Chicago Class vanity

I got outplayed by both of my opponents last Sunday. Psychologically, draws are not the most satisfying result, but drawing two games beats losing two games.  And in both games, both players were trying to win...

Try to predict White's move in the position below!

At the ICA Banquet the previous day, I had the honor of presenting the 2012 Broughton Award to Jim Brotsos. While Jim and I were bantering about his lifetime of service to Illinois chess, I had my iPhone in my hand, as I was about to read some email testimonials that Jim's friends had sent. Somehow, I managed to start playing a Peter Drucker audiobook in the middle of Jim's remarks.

Not having sufficiently learned my lesson, I forgot to turn my iPhone off before round 4. In the middlegame, I somehow triggered the iPhone in my pocket, and "Five Years" (the opening track of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) began playing for the "benefit" of the players. For "Five Years," I was penalized ten minutes (which seems more than fair: I could have been forfeited).  My apologies to all!

Don't be an inconsiderate dope like me: turn off your cell phone before play begins. (I realize that family and work concerns make it mandatory for some players to be in touch at all times: put your phone on vibrate, and let the TD know what you're doing.)

Adair-Uedemann, 1879

Here's another delightful post on local chess history from A Chess Reader.  Louis Uedemann and J.D. Adair were very well-matched when they played for Chicago bragging rights, and their play looks energetic and reasonably sound 133 years later.

The Chinese room as seen from the dentist's chair

On Black Friday, I had two impacted wisdom teeth pulled. Our dentist is an artist—he puts his patients at ease, he's conscientious, he's fast, and like every good professional, he knows his limitations. The extractions were as close to painless as one could hope for.

Still, it was not completely painless. Squeamish person that I am, I didn't want to think about what was going on inside my mouth. 

Instead, I began thinking about (what else) chess.  One difference between human chess players and computer chess players: pull a card out of the computer's motherboard, and the computer generally doesn't say "Ouch!".  One computer chess player was famously afraid, but that was in the movies, so I don't think that counts (yet).

Half an hour earlier, on the walk to the dentist's office, I'd been listening to one of John Searle's 2011 lectures on consciousness. (The whole series can be downloaded at https://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/philosophy-132-001-spring/id438307693?mt=10.)  In the seventh lecture, Searle argued that Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov proved nothing about Deep Blue's understanding of chess. Theoretically, a human with no knowledge of the rules of the chess could be thrown in a locked room, given Deep Blue's algorithm for finding the best move, some scratch paper and sharp pencils, and (after the arbiter slips Kasparov's move through the mail slot) replicate Deep Blue's decisions.  (Granted, the human might need a couple millennia to make certain moves, but hey, it's a thought experiment.) Would we award this hypothetical human the title of the world's strongest chess player?

Searle argues that this hypothetical human has no understanding of chess whatsoever.  As Deep Blue  and Houdini 3 are doing nothing more than executing an algorithm, they too don't know what they're doing.  This is a version of Searle's famous "Chinese room" argument: as summarized by Wikipedia, "a program cannot give a computer a 'mind', 'understanding' or 'consciousness', regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave."  Passing the Turing Test alone doesn't make a computer self-aware, wise, able to enjoy victory subjectively and suffer defeat stoically, or have the intuition of a Capablanca.

Human experts are not like computer experts.  A master dentist can approach problems from both intuitive and analytically rigorous perspectives.  Suppose the patient after me also had impacted wisdom teeth: my dentist may have been able to tell from a glance at the X-rays that this patient's molars were going to be much more difficult to extract, so he referred that patient to an oral surgeon.  Being a professional is not just executing an algorithm, it's also an art.  (On the other hand, the most conscientious artist can make an error: Daniel Kahneman discusses the limitations of snap judgments in Thinking: Fast and Slow.)

Chess masters make snap judgments all the time: how else could grandmasters play forty players at once successfully?  In some positions, a master "knows" at a glance what the right move must be.  Of course, not every snap judgment is correct—grandmasters do lose games in simultaneous exhibitions—but the quality of the grandmaster's snap judgment is much higher than the quality of our considered judgments.

(I remember consoling one well-known local master after a critical loss to Aleksander Stamnov: "The problem with playing Stamnov is that he makes good moves very quickly."  He replied, "Yes, and he also makes bad moves very quickly.")

Some recent chess books tell us to look at positions with "computer eyes," calculating all the forcing moves; others advise us to move first and think later.  What's a patzer to do?  Some positions demand brute-force calculation (we can never compete on an even level with chess engines in this sphere), others ask us to use our "feel" for the game. And most positions ask us to use some of each way of thinking.

These two ways of thinking—Kahneman calls the intuitive way "System 1" and the analytical way "System 2"—actually occur in different parts of the brain.  Thinking in System 2 is hard work!  As we're surfing through the complications of each chess game, we have to toggle back and forth between the two modes of thinking.

I'll close this rambling (hey, it's a blog) with two observations:

Narrowly: you may never be able to beat Houdini, but you already understand much more about chess than Houdini ever will.  I remember a Scientific American article circa 1979 about programmers who hoped to make chess programs think in a more human fashion.  That turned out to be an absolute dead end, and "brute force" alpha-beta searches won.  It's true that useless branches of the analytical tree are pruned by the top engines, and it's true that evaluation functions have been improved, but still...chess engines are "merely" executing an algorithm, and executing an algorithm requires no understanding whatsoever.

Broadly: similar musings about the failure to date of the "strong AI" project and about how humans become expert at what they do are very much in the air right now.

Chicago Latino Chess Championship XX: How Many Can We Fit in Here?

The 20th annual Chicago Latino Chess Championship is complete, with a record-smashing 93 participants. This year's upper section alone was larger than last year's entire tournament!

Jimi Akintonde of Whitney Young High School swept Section I (age 15 and up), followed by Justin Rajsky with 4.5/5 and Felipe Quiroz, Edward Zhang, Ricardo Román, Phillip Parker-Turner and Mark Jungo with 4.0/5. Parker-Turner and Jungo were so thoroughly tied, by every standard tiebreak measure, that their trophy order had to be decided by a blitz game (which all parties preferred to a coin flip). Parker-Turner prevailed.

In Section II (age 14 and under), Ricky Román of Nightingale School finished first with a perfect 4.0/4, followed by Teja Munagala of Center Grove School in Greenwood, Ind., and Abdel Raoul of the University of Chicago Lab School with 3.5/4. Seven young players followed with final scores of 3.0/4 to win the remaining trophies: Iggy Bielobradek (Komarek, North Riverside), Kaleb Tucker (Beasley), Joseph Buklis (Decatur Classical), Daniel Román (Nightingale), Susan Huang (U. of C. Lab), Daniel Zhang (South Loop) and Elias O'Malley (Decatur Classical).

Ten place trophies were awarded in each section. The tournament is held at the Rudy Lozano Branch Library in Pilsen, home of the Knight Moves Chess Club.

The perfect Christmas present for the chess player on your list

... is Houdini 3, the latest version of the world's strongest chess engine.

USCF Sales is running a Black Friday sale through Sunday: you can buy the Standard Edition of Houdini 3 for something like $85 dollars all in (Media Mail shipping) if you use the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY.   (I am not a big fan of USCF Sales, but this is ten clams cheaper than what I paid last week.)

Or if you have Amazon Prime, you can buy Houdini 3 for $84.95 (price updated 11/25/12) and have it two days later.

My guess is that 95% of users won't have any need for Houdini 3 Pro. This souped-up version supports 32 cores and 256 GB of hash memory, as opposed to the standard version's "measly" 6 cores and 4 GB of hash.  I suspect that the difference in analysis strength is not noticeable in most cases, and that most grandmasters would find the standard version more than adequate for their needs.  (And Houdini can suck up all system resources if you let it: on a quad-core machine, I only use three cores for analysis.)  But if you can afford the extra $20, the lucky giftee might find the pro version marginally more useful: hobbyists interested in computer vs. computer play and correspondence players might be most likely to benefit.

I really like the DeepFritz 13 user interface, and even find the contextual Microsoft Office 2010 interface somewhat less annoying that I did when using Rybka 3 Aquarium.  While there's a handy "Goto Chessbase" feature for ChessBase users, I havn't been able to install the Houdini 3 engine directly in ChessBase. But that's my only complaint so far: this is truly great software!  I hope to have a fuller review before Santa loads the sleigh.

For those of you on a budget: earlier versions of Houdini are available to download free of charge.  See this earlier blog post for details.

In Pilsen: Chicago Latino Chess Championship XX!

Twentieth edition: wow!

The site is the Chicago Public Library Lozano Branch on 1805 S. Loomis (Loomis is 1400 West: folks coming from the Loop may find the CTA's #60 bus - Blue Island/26th - handy).  No entry fee: lots of trophies!  Registration is from 9 to 9:30 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 24; play begins at 10 a.m.  You'll be home in time for dinner.

See the ICA Tournament Calendar for details!

Turkey Day 2K this weekend in Skokie

Brought to you by the miracle of cut and paste.  Original here.


Friday thru Sunday Nov 23 - 25, 2012. Turkey Day 2k - $2,000 prize fund guaranteed. 6R-SS Game-90 + 30/sec increment.

Location: North Shore Chess Center - 5500 W Touhy Ave Suite A, Skokie, IL 60077

Round Times: 12pm and 5pm daily

Entry Fee: $50 for everyone

Prize Fund Distribution:

• Overall: $500-350-200 (+$50 perfect score prize)
• U2200: $150-100-50
• U1900: $150-100-50
• U1700: $150-100-50

Special Rules - you must be rated Under 2200 USCF and no less than 1500 USCF according to the November rating supplement. Any player that has the national master title and is under 2200 is NOT ELIGIBLE to play. Any entry received that is not within the proper rating range, will be returned and you will not be registered.

This event will be USCF and FIDE rated.
Maximum capacity registration will be 64 players. The organizer reserves the right to limit lower the limit.

A beautiful queenside attack

I asked David Peng's teacher, Grandmaster Dmitry Gurevich, to take a quick look at my light notes to this game, played a week ago Saturday at Kings Island.  Dmitry wrote back, "Those 9 years olds like David and Awonder [Liang] are going to beat IMs and GMs soon... that's impressive.. scary :)) "

White: David Peng (2076)
Black: NM Charles Diebert (2234)
Kings Island Open, Mason, Ohio
November 10, 2012
Philidor Defense

I had the pleasure of witnessing most of this game from the adjoining board. David Peng is 9½ years old!

 1. e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 4.Bc4 e5 5.d5 Be7 6.Nge2 a5 7.O-O O-O 8.Ng3 Nc5 9.f3 Ne8 10.Be3 g6

Black isn’t satisfied with a draw against his young opponent, and is willing to take some risks to win. From that respect, the opening has been reasonably successful for Black. The knight on c5 is particularly well posted, and the pawn on a5 restrains White from playing b2-b4, evicting the knight. On the kingside, Black hopes to play ...f7-f5 at an appropriate time: perhaps Black could bring pressure to bear on White’s e4 square, then play ...f5xe4 in a way that White has to reply f3xe4, and the pressure will begin to get serious. Black has the clear idea of exchanging his bad bishop on e7 with ...Be7-g5. It’s not clear what the future holds for White’s bishop on c4: the d5 pawn secures a space advantage for White, but also blocks the a2-g8 diagonal.  

11. a3 a4 12. b4 axb3 13. cxb3 Bd7 

White to play

14. a4!?

Prophylaxis is the art of figuring out your opponent’s plans, then making a move (sometimes mysterious-looking!) that does something to frustrate your opponent’s schemes while advancing your own.

White wants to roll up Black’s queenside! But here’s the problem: if White plays an immediate b3-b4, the horsie hops to a4. With the support of the bishop on d7 and the rook on a8, it’s an excellent blockading piece. But if White plays a4 first, then the a4 square is denied to Black’s knight.

Objectively, Black has more than one adequate response to White’s plan, but I think 14.a4!? is an incredibly sophisticated move for such a young player to make. And for all I know, there may be three or four moves that are objectively better.

The immediate 14.b4 can be answered by the intermezzo 14…Bg5!? (the immediate 14...Na4 works, too) 15.Bxg5 Qxg5 16.Qc1 (but not 16.bxc5?! Qe3+ and Black is better) 16... xc1 17. Rfxc1 Na4 18.Bb5 Bxb5 19.Nxb5 Rc8 20.Rc4 f5 and Black has sufficient counterplay.

14... Bg5 15. Bf2 b6!?

15... Na6!? would be a creative response, as White has weakened the b4 square.

16. b4 Nb7?

And now White can continue with his plan virtually unimpeded. At the same time, it’s hard to fault Mr. Diebert for making what seems to be a very pragmatic decision: suffer for a few moves, then counterattack on the kingside. Instead, 16... Nxa4! allows Black to retain equality because of the fork trick on b5.

17. Qb3 Ng7 18. Bb5! h5

Or 18... Bxb5 19. Nxb5 with enduring pressure. (Allowing doubled pawns with 19. axb5!? also looks strong. )

19. Bc6 Rb8 20. Nb5 Qe7 21. a5 Bxc6

21... bxa5 22. bxa5 Nc5 23. Bxc5 Bxc6 24. dxc6 dxc5 is a better try for Black, which suggests that White may have played a4-a5 a bit prematurely.

22. dxc6 +-

White’s technique in the remainder of the game is excellent: no need to hurry in a position like this!

22…Nd8 23.axb6 Nxc6 24.Qc4 Qd7 25.bxc7 Rxb5 26.Qxb5 Qxc7

Diebert offers stiff resistance in a lost position: beating a master is hard work!

27.Qc4 Qd7 28.b5 Nd4 29.b6 Nge6 30.Rfb1 Rb8 31.Ne2 Nxe2+ 32.Qxe2 Nd4 33.Qc4 Nc6 34.Qa6 Rb7 35.Qa8+ Kg7 36. Rd1 Rb8 37.Qa4 Rb7 38.Ra2 Bd8 39.Rc2 Nd4 40.Qxd7 Rxd7 41.Bxd4 exd4 42.Rb2 Rb7 43.Rdb1 Kf6 44.Kf2 Ke6 45.Ke2 d5 46.Kd3 dxe4+ 47.Kxe4 Kd6 48.Rb3 Bf6 49.Ra1!

White has accurately evaluated that a couple checks and a pawn push is nothing to fear. 49…Re7+ 50.Kd3 Kc6 50... Re3+ 51. Kc2 d3+ 52. Kd2 and the rook on a1 is immune, even after Re2+ 53. Kxd3

51.Ra7 Re3+ 52.Kc4 Rc3+ 53.Rxc3 dxc3 54.Kd3 Kxb6 55.Rxf7 Be5 56.h3 Kc5 57.Rf8 Kb4 58.Kc2 g5 59.Rf5 Bf4 60.h4! 1-0 
 

White to play: what's the best plan?

White to play

 

Ask your computer, and you will get a list of candidate moves with more-or-less meaningless evaluations.  (There are no immediate tactics in this position, and White is somewhat better, but nothing serious.)

I am by no means certain that the player of the White pieces (to be identified later today) came up with the best plan, but it was a very impressive plan!

Illinois Class results!

Final results and prizewinners are here on the Illinois Class website, and the event was rated almost immediately. Permit me be lazy and link to Keith Ammann's tournament report, which should be going up on the ICA website in the next day or so. Thanks to Keith Ammann, Wayne Clark, Maret Thorpe, Gary Jannsen, and the staff at Concordia University for a very smooth event at a very nice location!

"Check ... this out: Richards boasts first all-girls chess team lineup"

Members of Richards High School's girls chess club are from left, Kristina Huggins, Jessica Zavala, Juliet Lucente, Mady Doan, Caitlin O'Sullivan, Anne Sortino, Marial Rancel and Aminah Garcia; who are practicing at the school in Oak Lawn, IL on Wednesday November 14, 2012. | Matt Marton~Sun-Times Media

Story on the Sun-Times website. (Hat tip: Rob Eaman.)

Pobo on The Daily Show

!!!!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Katie Dellamaggiore & Pobo Efekoro
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Rolling the Rossolimo

David Peng's parents, Jenny and Bill, were kind enough to send along David's first-round game from Kings Island. I find it difficult to believe that a nine-year-old could play such a game.

 NM Kristopher Meekins of Ohio tries to outplay David strategically in the trendy Rossolimo Sicilian, but David more than holds his own. 19.g4?! is a critical decision by White: if Black doesn't capture en passant, White locks up the kingside and plays on the rest of the board (King's Indian players know this theme well).  So David keeps the game open: kingside attacks are stronger because that's where His Majesty lives.

White is still coping adequately until the moment after David poses the beautiful question 25...c4! Houdini suggests that White may still be slightly better after 26.Kh2, but even a master can easily go wrong in such a position.

Vanity: Kings Island Road Trip

GM Nikola Mitkov headed a contingent of Chicago players at this year's Kings Island Open. The site is a creaky but charming resort adjoining the amusement park in metro Cincinnati.

 This year's field was not as strong as last year's (most GMs chose to play in Detroit the week before), but still pretty darn strong. Once again, Kentucky GM Gregory Kaidanov took honors, splitting first with IM Goran Vojinovic of Ohio. Crosstables here! 

In Saturday's round three, I was playing next to nine-year-old David Peng, and I looked at his game almost as much as mine. As David was rolling up his second master of the event, I found myself thinking, "Is this kid already stronger than I am?" Wonder no longer: David's post-event rating is 2108, and mine is 2106. Even before his recent ratings jump, David was second only to Awonder Liang on the nation's top nine-year-old list. (As I noted a few days ago, both David and Awonder at age nine are substantially stronger than the twelve-year old Bobby Fischer. But this is a misleading comparison on many levels. Parents, chess is more than having a large number after one's name: you want your children to enjoy playing and enjoy learning. These young players simply love to play!)

***

Here are my games, not because they're particularly good, but because it's a blog. :-)  Constructive criticism is most welcome: that's how we get better!

Claire and I drove in Friday night: traffic was heavy, so I wound up taking a first-round bye (thanks to USCF Executive Director Bill Hall for conveying the message to Wayne Clark).

In round two, I was paired with fellow Chicagoan Tam Nguyen, who is on the cusp of a long-overdue National Master title.  I sacked a pawn for no particularly good reason and was fortunate to escape with a draw:

In round three, I was paired against the reigning Kentucky state champion, NM Davis Whaley.  Black made a Slav triangle and grabbed the Catalan gambit pawn.  At one point, I thought I had excellent wining chances, but the game fizzled out into a dead draw quickly.  Between Evanston and Kings Island, I had now drawn five consecutive games in eight days. (This after making a vow to myself not to offer or accept draws in unclear positions: sometimes there's nothing the players can do...)

Sunday morning, I won against NM Pappu Murthy of Ohio. 15...Nc7? is a cute idea, but the attempt to trap the bishop fails. The alert reader will probably notice several dozen faster wins that I missed (29.Qc4 with the idea of 30.a3 is one, Black's counterplay after 32.Nxd6 appears not be that fearsome, after all), but hey, I won. And yes, Black could have resigned a few moves earlier, but note that Black almost set up a kamikaze stalemate trap. (Queens and rooks are great for kamikaze missions, but monochromatic bishops are generally ineffective.)

Thanks to my style of boring opponents to death, I had a chance to Swiss-Gambit my way into the Under 2300 prize in the final round. NM James Mills of Indiana had other ideas. 15.Ne5!? is interesting: I think I was right to take on d4, but 16...Nf8 is too passive: better 16...Rac8. 18...Bg5!? is my attempt to deal with the coming incursion on c6. I saw White's beautiful 23rd move coming, but didn't appreciate its force until it was too late: 23...f5? is just psychological collapse. A nice win by Mr. Mills!

Now that you've seen all the weaknesses in my play, come exploit them this weekend at the Illinois Class in River Forest!

Shulman & Amanov win Michigan Chess Festival

The field at last weekend's Michigan Chess Festival in Troy was ridiculously powerful: Grandmasters Sam Shankland, Alexander Shabalov, Yury Shulman, Victor Mikhalevski, Sergey Kudrin, Ben  Finegold, and Mesgen Amanov.

The two Illinois grandmasters, Shulman and Amanov, were the only players to win their first four games.  They drew each other in the final round, and nobody caught them.  And our Carl Boor didn't win any cash, but he was the top finisher under 2400, losing only to GM Shabalov. Excellent road trip, gentlemen!

International Master Irina Krush used day one of the event as the warmup for the Women's World Championship, giving her the dubious distinction of having been in Detroit and Siberia in the same week. Tomorrow, Krush faces Alexandra Kosteniuk in round one.

Crosstables here!

Grove Avenue Game/30 in Barrington this Saturday

This Chess without Borders event has scholastic and adult sections with options for rated and unrated play.  Details on ICA website.

Game/60 event at North Shore Chess Center this weekend

Details on ICA website.

USCF membership offer

Just got this U.S. Chess Federation membership offer in my mailbox: works for new members and current members!  But you've got to pull the trigger this month.

Dear Fellow Chess Enthusiast,

The USCF is embarking on the most significant growth campaign in our 75 year history. But we can’t do it without you. 

To help us show strength and stability to our new partners we are looking to grow and to show our members have made a long-term commitment to chess. So we are making this special Premium Membership offer.

Buy 2 Years of Premium Membership and You’ll Receive the 3rd Year Free

This Premium Membership Offer includes 36 issues of Chess Life, now in full color, mailed to you each month.

Visit www.uscfdues.org/342CLpromoE or Call 800-903-8723 to take advantage of this offer.

This Offer applies to Adult Membership categories only. 36 months can be added to current memberships.

Offer expires Friday, November 30, 2012 at 12:00 midnight Central Standard Time. You may be eligible for other membership promotions. Check the link above.

Thanks for your support. Together let's grow chess across America.

Ruth Haring, President

United States Chess Federation

Jonathan Safran Foer on Bobby Fischer

Slate published a selection from an essay on Bobby Fischer by Jonathan Safran Foer, taken from the recent collection Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame.  (One of the co-editors of this book is Jonathan's brother Franklin Foer, the former editor of The New Republic).

Fischer's struggles with mental illness and his renunciation of his ethnic Jewish identity are well-known. It's an interesting and important subject, but not a very pleasant one, and not directly relevant to chess. The paradox of Fischer seems ripe for a novel, so it should be interesting to listen to a young American novelist with a personal stake in this conversation weigh in.

Foer writes:

A Jew wrote The Natural, but has there ever been a natural Jew? Free-spiritedness, joie de vivre, ease in the world—these are not what we do. We do scrappiness, resilience, hard work, self-questioning, self-consciousness, self-destruction, and unflappable will. This applies especially to our athletes, many of whom were not given the best of genetic toolboxes. Most great Jewish athletes have at least this in common: they overcome God’s gifts.

Not a jock, and not a Jew by any definition richer than heredity, Bobby Fischer was the quintessential Jewish Jock. He worked harder than any of his peers. He attempted to conceal his insecurity behind an ego built for 20, and his self-love behind self-hatred behind self-love. And perhaps more than any human who has ever lived, he kvetched [....]

I agree with Foer that Fischer outworked his competitors.  Despite the title of Frank Brady's first biography, Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy,  young Bobby was not a prodigy in the sense  of amazing achievements by age 12  (Reshevsky, Karjakin, and Carlsen in chess, Mozart in music, Pascal and Ramanujan in math).  I know several children under ten who are probably significantly stronger than the twelve-year-old Bobby; from what I've seen of Fischer's 1955 games, I'm fairly certain that one of these young players is at least two orders of magnitude stronger.  

Fischer the teenager is quite another story.  (See Wikipedia for a quick recap of his rise in the years 1955-59.)  As Kasparov has argued, a genius for hard work is a kind of genius. Fischer at age 16 (ranked by Jeff Sonas as second only to Kasparov among the sixteen-year-old players of the last century) was already an order of magnitude stronger than the 14-year-old U.S. Champion, who was in turn several classes stronger than the promising preteen. If we only knew what Bobby did in these years—Jack Collins provides some clues—and what he did prior to his next quantum leap (1968-1970), we'd know much more about the best pedagogical methods for genius.

***

If Fischer considered himself "not a Jew by any definition richer than heredity," why did he expend so much energy calling that presumably tenuous identity into question?  As the author of Everything Is Illuminated knows well, Fischer was born in mid-Holocaust.  To be raised by a fellow traveler of the Communist Party of the USA, and to come of age in New York City in the years after the Rosenberg trial, all at a time when American anticommunism far too often had an antisemitic undercurrent: that particular environment might make the most rational person a bit paranoid.  More so if that person is also "wired" a bit differently than you and I are. Perhaps Fischer shared characteristics with those on the Asperger end of the autism spectrum. Or perhaps he suffered from organized paranoia—compare Judge Schreber and John Forbes Nash, whose antisemitism was a function of their mental illness. If so, then a measure of compassion is certainly in order.  

Some of the things that Fischer said in the last decades of his life were unspeakably vile, and one cannot help but sympathize with the revulsion underlying Foer's curt observation, "With Jews like this, who needs Nazis?"  But some of us are old enough to remember a very different Fischer.

Evanston Tri-Level results

26 players played four games in a day and were done by 5 p.m.: very nice format, Maret!  The multiple sections produce quad-like pairings: nobody is overmatched, and every game is a challenge for both players.

FM Albert Chow and NM Ken Wallach tied for first in the Gold Section with 3-1 scores.  Vito Vitkauskas and Bill Brock tied for third with 2½-1½.

Raul Dhiman won the Silver Section 4-0; Michael Wishner took clear second with 3-1, and Julian Bendelac, Brandon Zborowski, and Matthew Ylinen took third with 2 points.

Lorenzo Sampson swept the Bronze Section 4-0, Adam Wallach (chip off the block) took second with 3-1, and Keith Ammann and Nate Tracy-Amoroso split third.

Crosstables here!