INTERVIEW WITH MIG GREENGARD

I enjoy reading the articles of Mr. Mig Greengard on different web sites
(especially on http://www.chessbase.com/ and http://www.chessninja.com/ ).
His witty comments on chess events hit at the essence of the problem. Mr.
Greengard was well known as editor-in-chief at KasparovChess.com. He
maintains friendly relations with many famous chess players. So, I asked him
for the interview by e-mail.


Goran Tomic: Can you tell us something about yourself? Specifically how much
of a New Yorker versus Argentine or any other place are you?

Mig Greengard: I'm from the Bay Area in California and left the US to live
in Mexico in 1991, then Argentina in 1993. In 1999 I moved to Israel to work
on KasparovChess.com, which brought me to New York in 2000. I love New York
and after four years feel like a New Yorker and miss the city when I'm away.
I'll always miss Buenos Aires and still read the Argentine newspapers online
just about every day.

G.T: New York City is known as the main hub of the U.S. chess scene. Has it
been negatively influenced by internet chess and in what way? Do you play on
internet? On which site?

Mig Greengard: I didn't know the New York chess scene before internet chess,
so I'm not qualified to say. But the Manhattan Chess Club shut down just a
few years ago. I would certainly play more OTB chess if I couldn't play
online and can only assume there are many others who feel the same. On the
other hand, internet chess brings many more people to the game, people who
then seek out OTB venues and tournaments. I wouldn't say the US chess scene
has been negatively influenced on the whole. Influenced, definitely.

It's really of a philosophical question. "If chess is only played on the
internet, is it still chess?" How many of the benefits that we associate
with chess come through online? Is it socializing if you're home alone but
chatting with people from all over the world? I still feel that OTB chess is
inherently better in many ways but admit I can't really explain why that
should be true. An entire generation of chessplayers is coming up playing
online just about exclusively and they certainly won't see it that way.

I play at Playchess.com all the time. Sometimes bullet (aka Space Invaders)
just to relax, more often blitz. I also give regular simuls at Playchess for
subscribers to the ChessNinja.com newsletters.

G.T: We hear of the clubs and even long time events closing down for lack of
player participation. How serious is the impact of internet and other types
of computer chess on U.S. chess? Same question around the Globe?

Mig Greengard: It's definitely having an impact, just the way many print
magazines are shutting down because of content on the internet. It has yet
to run its course. Right now the number of new players brought in through
the net is probably compensating for those who are leaving the OTB game for
online chess. It seems logical that the final numbers will come out in favor
of more OTB chess, not less. The success of clubs and events will continue
to depend on the dedication of the organizers.

When I was at KasparovChess.com over 10,000 people per month clicked on the
"Learn to Play" link. I consider that one of the most important of the many
positive statistics to come out of that glorious so-called failure. Go to
the top chess websites now and search for the word "learn" and you get
nothing. You'd think they'd realize that their bottom line benefits greatly
from more people learning to play the game.

Computer chess in general, playing programs for the most part, are a
separate story really. Few people find playing against a computer as
interesting as playing against a human. They are great for learning and are
likely quite good for OTB numbers. Mass-market software like "ChessMaster"
and "Fritz & Chesster" bring the game to that critical new audience by
making it fun and not intimidating.

Serious chess fans and players, on the other hand, often want the
intimidating stuff. You have people lining up to get the latest, strongest
chess engines, as if a 1700-rated player gets any more from a 2700-rated
program than from one rated 2650! But that's human nature.

Globally it may turn out to be quite different, at least in places with
chess culture greater than that of the US. 75% of Americans are online, but
few play chess so it's harder to judge the impact. What will happen when 50%
of Ukrainians and Russians can play online? Will they still go out in the
snow to the club? You'd have to ask club directors and organizers of amateur
tournaments in places like the Netherlands and Germany, where they have a
lot of chessplayers and also a high percentage of people online. From the
numbers I can see amateur tournaments are still doing well in those places.

G.T: What do you think of Gary Kasparov's statement that classical chess
will get reduced to a role of opera and ballet in the music world? Like
maybe 5%?

Mig Greengard: It's already happening. The question is whether or not the
trend will ever reverse. This may just be a fashion. Forty years from now
people might look around and say, "Wait, most of our games are garbage
compared to the masterpieces of the 20th century. Maybe we should try and
play good chess." The idea that chess can be a visually exciting spectacle
for people who don't appreciate the game is ridiculous. Sure, watching some
GMs bang the clock and pieces around in a blitz is fun for a few minutes,
but so is watching two complete patzers do the same thing. In the long run
you have to educate people to the beauty of the game and you need time to
explain.

I've spent a lot of time giving live commentary over the years and now,
particularly since we all use Fritz, rapid games simply become a matter of
waiting for a big blunder. There's no time to explain anything so the
audience is reduced to passivity instead of feeling like they are learning.
Of course they can read in-depth analysis later, but people love live chess
and the best experience is when they have time to know what is going on.
When I organized the KasparovChess Online Grand Prix tournament back in 2000
I chose a game/60 control because it was short enough for people to watch
the entire game and long enough for competent and interesting commentary.

Watching the Kasparov-Kramnik Moscow blitz matches (1998 and 2001) was
exhilarating online and off, but when you realize that most of the audience
has no clue at all what's going on until the game ends you see it's a
limited experiment. People are fascinated with the great players facing off,
but if it happened all the time the fact that they can't understand the
chess would become increasingly important. On the other hand, you only need
a few thousand dedicated fans online to make such events profitable, so
niche success, as usual in chess, is likely. I just get tired of people
talking about how chess could be as big as golf or tennis if only this or
that.

Classical chess turning into opera is happening because of economics as much
as fashion or bizarre FIDE time controls. Organizers can run a whole event
with top players in just a few days instead of weeks. The fans prefer to
watch classical chess though, so as the economics change things might turn
around. The internet can leverage fan desires.

G.T: What is your connection and/or co-operation with Kasparov, or other
well known GM's, at this time?

Mig Greengard: Garry and I are friends who also talk about work, if that
makes any sense. I'm involved in a few of his projects and we talk regularly
about chess and business. I don't have any formal business relationship with
any GMs, but many are good friends. It's sometimes odd talking to people as
friends and also as a chess writer, but I've been dealing with that for many
years now without any fatalities. When I had a party at my apartment last
November during the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match I joked that it was a category
13 event. (I won't tell how much vodka you had to drink to get a GM norm...)
The downside is having chess friends worry that what they say or do in my
company might appear on the internet, so I try to assure them that
everything is off the record unless they say otherwise.

I was in regularly contact with more players when I was managing the content
of KasparovChess, of course. I'll be working with at least a few top players
this year as I expand the newsletter content of ChessNinja. We're adding
regular contributors and it's nice that I already know just about everyone
I'd be interested in. For example, asking a star like Yasser Seirawan to
contribute is a lot easier after having drunk wine out of a ceramic chicken
with him in Bermuda.

G.T: What's your opinion about Kasparov's book "My Great Predecessors"? Is
it easier to write chess books today than in the past?

Mig Greengard: I love the books so far. I get a lot of enjoyment from them
and have learned a lot and that's still what I want from most chess books.
Few of the games were new to me, but having Kasparov's perspective on them
is quite an addition even if you don't have the time or inclination to go
deeply into the analysis. Even if you've seen much of the compiled analysis
before, having it all in one place creates a remarkable resource. I can see
turning to these books again and again for many years and of the many
hundreds I have there are probably fewer than a dozen I could say that
about.

It's easier to write BAD chess books today, certainly, or at least have them
published. Time was, just getting a book published implied either quality or
an author's reputation to move many copies. Now there seems to be no
shortage of publishers willing to churn out mediocre content and that must
mean there's no shortage of people to buy it. It's even sadder because the
few good books get lost in the tide of filler.

This isn't to say that there weren't many bad old books, but there are so
many more books today. Thirty years ago you had maybe 50 books coming out in
a year and you got a dozen good ones with maybe one or two great ones. Now
you have hundreds of books and you still have just the few good ones.
Instead of an author coming to a publisher with a book he's dedicated a
piece of his life to, and that is about something he knows and loves, you
have publishers with a sales plan farming out work to a stable of authors.
That soulless system now accounts for a majority of new chess books.

Literally speaking, it's much easier to write a book, or any chess content,
today. 90% of the reason is ChessBase, the other 10% is the internet.

G.T: I have read that your favorite book of all time is Botvinnik's book
"Championship Chess, 1941." Is it true? What is the perspective of
publishing chess books in the future? Is it a bit archaic nowadays?

Mig Greengard: That's always been my favorite, although it's not sitting
next to my bed every night. I learned a tremendous amount from that book and
I still think one or two great annotated game collections will take a club
player to Master far better than any number of course books and other "new
age" instructional material. It's just that people don't like to do the
work. They like reading ABOUT getting better instead of doing the analysis
required to actually improve their understanding.

I compare this to people who study a language and want to learn grammar
instead of being immersed. Learning how to build or repair a car doesn't
make you a better driver, or even a good one. Learning how to think in chess
and what to think about is useful information for beginners. After that you
need raw meat and lots of it. A competent club player, say 1800, needs
immersion and work.

Publishing will continue to move online. It never even occurred to me until
my friend Malcolm Pein of London Chess Centre commented on it, that
ChessNinja.com is simply an online publishing venture. The advantages are
enormous. Friday you get a newsletter with an annotated game that was played
yesterday. You can replay it with commentary online or in your chess
software, and then use that defense in your online tournament that night.
People who want paper click the "print" button in Acrobat Reader and for
threedollars a month they get forty pages of customized content. They can
send in questions and have their own games analyzed, they can discuss all of
this with hundreds of other chess fans in the message boards. It's hard for
print publishers to compete with that. Books are just a bit thicker, really.
You can already download various chess e-books and if you like, print them
out yourself and bind them nicely for pennies. I'm not claiming the death of
print just yet, however. It's a slow process after the early adopters are
done.

G.T: You were working for KasparovChess.com site. What was your experience
in that work? Why did that good web site end? What's your experience in
writing for other sites?

Mig Greengard: This is too big to tackle here and now, I'm afraid. It was a
fantastic experience, if bittersweet at the end. Imagine someone asking you
to describe your dream job and handing it to you with a few nice touches you
didn't even know you wanted. I got to combine chess, internet, design,
writing, travel, and meeting and working with amazing people all at the same
time. It was very challenging and time-consuming, but it never felt like
work.

It ended along with the dot-com era and our mistakes were not original ones.
We spent huge amounts of money just like we were supposed to according to
the conventional wisdom of 1999. Then the conventional wisdom was shown not
to be very wise in 2001 and things turned sour very quickly. It was like
being on the Titanic and seeing the iceberg ahead and knowing that there was
no way to turn such a huge ship in time to avoid it.

It basically came down to a conflict that was over my head, one between
chess and technology and money. We could have kept the site running very
cheaply, and I even prepared business plans to that effect, but the money
people didn't feel they would ever get the return they required that way.
Once it failed to be a huge dot-com success it didn't really matter to them
that it was a success in many other ways.

The writing is still what I enjoy most, so I'm grateful to ChessBase.com for
promptly giving Mig on Chess a home after KC started shutting down. It
started at TWIC in 1997 and now I'm almost to #200 and it still amazes me
that I can share this with so many people around the world. Corresponding
with fans and players is fun and humbling.

Since I've generally just written about events or whatever came into my
mind, starting the instructional series on ChessBase software at
ChessCafe.com ("ChessBase Cafe") last year was a new challenge. It has to be
useful and practical, not just entertaining and informative.

Then I have my instructional writing for the ChessNinja.com newsletters. I
was a classroom and private teacher (English, not chess) for many years and
I think that experience is almost as important as the chess knowledge and
writing. You have to be able to put yourself into the heads of your readers,
understand their needs better than they do, and present it in a way that is
helpful and fun. I've learned a lot from reader feedback and from regularly
playing against amateurs to understand the common mistakes in both process
and implementation.

G.T: You were present at Kasparov's matches against computers. You were very
optimistic after the first game Kasparov-Deep Junior. It seemed that
Kasparov would easily beat it. What happened in the rest of the match? Why
didn't Kasparov win the match?

Mig Greengard: He won game one quite convincingly, but as we saw in game
three against X3D Fritz, machines just can't play some positions. If they
get the right type of position out of the opening they are quite literally
unbeatable. This makes predictions impossible since previous results are
largely irrelevant, unlike with humans.

Kasparov didn't win that match for the same reason he didn't win the X3D
Fritz match: he blundered and was punished instantly. I don't want to take
credit away from the programmers because they do fantastic things. But so
much of their programs' success against GMs depends on how well or poorly
they prepare the opening book that the "artificial intelligence" aspect
becomes very much secondary in many games. The human blunders and the game
ends, or he doesn't. I suppose what I'm saying is that once the game leaves
the opening book, 90% of the games would have the same result with any of
the top programs.

G.T: What do you think about "man versus machine" (or "woman versus
machine") matches?

Mig Greengard: I enjoy them, I like the science behind them, and I think
they are a good way of exposing a wider audience to the game. Only rarely is
it really chess, but the battle is almost always interesting.

G.T: What's your opinion about future X3D technology in chess?

Mig Greengard: Right now it begins and ends with X3D Technologies Inc. It's
a remarkable product that add several new avenues of promotion to an event.
The buzz it generates for the mainstream media is somewhat negated by the
suggestion that the human can't play his best game using it. We certainly
don't have enough information on that to say for sure, but obviously
anything that takes a player out of his normal routine can hurt.

On the other hand, if amateurs pick it up and start playing this way
themselves, Kasparov's semi-joke about the next generation not recognizing a
wooden set and board may come true. X3D has some very cool ideas for the
next match and if they bring interest and attention, even if reflected, to
chess, that's great. And the technology is only going to get better and
easier to use. The black glasses got a lot of attention this time around,
but X3D computing is clearly marching forward.

G.T: I would like to ask you some questions about process of re-unification.
It seems that process is in crisis. What's the real reason for no-played
matches? Are the lack of sponsors the main reasons for delaying (and/or
canceling?!) these matches? What do you think about demand that participants
of these matches start the next cycle from the quarter-final stage? Is FIDE
in crisis?

Mig Greengard: There are as many reasons as principals, unfortunately.
Self-interest rules these situations and as long as not playing is viewed as
a viable career option it's going to be very hard to make progress. They all
seem to think that they have more to lose by playing than to gain, at least
at some point. This means there is a serious expectation problem. After the
big Kasparov matches through the 80's and 90's, younger players like Shirov,
Kramnik, and Ponomariov don't see why they aren't getting three million
dollars too. Ilyumzhinov kicking in millions out Kalmykia's treasury
contributed to this delusion. Consider it a market subsidy that inflated the
true free-market value.

There ARE sponsors, but they want fair value. X3D invested millions and is
happy. Corus continues to sponsor Wijk aan Zee. If the market is willing to
put up a quarter-million dollars for Kramnik-Leko but they want a million,
then what? They need to wake from the dream of millions and play chess or
just forget about it.

FIDE is becoming less relevant every day. If they can organize an Olympiad,
a championship, wonderful. You're only worth what you achieve. The idealized
dream of what FIDE could be isn't worth anything at all. Lately all they've
done is scare off legitimate sponsors and help derail unification.

As much as I would love a unified world champion, you can't put all your
energy into this dream as long as the main parties involved aren't willing
to compromise. We have a rating list, we know who number one and who is
number two, and who is number two-hundred and twenty-two. Let's just play
some chess. Some of the energy can go into a Grand Prix, for example.

As is stands now, there is supposed to be a big KO in 2004 with the winner
to play Kasparov no later than July, 2005. The winner of that match should
play the winner of Kramnik-Leko. Basically this is what we talked about in
Prague two years ago. If it happens, great, but meanwhile let's play chess.
Having so many of the world's top players away from the board because of all
this silliness is the real tragedy. Years from now they'll look back and
wonder why Kramnik and Kasparov were so inactive instead of contributing
more eternal masterpieces to the game.

As for the seeding, that's just life, and sport in particular, not being
democratic. If you have one or two guys without whom your entire event loses
funding and credibility, those guys are going to get preferential treatment.
End of story. Sport is not fair, it's based on achievement and merit. In an
ideal world, the system would be more important than the player. That was
true for many years, as Fischer found out. Right now we don't have a system
so the individuals have more power. They have professed a willingness to
give up some of that power to unite things, but that comes at the cost of
making some concessions to them, mostly seeding.

Short-run concessions for long-term unification and gain for all isn't a bad
deal if it actually comes true. So we can pretend that Kramnik-Leko is
really the championship and pretend that the FIDE KO is a championship and
that the KO-winner vs Kasparov is a championship and that the final match is
REALLY the world championship! Just close your eyes, hold your nose, and
let's get this over and move on. We know that having a unified champ will be
a great benefit to the sport, so if we can remove the cancer let's not
complain too much about how bad the medicine tastes. Being a moralist or
purist about this is easy, but it's basically embracing the status quo and
saying you'd rather be right than solve the problem. The pathetic part is
that we haven't even been able to make progress even with this sad set of
compromises.

G.T: The elections to the board of the Association of Chess Professionals
have finished (
http://www.chess-players.org/eng/new...sp?iCounter=34 ). Could
it improve the lot of professional chess players?

Mig Greengard: I sincerely hope it will, if only through educating them
about the existence of a common good. (When Seirawan tried to establish a
player's committee in Bled in 2002 almost no one bothered to come to the
meeting.) At some point action and sacrifice will be required and we'll have
to see how they do then. Either they will show themselves to be united for
the good of the players or they'll be a knitting circle with a nice website.
For example, will they boycott events with inferior conditions? Will they
protest the FIDE g/90 time control? Will they organize events? Talking the
talk is easy, walking the walk will be much harder.

Imagine if 90% of the invited/qualified players told FIDE they wouldn't play
in the next KO unless they returned to a classical time control! It would be
fantastic. Same for the Olympiad. Ilyumzhinov would call them ungrateful
because he believes that he gets to write the rulebook and the prize checks
with the same hand. If it were a private tournament, I'd agree. But FIDE and
the Olympiad and the world championship are supposed to be above that, and
should be.

I definitely hope they succeed with their stated goals. When I met Joel
Lautier (ACP member and founder) here in NY in November I was happy to hear
the group isn't trying to be too ambitious at the start. Sticking with
achievable things that everyone can agree on is the best way to begin.

I really don't know most of the new board members. Just Joel, Kramnik, and
Matveeva, whom I had the pleasure of working with at KasparovChess. All
three are smart and down to earth, and I know from friends in common that
several of the others are the same. Kramnik's participation is a little
tricky and I don't expect to see him take a leadership role. It could
quickly put him at odds with his own best interests, but championing those
will leave him open to criticism. As Kasparov found out during his time with
the GMA decades ago, the world champion can be a divisive figure even if he
sincerely wants to help.

Goran Tomic: Thanks for the answers. I'm sure the readers will enjoy reading
your comments.


http://www.sah.paracin.co.yu/MIG.htm

http://www.sah.paracin.co.yu/MIG.pdf