Monday Coffee, Carlsen-Caruana, Copyright and other nonsense
How are you today? I trust that your weekend gave you everything you needed…You will require every bit of strength and stamina for what is coming your way this week. American sanctions against Iran (and the rest of the world, if need be) kick in today. Tomorrow is D-Day for Trump (and the rest of the world) as the midterm elections go to a vote. Finally, the World Championship starts this week! So much excitement and lunacy jammed pack into the next few weeks!
Carlsen vs Caruana begins on Friday!
A best of 12 games encounter for the World Championship. London will host the much anticipated match between the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and the American/Italian Fabiano Caruana.
Time control is the standard 100 minutes for the first 40 moves; then 50 minutes for the next 20; finally, if needed, 15 minutes to finish the game. (Plus 30′ per move). Arbiters are Stephane Escafre and Nana Alexandria.
The play schedule is repetitive: 2 games followed by a rest day. Repeat until game 11, when there is a rest day before the final 12th game. If need be, a schedule of tiebreak games has been choreographed, and the reader , if interested, might find about it HERE.
Who is the favourite?
Confidently predicting chess results has often reminded me of the exaggerated certainty of football fans’ enthusiasm before a big game. Most of it is all about bias and favouritism. And FUN.
As it should be! These matches only come around once every two (or three) years, and the chess community considers it a sacred ritual akin to a pilgrimage to the Mecca. So why not take a little guess?
According to the experts, (apparently everyone is an expert these days), both players are playing very well and the match should be even better than in 2016. Well, both players have infact been playing very well for the past 2 or 3 years. But I don’t follow the judgement about the Karjakin – Carlsen match: it was a cliff hanger! Why should Caruana make much of a difference in terms of excitement and interest?
I have read one opinion that expressed the view that Caruana might have the better chances because he is more motivated. What ever that means. I haven’t seen Carlsen slacking off one bit in the past 6 months…The majority of the predictions expect that Carlsen has the edge if it goes into tiebreaks; Caruana, these experts contend, will have to try to win before then.
Ofcourse, this is all nonsense and speculation. Wonderful football nonsense and speculation, mind you, and everyone loves it!
I have already given my opinion somewhere in a previous blog article that I can not quite locate at this moment. I think that chess-wise Caruana is a slightly better player than Carlsen, but Caruana has shown that he can not as easily get up after being knocked down on the canvas as Carlsen can. This is something very important in a match.
BUT I think that the most important factor that has been overlooked in the ‘expert’ predictions is fatigue. Caruana has been playing non-stop like a lunatic these past 6 months or so since he qualified from Berlin. I wrote here on this blog that failure to take periodic rests (down time) can result in making a player’s form unpredictable. And unstable.
As most World Championship matches are a once in a lifetime opportunity, it just made sense for Caruana to alter his busy schedule and focus only on this match. What I now fear is that Caruana will likely suffer from burn out during his match with Carlsen. If this transpires, then I would think that a 4 to 1 score for Carlsen is a likely outcome.
If Caruana can avoid burn out, then it should be a close match and I definitely will cheer both players on!
AGON, live transmission and copyright issues
If you search this blog you will find that this issue of who owns what and how can I work this against my online rivals comes up every time there is a World Championship match. When Agon is involved, at least.
In each instance the tactic has morphed a bit, moving away from copyright of the game score to break of contract to the threat of years of suspension from FIDE events and tournaments along the lines of the Ethics Commission.
It has all been quite unpleasant, and we have to question the sanity of AGON’s leadership to try to keep this pressure on online rivals in 2018 when EVERY SINGLE court process has been a failure from AGON’s perspective.
In any case, apart from the element of stubborness, AGON probably does not really understand the concept of what belongs or does not belong to him. Many in the chess world struggle with similar confusion…
One of my favourite sources of information concerning the golden age of chess is Edward Winter’s Chess Notes. While it is not clear whether Edward is a pen name or not, we can only admire his relentless pursuit of details by digging thru old magazines, newspapers and books.
That being said, I have written from time to time here on this blog of a particularly annoying habit of Winter: the constant abuse and misuse of copyright in his articles.
Dealing with history, virtually everything inside Winter’s blog (and other publications) is factual. Facts can NOT be copyrighted. I estimate that 95% of the material that he has copyrighted is infact NOT copyrightable.
Case in point is a pretty colourful book review that Winter did on one of the late Nathan Divinsky’s books. I whole heartedly agree with Winter that Divinsky must go down in history as being one of the worse authors ever. Divinsky never paid close attention to the accuracy of details and often took rumours and hearsay on equal footing.
Winter wrote a wonderfully sarcastic (insulting!?) introduction in his book review (completely copyrightable, as it is original) but then proceeded to list, methodically according to the exact order in Divinsky’s book , every factual error that he could find in Divinsky’s work.
This is not copyrightable. Facts are not. Nor is his list of facts. Had Nathan Divinsky wanted to correct his numerous factual errors in a future edition (something difficult to imagine, knowing Nathan), then he would be perfectly within his right to do so. Would Edward Winter have dared to cry ‘Copyright infraction!’?
As an aside, when I wrote a book review of Winter’s book review, I was taken to task for heavily borrowing from his …FACTS!
To be continued