the July-August dates.

The prizemoney has been confirmed at $2.4m (that is $3m less 20% or $600,000 which is FIDE's share) by FIDE in the last few days.

4) Myanmar Ratings

Last week I published the results of the GM Scheveningen tournament in Yangon, Myanmar [this is Rangoon, Burma]. It has led to one of the largest reponses ever to a single event. In fact some mention was made at the end of January by Massimiliano Orsi of the large number of highly rated players from Myanmar in the ELO list for the first time. However this was not to prepare me for the level of reaction to the event covered last week.

This is not an anti-Burmese article, these kinds of fraud and manipulation have been ignored in the past. There are tournaments where you can get ratings and norms without even playing a game in Europe, for a fee of course. One player, well known on the internet, absolutely strong enough to have scored his final GM norm on his own, got it in an non-existent event. However the breathtaking speed and scale of this has astonished numerous observers who thought they had seen everything and has made it impossible to ignore. The rating list will soon become both inflated and meaningless if this continues.

Is there a case for the defense? It is recognised, even in Burma, that some of their players may be overrated due to the initial high K factor. However, people with connections to Burmese chess, believe that within two years Burma will be a chess force to be reckoned with. The driving force behind the organisation of all these tournaments has been Muang Maung Lwin, IA, the secretary of the Burmese Chess Federation.

However much of the evidence below suggests a lot more than this, although there are talented players coming through (including Zaw Win Lay) the level of over-rating is astonishing and systematic.

Paul van Linde was the first to get in touch. He looked at the results of the event and was astonished.

"The Scheveningen format is known to be very appropriate for creating title norms, and so did it in the Yangon tournament. However, in this case the harvest was especially high."

"If I count correctly, in the down half there were 6 players (out of 14) who managed to get a GM-norm: Zhu Chen, Sharavdorj and the four (!) Burmese players Zaw Win Lay, Aung Thant Zin, Nay Oo Kyaw Tun and Myo Naing. At least, that's what I have to assume, since all of them met 3 GM's (Ye Jiangchuan, Al-Modiahki and Liang Jinrong) and made 2600+ performances."

"But that's not all. There were also no less than 8 players in the tournament who have apparently made an IM-norm (2450+ performance and at least 3 IM's as an opponent). Five (!) of these IM-norms were made by Burmese players. This means that no less than 14 players (out of 28) managed to get a norm! Nine of them were Burmese."

He thought there was "something terribly unnatural about the tournament and about the ratings of the Burmese players. One more glance at the tournament chart reveals the huge amount of untitled Burmese participants with 2500+ ratings. And some of them have managed to perform on 2200 level or even below."

Comparing the standings of the Dutch players with those of Burmese players in the last rating list he came up with the following figures:

            MYA     NED

2500+       16      12
2400+       52      45
2300+       105     142
Rated       201     485

Respected Grandmaster and chess journalist Ian Rogers also felt moved to comment on the event in the Canberra Times Chess Column for March 7th. He too was almost breathtaken by the number of norms scored in the event and the calculated level of planning required for titles and rating fraud on this scale. I quote, with permission, at length below.

"The Grandmaster tournament which took place in Rangoon in the first two weeks of February took months of planning but succeeded in creating six Grandmaster results and eight IM results, an astonishing success rate. (Two or three title 'norms' are needed for a player to be awarded the GM or IM title.) Some of those scoring Grandmaster results had struggled to score 50% in the South-East Asian zonal tournament only a month earlier! Corruption extended not only to the tournament itself - with seven highly rated locals losing all their games to their compatriots - but also to a series of events held in 1998 which provided extremely high world rankings for all those required to be 'victims' in the February tournament. All seven of the no-hopers in February were unrated in January 1998, yet on the January 1999 FIDE list had rankings higher than Australian Grandmaster Darryl Johansen."

"The following game is not atypical of their play, with the heavily 'outrated' Mas winning one of the easiest games of his career: Rangoon 1999 White: H.Mas Black: Thein Dan Oo 1.e4 c5 2.f4 d6 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bb5 g6 5.0-0 Bg7 6.Bxc6+ bxc6 7.d3 Rb8?! 8.Nc3 Nf6 9.Qe1 0-0 10.b3 d5? 11.e5 Nd7 12.Ba3 Re8?! 13.Na4 Rb5 14.e6 Nf6? 15.c4 Ra5? 16.exf7+ Kxf7 17.Ne5+ Kg8 18.Nxc6 1-0 Mas, the honourable Malaysian IM who performed so creditably in Sydney in January, was not one of the favoured many who scored title results. His opponent, rated 2539 - a near-GM ranking, managed only 4 points from 14 games. There is no suggestion that any of the foreign visitors were involved in anything other than pre-arranged draws - they simply took advantage of the extraordinarily overrated opposition. However the local players in Rangoon probably knew the results of many of their games before the event began and if an 'accident' occurred to one of those destined to score a title norm - e.g. a loss to a foreign player - their compatriots pitched in and provided some extra points or half points. Unusually for a corrupt tournament, the foreign invitees were not needed to help out the locals, since the enormous rankings of the weakest players meant that the scores required for title results were relatively low."

"From the point of view of the organisers, the event was so successful that it is likely to be repeated in a few months time, before the ratings of the tailenders are adjusted on the July FIDE rating list. After one more such tournament, Burma could have 4 Grandmasters and half a dozen IMs; after a few more such tournaments they could have more Grandmasters than any country in Asia! Publicity may encourage the Burmese to become more discreet in future but FIDE is highly unlikely to take any action. Their actions in past cases would indicate that the world body tacitly approves of a 'developing' chess nation acquiring titled players, whatever the ethics involved."

Also English journalist Leonard Barden, who was responsible for much of the sponsorship and many of the events that allowed England to develop as a leading nation was also certain that ratings fraud of an unprecidented scale was going on and was struck by the precision of the scores in the event last week that allowed almost the maximum number of norms from the Yangon event. In addition he says because of the over-rating of the Burmese players in the event only a very few of the games need have been thrown as in the normal course of events most of the over-rated players would lose to their more talented countrymen.

In fact things could have been a whole lot worse. In a little publicised ratings regulation brought in recently and implemented retrospectively, no-one's rating can change by more than 100 points per list. This has caused consternation amongst a number of Federations but has an effect here too. Paul van Linde researching the FIDE database of ratings at: http://www.chess.gr/ratings/default.asp recovered the following figures:

Zaw Win Lay         +112,0
Aung Aung           +124,5
Aye Lwin            +167,1
Nay Oo Kyaw Tun     +237,45
Myo Naing           +309,45
Zaw Oo              +251,7
Aung Thant Zin      +348,75

as the real improvements that should have taken place. However in the rating list:

                    7/98    1/99

Zaw Win Lay         2465    2565
Aung Aung           2400    2500
Aye Lwin            2395    2495
Nay Oo Kyaw Tun     2395    2495
Myo Naing           2345    2445
Zaw Oo              2340    2440
Aung Thant Zin      2310    2410

They only gained 100 points. Without the threshhold a number of players would have broken through the 2600 barrier with for example Myo Naing's rating being at 2654.

Further analysis in Finnish by IM Jussi Tella from Finland, who is one of the editors of the Finnish chess news site ShakkiNet is at: http://www.shakki.net and http://www.shakki.net/skandal.htm .

In his analysis [Jussi: "A rapid development can be observed in the level of Burmese chess" ] he shows some additional statistical evidence which is very revealing. In the table below he gives the amount of Burmese players on the two last rating lists, subdivided into rating categories :

                7/98        1/99

2000-2100       7           20
2100-2200       12          30
2200-2300       18          46
2300-2400       33          53
2400-2500       4           36
2500-           0           16

He follows this up with "Zaw Win Lay was suddenly hit by overwhelming chess enthusiasm"

Ratings of Zaw Win Lay.
1/93    2205
7/93    2205
1/94    2230 (+25)
7/94    2230
1/95    2230
7/95    2230
1/96    2230
7/96    2230
1/97    2230
7/97    2230
1/98    2395 (+165)
7/98    2465 (+70)
1/99    2565 (+100)

Finally someone who was alert to this fairly early was Milan Novkovic 33, FM, 2400 ELO. He wrote an article for the biggest monthly German Chess-Magazine: "Schach" March 99 - edited by GM Raj Tischbierek. He gave permission for an English translation to appear below (you can contact him at: NovkovicM@tridonic.co.at for permission to reproduce.)

Sensational Chess Boom in Myanmar

by Milan Novkovic

Forget the Russian School of Chess! Forget about Boeblingen 1998 and "Fritz" up someone’s sleeve. In Myanmar you can push your FIDE-rating to unknown heights much more effectively, quickly – and with the blessing of FIDE. If things continue as successfully and as peacefully as in a last two years, then the former Burma – situated between China, India and Thailand – will produce the world’s next number one and the top 100 of the FIDE rating list will be adorned by hitherto absolutely unfamiliar names.

In January 1997 Myanmar had a relatively modest number of internationally rated players, totalling six. Highest ranking among these proteges of Caissa was Lwin Aye with 2360. But that year saw the beginning of a chess boom in the country of Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel peace price and leader of the opposition movement. Its not clear whether the chess players have been refused visa by the military junta so that they could not play abroad or whether other reasons have kept them from doing so, but they have still managed to turn their situation into an advantage by fighting numerous tournaments among themselves.

There some managed to achieve almost superhuman feats. Chief among those unsung heroes is Moun Moun Latt, who scored 15,5 out of 18 in the "9^th TMW Invtl Rating Trnmt" in September 1998 in Myanmar. His opponents were all fellow countrymen with an average rating of 2391. Thus he gained a rating of 2554 and number 196 on the current list, one point ahead of such GMs as Lobron, Macieja and Dzindzichashvili.

Moun Moun Latt is only one of the many shooting stars from Myanmar. Until July 1998 as many as 73 players had catapulted themselves into the FIDE-list. Much to the chagrin of the visionary and mathematically gifted organizers of such tournaments as the "Battle of two Cities", the "Department Chess Tournament" or even the "Tal-Memorial" – all taking place in Myanmar – a great number of active players still did not produce the necessary peak.

Therefore, the established players continued to crush new-found aficionados of the game until they had reached olympic status in terms of ELO. Chessfriends all over the world had to wait for an unduly long time to see their strength reflected in numbers, but for the men from Myanmar it was well worth the wait. 201 players are listed as of January 1999, among them 16 with a rating higher than 2500 and 36 with more than 2400. Only Russia, Germany, the Ukraine, the USA, Yugoslavia and Hungary do better. Even chess powers like England and Israel or the Netherlands have failed to push so many players beyond 2400, despite decades of hard work, that is.

Zaw Win Lay – a name to remember

If the chess-boom in Myanmar continues in this vein, then Garry Kasparov will certainly lose his top position on the FIDE list, but he will not do so to Anand or Kramnik, but – most likely – to Zaw Win Lay. In January 1997 Lay was far behind with a measly 2230. In the meantime he has improved by leaps and bounds, thus becoming his country’s number one and the world’s number 155 with 2565 ELO. As he picks up roughly 100 points per rating period, it’s easy to figure how long Kasparov will remain unchallenged.

In August 1998 Zaw Win Lay (then ELO 2465) crushed 10 fellow countrymen at the "Battle of two Cities" with 10/10, gaining 35 points. This resembled his triumph at the "Tal Memorial". There he destroyed all local opposition (average rating 2386) by scoring 11/12. Two more triumphs in local tournaments were to follow. Unfortunately, he dropped 16 rating points at the Rangoon zonal (zone 3.2a) in December against an average of 2329. The tournament saw Indonesian GM Utut Adianto in first place. Mr Zaw finished among the also-rans with 4,5/9. Nevertheless, the second half of 1998 brought another 100 rating points.

Independent observers hope that Mr Zaw can get over this unexpected setback at the hands – and minds – of foreign players. They hope that he will be able to rehabilitate himself on native soil in the tournaments to come. Anyhow, the chess world is eagerly awaiting the July 1999 rating list. Perhaps it will announce the first player from Myanmar to cross the threshold of 2600.

Top 20 countries with players above 2400

Sources: Current ELO-Rating-List: http://www.chess.gr/enter.html
Archive of ELO-Rating-Lists: http://www.fide.com/

Games by Zaw Win Lay can by found on ChessBase Megabase99 and in TWIC 215, TWIC 225; a photo in ChessBase 7.0 Playbase

Feel free to publish this report. If you wish to compensate me for my research, please call me at the numbers listed below or send an email.

Milan Novkovic
Mitteldorfgasse 1a
6850 Dornbirn
Austria

33, fully employed, FM, 2400 ELO
Email: novkovicm@tridonic.co.at
Tel.: 0043/5572/32247 (home)
0043/5572/3954139 (work)

FIDE Rating List Jan 97

Country Myanmar

FIDE Rating List Jan 99

Country Myanmar