Russian Superfinals

A couple weeks ago the Russian Superfinals finished. It was a wonderfully hard-fought tournament, with fewer than 50% draws in the men’s bracket and an even smaller percentage on the women’s side. Alexander Morozevich won the men’s tournament with a score of 8-3 (including two losses!) and Tatiana Kosintseva won the women’s with a 7-4 record (also with two losses).

An extremely interesting moment in the men’s tournament came in the penultimate round, when Alexander Grishchuk defeated Andrei Rychagov in a 100-move marathon. (The win brought him within ½ point of Morozevich, who earlier had led by 1½ points.) Grishchuk and Rychagov entered a rarely-seen pawnless endgame, King + Rook + Bishop versus King + Rook. This endgame is a theoretical draw, but in practice it’s extremely difficult to play accurately. The pawnless endgame began at move 59, so Rychagov had to reach move 109 without getting checkmated or losing his rook. Unfortunately he made a critical mistake at move 96, and resigned because at move 102 he was going to have to give up the rook to avoid checkmate.

Interestingly, there were several times between moves 90 and 100 where Rychagov could have reached positions that were theoretically lost, but where he could (with best play) prolong the game well past the move-109 cutoff. Back in the old days before computers, we never would have suspected this, but using the computer tablebases you can now see that the position went back and forth from drawn to “lost-but-drawable-under-the-50-move-rule” several times. It’s either humbling or reassuring (take your pick) to see that even grandmasters do not understand this endgame.

Could you have drawn the game if you were in Rychagov’s shoes? You can play the game out and see. Even better, go to Ernest Hong’s blog. He put up a wonderful long entry a couple days ago that analyzes the R+B versus R endgame, walking you through a study by Philidor and the Rychagov-Grishchuk game. After I’ve thought about his analysis, maybe I’ll post a followup comment here (or even do a lecture on it!). Just to whet your curiosity, he argues that if the defending king has been driven back to the first rank, it is better off on a knight or bishop file than on the king or queen file — which is exactly the reverse of most endgames, where you would rather have your king closer to the center.

Another interesting thing happened in an early round of the women’s Superfinals. One of the contestants received a cell-phone call during the game, and she was immediately forfeited! I was surprised to read about this drastic punishment. Apparently it surprised the spectators, too, and the arbiter had to write an article on chesspro.ru explaining that according to FIDE’s current rules he had no option. The mandatory forfeit was instituted because of the belief that cell phones could be used to cheat, even if the player doesn’t answer the phone.

What do you think about this rule? I’ve never seen such a harsh punishment in the U.S. I don’t think that the USCF has a clear-cut rule on cell phones, so it is pretty much at the tournament director’s discretion. For example, in the Nevada tournaments that I play in, the rule is that if your cell phone rings, you get 10 minutes deducted or half your remaining time, whichever is less. I think a second offense might be grounds for forfeit.

Basically, there are two issues here. First, a cell-phone call is annoying, not only to your opponent but to every other player. That is, as I interpret it, the main reason for the time penalty. However, annoying behavior is not sufficient justification for forfeiting a player, at least the first time it happens. So the only justification for such a harsh punishment is the possibility of cheating.

However, one could use the same argument to ban just about anything else, such as eating yogurt during a game. Remember how Korchnoi once accused Karpov of receiving signals that were encoded by the flavor of yogurt he received? Instead of banning yogurt, cell phones, visits to the toilet, etc., what I really think we need to ban is cheating, and the arbiter should be left with sufficient discretion to determine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that cheating has occurred. The simple ringing of a cell phone is not enough. The ringing of a player’s cell phone, followed by his hurried departure from the tournament hall while his clock is still running, would raise a lot more suspicions.