October 5, 2008
Chess
Rare Invitational Tournament Ends in 4-Way Tie and a Twist
By DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
NY Times
Invitational tournaments for top players are common in Europe, but are rare in the United States. Last weekend, one of them wrapped up in Lubbock, Tex., with a four-way tie for first among an all-grandmaster field. The tie was broken using a scoring system.
The tournament was the second Spice Cup, which was organized by Texas Tech University and named after the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, or Spice. The university founded Spice last year to help recruit a chess team, do community outreach and work with academic departments that use chess as a research tool. Polgar, a former women’s world champion, leads the institute.
Texas Tech said the Spice Cup was the strongest invitational tournament to be held in the United States. Based on the ranking system that the World Chess Federation has used since 1970, that could be true. But the two Piatigorsky Cups, held in the Los Angeles area in 1963 and 1966, were stronger. Some of the greatest players of the 20th century competed in the tournaments, which were sponsored by the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. They included Tigran Petrosian, who was world champion for much of the ’60s, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky.
(This is a response to the questions raised by some bloggers: I am not sure why Mr. McClain stated that Texas Tech said that it was the strongest invitational tournament to be held in the U.S. On our official brochure, posters, and press releases, SPICE and TTU have stated that it is the highest-rated 10-player international invitational tournament in U.S. history. The word strongest is subjective and that is why we went with the facts. As some bloggers have pointed out, here are some of the links prior to the SPICE Cup:
https://chessdailynews.com/spice-cup-festival-2/
https://chessdailynews.com/2008-spice-cup/
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/spice/SPICE_CUP_2008.php
There are many more links which show the same but these are just a few examples. Having said that, I do appreciate Mr. McClain covering the SPICE Cup. The 2009 SPICE Cup is expected to be at least at category 16 and perhaps even 17.)
The Church’s Fried Chicken International, held in San Antonio in 1972, was also stronger. In that tournament, Petrosian, the future world champion Anatoly Karpov, and Lajos Portisch tied for first, ahead of Paul Keres, Bent Larsen and Henrique Mecking.
Still, competition at the Spice Cup was formidable. Pentala Harikrishna of India; Alexander Onischuk and Varuzhan Akobian, both of the United States; and Leonid Kritz of Germany tied for first, and Harikrishna took the title using the tie-breaker formula.
Here is the full article with analysis.
Why did Mr. McClain state that it’s the strongest tournament. I’ve not seen this anywhere.
Who claimed that it’s the strongest tourney? Did Dylan McClain make that up to create controversy?
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/spice/SPICE_CUP_2008.php
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2008/09/spice-cup-festival.html
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2008/08/2008-spice-cup.html
He’s a chess player and a big time journalist. How is it possible to make an elementary mistake like that?
I was not playing chess at the time of the Piatagorsky Cup tournaments, but I have the Tournament Book for San Antonio 1972. That was a Category 12 tournament, featuring 10 International Grandmasters (including Petrosian and not-yet-champion Karpov), four International Masters and two National Masters. The average Elo rating was 2538.75, and that was counting the provisional ratings given to the two National Masters for whom this was their international debut (today, provisional ratings would be much lower). By contrast, all of the participants in SPICE Cup 2008 had the International Grandmaster title and the category was 15.
Granted, many of the players in San Antonio would be famous for decades afterwards for being pioneers in their fields of expertise. You can make a plausible argument that because of them, today’s Grandmasters are much stronger ratings-wise than their predecessors.
I do not know the rating categories for either of the Piatigorsky Cups. There is no question the players there were strong and many of them would become world-famous. But life changes.
I think the New York Times needs to fire Dylan McClain.
He is an embarassment to journalism and to chess.
A third grader can do a better job and probably behaves better too…
Just for the record, here is the release from Texas Tech that was put on the USCF’s Web site.
http://main.uschess.org/content/view/8558/319/
Twice in the first three paragraphs, it refers to the Spice Cup being the strongest in U.S. history. Notice that I did not say that Susan said this; just the university. Susan may want to check the wording of future releases from the university more carefully.
As for San Antonio, I noted in the column that it included some weaker players which certainly brought down the strength of the overall field. Alas, that was cut for space.
In addition, I did not note, again for space reasons, the 1924 and 1927 New York internationals which included Capablanca and Alekhine, among other great players. Arguably, those were also stronger than the Spice Cup.
That said, as I noted, the Spice Cup this year was an exceptional event as it included only grandmasters. If it is even stronger next year, that would be a wonderful thing for chess in the United States.
Dylan McClain
One more thing: I think it is interesting debate about the strongest tournaments in U.S. history. There have clearly been too few superior events on U.S. soil.
Oh, and I just remembered Cambridge Springs, 1904.
Dylan McClain
According to the link provided by Dylan McClain, here is the headline:
2008 SPICE Cup is the Highest Rated 10-player International Round-Robin in U.S. History
The following is also in there:
This makes SPICE Cup a Category 15 tournament – the highest-rated tournament of its kind held on U.S. soil. The invitational round-robin tournament pits an international slate of 10 players against each other through nine rounds of play over ten days.
I find it it interesting that Dylan McClain chose to go after one sentence written by a non-chess player while there are hundreds of other quotes stating that the SPICE Cup is the highest rated.
Is this proper chess journalism? Does Dylan McClain have a secret agenda?
I think everybody should take a deep breath…and relax. Spice Cup was great. Dylan’s report on the SPICE cup was very good. No reason to quibble and point fingers, especially when things have been clarified. Dylan was nice enough to respond in this forum.
Even if you don’t like Dylan’s reporting in the NYT (for whatever historical reasons), some of these comments are needlessly nasty, and blowing the issue out of all proportion. Chill out, guys!
Ditto.
Dylan,
You don’t do anyone any favors. Your irresponsible reporting tactics should get you banned from journalism.
Thank you Dylan for covering the SPICE Cup.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
Kudos to Susan. She is such a nice person who even forgives the mistakes of others. You are a good example for everyone in chess Susan.
My only hope is that the journlists can report on your work and not the crazy few who defame your work.
It doesn’t speak much for the author’s credibility given one sided reporting against Polgar in the past.
I don’t believe McClain should be fired. I do believe that he should do a better job reporting chess and not his biased agenda.
The nut-cases are having a field day over one word written by a non-chess player. This is the state of American chess. Pathetic.
New York Times needs to reel in its amateur writers. This is too much for chess fans to bear!