Daily Rome Shot 731 – 28 June 1962

Piazza der Fico.

From M.

White to move and win material.  Careful!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

The Benedictines of Norcia make great beer.  Get some for your priests!

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

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Huge news in the world of chess, so much so that even non-chess followers will probably have heard something about this.

Last year in St. Louis during a tournament, Magnus Carlson quit and left with the strong implication that young Hans Niemann had been cheating. I won’t rehash. Niemann responded by suing Magnus, Chess.com and Hikaru Nakamura (who sorta jumped onto the bandwagon) for $100 million for defamation. Defamation is where you say something false about someone knowing that it is false. The problem is, there is no way to now if Niemann was cheating or not. In any event, yesterday a federal judge dismissed the “anti-trust” angle of the suit “with prejudice”. The remaining counts (involving defamation) are dismissed “without prejudice”. So, this could continue on the level of the state, though it is hard to know which state and how.

Allegations of cheating have cropped up at high levels in the past. There is the case of Topalov v. Kramnick in 2006 when there was (rather dumb) speculation about a cable found in a bathroom wall. There was the wild and weird Korchoi v Karpov in which Korchoi speculated that Karpov received signals through the delivery of some blueberry yogurt, which Karpov had not requested. Bobby Fisher accused the Russian players of coordinating their efforts to tie, consult during games, etc., to hold him down in the standings at the Candidates tournament in Curacao on 28 June 1962.

28 June 1962… the TLM was simply “Mass”.

In the 2020 Pro Chess League, Tigran L. Petrosian wound up being banned for life after it was concluded that he cheated on online play and his team’s victory was overturned. Ironically, Petrosian had in 2015 accused Georgian grandmaster Gaioz Nigalidze of cheating. He was going to the bathroom too often. A hidden mobile phone was found.

Here’s a book about the dramatic Candidates Tournament in 1962, which I’ve read. Ailing Mikhail Tal, Victor the Terrible, young Fisher.

US HERE – UK HERE