Figjam Chess

Queenstown 2012: my first IM norm

2012-02-12T21:51:00.002+11:00

by Junta

Post on Rounds 1-4 is here.

In Round 5 I won a 7.5-hour marathon game, a RN vs. R endgame at the end.
As my opponent gave up her knight for my last pawn, I knew that the logical outcome was now a draw, but I really wanted to win this game - sensing my opponent was very tired, and knowing that even Judit Polgar had failed to defend this endgame once (against Kasparov), I very much felt that it was worth pushing all the way to the end of the 50 moves. Black's last saving chances were to swing the rook to the queenside on moves 108, 109 or 114.

In Round 6 I drew with IM Herman van Riemsdijk with a Sicilian Kan - last July I entered lines from an opening book into ChessBase for the first time, and this was on the Kan - interestingly, a couple of the lines in the book were based on my opponent's games from 30 years ago! When we repeated moves after move 30, it was a position where I just could not find a good plan or sequence of moves to follow, to push for a win - of course, the position was equal, but you feel a little annoyed at yourself for not being strong enough as a player when you're unable to find anything constructive to do in a position.

In Round 7 I managed to sidestep my opponent's preparation with 8...Nf6 which I found in the morning, and I knew that the subsequent pawn sacrifice must be correct - but what was the follow-up?! 11...Ng4 was begging to be played, but what if 12.Qxd5? Intuitive players may have just banged the knight move out quickly, but I had to find why it worked, and as my clock ticked down from 90 minutes towards 30, I finally found 12...Bxf2+. After White missed the flashy resource 17.Re4! Nc2 18.Qd6!! which close to equalises, Black was winning.

In Round 8, I was up against Trevor Tao - a win would essentially guarantee an IM norm for the victor (for him, also the IM title). My opponent was very smart in his opening choice, swapping off his g7-bishop for my Nc3 in a Fianchetto English to steer the game into positional channels (which I am not very good in). Although I used too much time in the middlegame, I had just about reached complete equality when a nightmarish blunder occurred on the dreaded 40th move, losing a pawn and the game to a simple knight fork.

In Round 9, I needed to win as Black to achieve the norm. I was anxious after the opening - my mind was filled with doubt and hesitation as I realised I had to sacrifice my queen a few moves later in the seemingly best line (20...Rad8) - eventually I convinced myself that other lines were definitely worse, and if this line didn't work out, at least I wouldn't have any regrets. Black's RRBN co-operated well enough against White's Q+R (though I'd completely missed 42.Rc7+ !), and I won on move 46. Eugene was very nice and congratulated me on the winning combination after the game.

After several near-misses and disappointing failures over the last two years, I felt much more relief than happiness on achieving my first IM norm. After most tournaments I play in, I feel like a stronger player, and I look forward to the upcoming events of 2012. GM Dejan Bojkov congratulated me, saying that the first norm is the hardest - I hope he is right!

A mini trophy from my family - "Norm #1".

FIGJAM in the first half of 2012

2012-02-09T02:40:00.003+11:00

by Junta

Apologies for neglecting to post, I will be writing on the second half of Queenstown in the next few days. After this blog started up in July last year, the five of us have only written a little less than 60 posts, but there have been a lot of viewers, and we are about to hit 10,000 views. Thank you for reading, and I hope we can bring you many more posts this year.

I thought it might be good to write a post on what we, the FIGJAM team members, are up to this year. The summer holidays are traditionally the time for chess tournaments (personally, since January 2002 when I played in my first Australian Juniors as a 10-year old, it has been 11 years in a row, and counting), and the end of Queenstown marks the end of this summer (in the chess sense), so we are back into the real world where the outcome of each day does not depend on how we went over the 64 squares.

After 2011, when some of us took time off university to travel and play in overseas tournaments, this year we are all students, as Andrew, Sam and I are all studying in Canberra, while Moulthun is studying up in Brisbane. And lucky Fedja is studying in the Netherlands on exchange (you may have seen the post where he took photos at Tata Steel)!

In Canberra, of course, this Easter marks the 50th edition of the Doeberl Cup, the biggest tournament, and annual get-together of chess players, in Australia. Before that, though, the three of us here have the opportunity to play in two FIDE-rated events - the ANU Masters, and ACT Championships.

The former is a 10-player round robin with a game each Wednesday night until the Doeberl, with the field made up of invited players (such as Andrew, Arianne Caoili and myself) and tournament winners from last year's ANU Chess Club calendar. The draw can be seen here, and crosstable here.

The latter will be held over two weekends: February 17-19th, and 25-26th (9 rounds). I will be attempting to defend my title from last year.

After the Doeberl, many of the players will move to Parramatta for the Sydney International Open - it should be another great event.

When returning from Queenstown, I thought 4 events through Semester 1 was quite enough. However, a few days after catching up on rest and sleep, another tournament was put into my diary. Asked by Moulthun and Irene (from Indonesia, who we became friends with in Queenstown) if I was interested, I decided to play in the HD Bank Open in Vietnam, running March 1st-8th.

With a 1st prize of US $10,000, the event will see many strong players fly into Ho Chi Minh City from all around Asia, and three weeks before the tournament, the list of entries looks very exciting. Le Quang Liem (2714), Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (2662) and Ni Hua (2641) are the top three seeds so far, with 50 of the 80 players rated above 2200!

Later on, as the first semester concludes in June-July, some of us may set our sights on other shores in the holidays until Semester 2 - we shall see...

A Tale of Two Knights

2012-01-30T21:34:00.002+11:00

By Moulthun Ly

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms”

MURIEL RUKEYSER

“This single-combat between Gologras and Sir Gawain is long and very evenly fought, but at last Sir Gawain gains the upper hand. But Gologras will not ask for mercy. He prefers death to the dishonour of surrendering to Sir Gawain. The victorious knight tries to persuade the other to capitulate and Gologras replies that if Sir Gawain will pretend to have been defeated and to walk off the field as his prisoner, then he will see that matters are resolved to Sir Gawain’s liking once he is in his castle. Despite not knowing Gologras at all, Sir Gawain agrees to this plan, sensing that his adversary is honourable. They pick themselves up from the ground, pretend to fight for a while, then Gologras leads Sir Gawain off the field as his prisoner. Roles have been reversed. King Arthur groans in anguish and begins to weep.”

“Once inside the castle, however, Gologras addresses his noblemen, lets them understand the situation and they tell him that they would rather that he remained as their lord, even though he may have been defeated in battle. Gologras and Sir Gawain issue from the castle together, unarmed, and Gologras approaches King Arthur in submission. Three days’ feasting ensues in celebration, and at the end of it, as King Arthur prepares to leave, he relinquishes his sovereignty of the land and gives full control back to Gologras.”

So what exactly is the point of this story? Short answer is that, there is nothing quite as exciting as the stories of chivalry, honesty, loyalty and courage, which is prevalent throughout medieval history. I'm sure i could have mentioned a much better story. Besides, this was one of the shortest to highlight. For anyone who has read Jonathan Rowson’s book, Chess for Zebras then you will understand the importance of storytelling for chess players. Simple put it is a way for us to create meaning of a situation, to find a beginning and mark an end. I do this all the time during my games, sometimes even subconsciously.

But, I suppose I should end it with it least something chess related. Looking through some games of one of my favorite openings, the “Blackmar-Diemer Gambit”, I found a nice game. Which if nothing else, is befitting the title.

FailChess #1

2012-01-28T16:25:00.004+11:00

   By Moulthun Ly

It is very often the case in chess that one will put aside their objective judgements of a position, in place of an aesthetically pleasing combination. The term chess aesthetics is well known to all competent chess players, and is the reason why many still continue to play.

In fact, there has been surprising amounts of research into computing the beauty of chess positions. Something i believe only humans will ever fully understand. However, this entry is not about the most beautifully played games, nor will it look at tactically brilliant combinations. But rather, the pitfalls which players will suffer along the way to achieving their best game prize.

Although a perfectly played game is a sight to behold. A well played tragedy is just as entertaining, if not more so. For these games i prefer to look for master level or near master games, making them all the more interesting. The first entry was a game played at Queenstown tournament, which i had recently finished several days ago. I finished on 6/9 after tragically losing my last round to Rozentalis from a very equal ending. We might finish off the second half of the Queenstown post soon. But enough of me, lets have a skiwz at the game. I won't mention the players names for the sake of these posts, but it is the positions which we are more interested in! :)


White has played quite oddly up to this point, but managed to hold his advantage the whole way through the game. It is now white to play, for those of you suggested such natural moves as Rc1or h5 or Rd2 then you get a 0 for artistic flare.

The move played was Qf5!! and the double exclamation marks are given for its artistic humor, considering this was a serious tournament game.


Rc2+ 31.Ke3 Ra2 32.Rg1 32...Ne8 33.Rc1+ Kb7 34.Kd4 Rxa3 35.Re1 Nd6 36.Re7+ Kc8 37.Re5 37...Nb5+ 38.Ke3 d4+ 39.Ke4 Kd7 40.Rd5+ Ke7 41.Re5+ Kd7 42.Rd5+ Kc7 43.Re5 Kc6

44.f6 gxf6 45.Rh5 f5+ 46.Kxf5 Rxd3 47.Rxh6+ Kc7 48.Rf6 Rxf3 49.Rxf7+ Kd8 50.Kg4 Re3 51.Rf5 d3 52.Rd5+ Ke7 53.h5 Ke6 54.Rd8 Nd6 55.f5+ Ke7 0–1

To finish things off white has gotten himself trapped in a sort of zugswang, which deserves a diagram position of its own. White's pawns have created a barrier for its own king leaving no escape. Anyhow, that is it for the first post will be sure to keep adding more games as i stumble across them.

Queenstown: Days 1-4

2012-01-20T11:52:00.005+11:00

"I've been playing steady chess for a long time...maybe this is the year to start playing better." - GM Levon Aronian on the opening day of Tata Steel 2012

"In all my years in this job, I've never seen what you guys just did."
Experienced quad-biking instructor after witnessing some vehicle acrobatics

Round 1 under way

Day 0 (January 13):

The three of us met at Sydney Airport - even though there was some chess fatigue after the Australian Championships, playing overseas is always a fun experience where you have extra motivation, so we were all looking forward to the tournament. As our flight to Queenstown was slightly delayed, we passed the time playing cards.

On the news on an in-flight TV, we saw the story about the Australian girl who had miraculously survived after her bungee jumping cord had snapped in Zimbabawe, which may have put Moulthun off the idea of going bungeeing during the tournament.

There were the usual chess player @ the airport moments on the way for some of us, e.g. taking 10 times longer (both time and distance-wise) to move to the international terminal from the domestic at Sydney than required, and accidentally ticking 'declaring prohibited materials' on the arriving-into-NZ customs declaration.

Arriving to our apartment just 200m away from the venue in the late afternoon, we went for a walk around town and shopped for essentials such as snacks, fruits, breakfast foods and drinks, although this was preceded by 28 rounds of rock-paper-scissors to decide who claims the only double bed in the apartment (the other two being single).

With the winner requiring 11 wins or more with a two-point advantage, it was a heated contest where each of us had the lead at some stage, but after it was all tied at 8-8-8, Andrew showed his usual good form in New Zealand and ran way as the victor.

How were the colours for Round 1 decided? At the deadline of the 6-8pm registration, the highest seeded (12th) player present in the hall, Trevor Tao of South Australia, was given the task: utilising eenie meenie miney mo, the hand with the white pieces was chosen for the even-seeded players.

In the top half of the draw, we each won comfortably in Round 1 - in Round 2, Junta won in a miniature (21...Nc2-e1+ 0-1), while Moulthun managed to grind down Noel Pinic in a 6-hour struggle.

On Board 3, Andrew was playing one of the world champion's seconds - GM Surya Ganguly of India (2639), the highest rated opponent he's ever faced.

After you prepare intensively for a strong opponent, they very often play somethingelse from the outset, and this was no exception. Although the Open Sicilian (Sveshnikov) was anticipated, instead a typical Saemisch King's Indian battle (with ...exd5 cxd5) developed, where Andrew eventually won back the sacrificed pawn on the b-file. An equal endgame with bishop, knight and five pawns was reached, where White was pushing to create weaknesses. Andrew kept his nerve to defend, and the final pawn endgame had a sweet finish (opposition!).

He explained after the game - "I felt confident that I could play well, even from before the game." A common quote from Moulthun over the last week: "All you need is confidence - against an equal or even slightly better opponent, you can just outconfidence them and crush them."

In Round 3, it was Junta's turn to play his strongest opponent ever - top seed GM Li Chao of China (2693).

In a Fianchetto English where both sides missed (quite simple) ways to gain a slight advantage (for Black: 8...Nxb4, for White: 13.Ne5, which Junta commented on: "I saw Ne5, but after calculating a short line which resembled Black doing well, I stopped analysing - I think I just believed that surely he wouldn't let me get the advantage with a tactic like Ne5 (too much respect for opponent / not enough confidence)". For two pawns, White's kingside attack looked plausible, but objectively there wasn't enough and Black was always on top.

In Round 4, Moulthun drew with GM Zhao Xue in an intriguing endgame (two bishops + passed a-pawn vs. rook and knight) where the analysis nearly went for as long as the game (!), while Junta had another 20-move win as Black in the Queen's Indian line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Ba6 5.b3 b5. Andrew looked worse against fellow Canberran, Emma Guo on the Black side of a Sveshnikov, but she made an unfortunate oversight blundering a piece.

The answers to the trivia question from the Tata Steel tipping post were:

Moulthun has played Adhiban (two draws), Lahno (draw), Turov (loss), Timman (draw), Paehtz (draw).

Junta has played Brandenburg (loss), and Van Wely (2-0 in blitz).

Tata Steel Chess Pictorial Report

2012-01-20T07:11:00.001+11:00

"I tried to play like Anand and make 3 draws at the end" - Hikaru Nakamura on what caused his collapse at Reggio-Emilia

Today I travelled to Wijk aan Zee to have a look at the Tata Steel Chess tournament. As I'll be playing the amateur event from tomorrow until the end of the tournament, I thought I'd bring you a short pictorial report from today.

Gashimov and Karjakin share a joke before the game.

But they weren't laughing much later when Karjakin went down to Gelfand.

While Ivanchuk took care of Gashimov.

Aronian was happy to take a quick draw with Van Wely and maintain equal tournament leadership alongside...

World number 1 Magnus Carlsen, who was in deep thought early against Giri - that game was a hard fought draw.

Radjabov and Topalov analysed their game in the press room.

As did Pentala Harikrishna, my tip to win the B-group, who is on 4/5 after drawing today with Erwin L'Ami

Jan Timman showed his nice win against fellow Dutchman Sipke Ernst in a press-conference

Last year's winner Hikaru Nakamura was in good spirits after notching up his first win this year against David Navara, so I thought it would be a good time to ask him for a photo.

And finally, just for Moulthun, a photo of Gata Kamsky.

Tata Steel tipping!

2012-01-14T22:45:00.005+11:00

"You might be a really good chess player, but I'm much better at waiting than you!"
A waitress being mean to GM Zhao at the Australian Championships

by Junta

After the Australian Championships finished a week ago, where we bid a year's farewell to Fedja who'll be on exchange in Holland for 2012, he's replaced here in Queenstown, NZ by Andrew.

Each of us have played here, in this 'adventure capital of the world', before, and after checking out the familiar tournament hall at the Millennium Hotel several hours ago, we've kicked into chess mode and can't wait to play from tomorrow.

But on the other side of the world, in Wijk aan Zee, perhaps the most exciting chess tournament of the year is about to start - after watching the official tournament video covering the opening day (the interviews are nice to watch), we agreed that it was simply impossible to not follow the games live tonight.

Here are our tips for the three groups of the 74th Tata Steel tournament (A, B, C):
In the A Group are Carlsen, Aronian, Radjabov, Topalov, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Gashimov, Nakamura, Gelfand, Caruana, Kamsky, Giri, Navara, Van Wely for a tournament record average of 2755.

Andrew
A Group: 1st Carlsen 9/13, 2nd Ivanchuk 8.5, 3rd Aronian 8, 4th-5th Karjakin, Topalov 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Turov with 10/13

Fedja
A Group: 1st Topalov 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Karjakin, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Harikrishna with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Adhiban with 10/13

Junta
A Group: 1st Aronian 9/13, 2nd-3rd Carlsen, Radjabov 8.5, 4th Nakamura 8,
5th Karjakin 7.5
B Group winner: Potkin with 9/13
C Group winner: Sadler with 10/13

Moulthun
A Group: 1st Ivanchuk 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Nakamura, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Grover with 10.5/13

Trivia questions:
Between Moulthun and I, we've played 7 of the 42 Tata Steel participants in tournament games.
1. Who are the 7 players?
2. We won against a player from the A group. Which player was it?

Timelapse Chess in Morphsuits

2012-01-13T01:01:00.005+11:00

by Andrew

This is a video my friend and I did recently of a timelapse chess match between us, which was carried out wearing morphsuits. We played a two-hour game and used a camera to take a photo once every five seconds, after which we condensed the 1400 photos we got into about 4 minutes of footage. Hope you enjoy it.

In this epic two-hour battle, condensed into just 4 minutes of footage, the reigning Unofficial Morphsuit Chess Champion of Australia, "Blue", defends his title against the sly and unperturbable "Red". Although security was tight for the match, unfortunately some fanatical spectators managed to break through into the arena during our coverage of the event.

Cautionary statement: Chess is a violent game. Viewer discretion is advised.

This video can be watched in full screen at http://www.chessblog.com/2012_01_01_archive.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_tHo6tW_Og

Smirnov v Zworestine

2011-12-25T23:00:00.000+11:00

"15 241 383 936" - Anton Smirnov calculates the answer to 123456^² in his head (I had to use a calculator).

This year's Christmas present to our readers from Figjam is the 2010 Sydney Interclub game between then 9-year-old Anton Smirnov and our former hero Charlsen. Despite making a good start with his first move, it seems the Zworebeast has forgotten his preparation by move 3. Five questionable moves in a row change the position from (-0.11) to (13.77), and mate will follow on just move 23.

Lidums AYM - Muller v Zulfic

2011-12-20T00:00:00.001+11:00

" I've been a good boy for the rest of my life" - IM George Xie on why he isn't the mafia

The following is my game against Jonas 'Bronas' Muller in round 3 of the Lidums AYM, judged the best game of the tournament by sponsor Robert Hoile.

Jonas played some great practical defensive moves, particularly 25.Qc3 and 26.Bxf6. Still, the position appears to be winning for black after 30...Qa4 threatening b4, but I missed the idea in time trouble.

Australian Young Masters Round 9

2011-12-11T10:01:00.002+11:00

Australian Young Masters Round 9

Australian Young Masters Round 8

2011-12-10T14:59:00.000+11:00

Australian Young Masters Round 8

2011 AUS Young Masters Day 4 (Round 7)

2011-12-09T22:02:00.002+11:00

2011 AUS YM Day 4 (R7)

2011 AUS Young Masters Day 3 (Round 6)

2011-12-09T15:02:00.002+11:00

2011 AUS YM Day 3 (Round 6)

AUS Young Masters R5 (Day 3)

2011-12-08T20:42:00.002+11:00

AUS YM Day 3 (Round 5)

AUS Young Masters R4 (Day 2)

2011-12-08T14:57:00.002+11:00

Young Masters R4

Young Masters R3

2011-12-07T20:19:00.003+11:00

Young Masters R3

Lidums Australian Young Masters Day 1 R2

2011-12-07T14:47:00.001+11:00

Young Masters R2

Lidums Australian Young Masters Day 1

2011-12-06T18:41:00.002+11:00

Young Masters Day 1

2011 Lidums Australian Young Masters

2011-12-06T00:41:00.001+11:00

Junta: "Alright, just do one post this month (November) yeah?"
Fedja: "Yeah I'll do that."

With the generous sponsorship of Aivars Lidums, the 2011 Lidums Australian Young Masters tournaments will be held at the South Australian Chess Centre in Adelaide from the 7-11th of December this year. The fields for the Young, Junior and Girls Masters are below. The Lidums South Australian Junior Masters will run alongside these events, although the field is still to be confirmed.

IM George Xie and WGM Daniela Nutu-Gajic will be doing post-game analysis with the players.

Prizes: 1st $300, 2nd $200, 3rd $100 + trophies in each event. The Robert Hoile Brilliancy Prize $100

Schedule: Games to start at 9.30 am and 2.30 pm daily, one game at 9.30 am on the 11th

Time Control: 90 minutes + 30 second increment from move 1

Arbiters: IA Charles Zworestine and IA Roland Eime.

The tournament couldn't go ahead without the generous support of the following sponsors:

Aivars Lidums (naming rights sponsor)
Robert Hoile
George Howard
David Hudson
Ian Rogers
AusJCL
SAJCL
SACA
ACF

Technology permitting, we'll be running a live blog for each round on this site so tune in on Wednesday!

London Classic tipping!

2011-12-03T23:50:00.003+11:00

"Sam is one of the Gold Coast's young talents and has been introducing many kids to chess with the Gardiner Chess Academy. Today it was Sam who learned a lesson." - IM Aleks Wohl

from the official website, http://www.londonchessclassic.com/

Just a week after the Tal Memorial concluded in Moscow, the 2800 club + Nakamura head west to play in the 3rd London Classic, joined by four of the best English players for a 9-player round robin. The pairings are here.

The football scoring system of 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw is being used.

Andrew's predictions:
1st: Carlsen - 16, 2nd: Aronian - 15, 3rd-4th: Kramnik, Adams - 12,
5th: Anand - 11

Fedja's predictions:
1st: Charlsen - 16, 2nd: Aronian, 3rd-4th Anand, Kramnik, 5th: McShane

Junta's predictions:
1st: Aronian - 16, 2nd: Carlsen -15, 3rd: Anand - 12,
4th-5th: Nakamura, Adams - 11

Moulthun's predictions:
1st: McShane 2nd: Hikaru Equal 3rd: Aronian, Short, Carlsen

The games will be at 1am AEST, except for Round 4 at 3am and the final, Round 8 at 11pm. The rest day is at the halfway mark on the 7th, but with nine players, one gets a rest from playing each round - they will be providing commentary on the games, a brilliant idea which has received widespread praise.

Information for the numerous side events, exhibitions and innovations are all on the official website - it sure sounds like one professionally organised, fun chess event to be a part of. On Friday afternoon, the 9 participants took part in a game vs. the world on Twitter, which, amusingly, the super GMs won with the North Sea Defence (1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6 3.e5 Nh5) as Black in 23 moves!

Some (especially) interesting games to watch will be:
Round 1: Kramnik-Nakamura, a re-match from last year where Kramnik made a surprising knight sacrifice right out of the opening but Nakamura won.
Round 2: McShane-Carlsen, another grudge match from last year where McShane surprised observers by conducting a smooth positional victory in R1.
Round 3: Carlsen-Nakamura, with Kramnik commentating. Key word: Kasparov.
Round 5: Aronian-Carlsen - Let's hope we'll witness another fascinating game between the two highest rated players in the world (2829 and 2815 on the live list).
Round 7: Aronian-Anand - the decisive game count is 5-0 in favour of Aronian since Anand became WC in 2007 (four of them with Black)!
Round 9: Short-Carlsen - will we see another of his vital last round wins?

In any case, it's hard to see there not being more decisive games than in Moscow (just 10/45), although the chess played there was very entertaining and of admirably high quality.

Vikings Weekender - Day 2

2011-11-23T17:20:00.002+11:00

"...I have always been of the opinion that, of the two evils - under-estimation and over-estimation of one's own strength - the former is much the more harmful." - Mikhail Tal

by Junta

On 3½/4 after the first day, it was clear that I would have to score at least 2½/3 on the second day to have hopes of winning the tournament. After the pairings were released in the evening and I looked up my opponent's games in the database, I revised a particular line in the Sicilian Kan as I was quite certain it would occur on the board.

More important, though, was to get a sufficient amount of sleep - it's impossible to play these 60 10 time control games at an optimum condition with insufficient rest overnight. Doubly so for me on this night, as the fast food lunch after Round 2 had given me some non-chess annoyance afterwards - since returning from overseas, having fast food which I'd had no problems with before have given me stomach pains so I might be avoiding them for a while.

On another note, I was planning to take some photos of the playing venue but once the tournament had started, such extraneous tasks all faded out of my mind. Perhaps Shaun Press will be uploading some later, when I'll link to it here.

Round 5

Feeling much better in the morning, the opening as Black went perfectly, and my opponent (who last year killed my chances of 1st by leaving me on 2½/4 after Day 1), pursuing action, decided on an unsound Nd5 sacrifice. I was moving all the right pieces in keeping my advantage until a couple of dubious moves crept in, and suddenly White won back my estranged knight on a2. He was close to equalising, but went astray from the pressures of Black's passed c-pawn and heavy pieces.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

On Board 1, Andrew was playing George as White, in an interesting line of the Queen's Indian which I believe went 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Ba6 5.Qc2 Bb7 6.Bg2 c5 7.d5 exd5 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.0–0 Nc6 10.Rd1 Nc7!? (10...Be7 is usual)

A provocative novelty from Black.

Andrew subsequently went all out for the attack on Black's slightly suspect king, but George calmly repulsed the onslaught after taking the exchange and converted convincingly. With two rounds to go, the leaderboard read:

4½ - Xie, Ikeda
4 - V.Smirnov, Brown, Melrose, E.Guo, Ng

Round 6

The crucial game. I believe George is the player who has given me the most losses in tournament play, and apart from one win thanks to an opening blunder in 2008, through 2005-start of 2011 I had lost 7 games to him - over the last summer especially, losing to him in each of the three big tournaments (Surfer's Paradise - penultimate round, Australian Open - final round, Oceania Zonal - final round!). Many players have one or two opponents they score poorly against, and it takes time to overcome what is undoubtedly a psychological obstacle against these players.

In this game, I had a slight advantage as Black after the opening (Torre Attack), but lost the thread in the early middlegame, and White's queen, light-squared bishop and two knights became poised to attack my king on the queenside . Although the knockout blow was missed, White's immovable bishop on c6 and potential exploitation of the a, b and e-files had each of my king, queen, rook and bishop confined to passivity. However, the vertical path for the rook to my royal couple was chosen wrongly, letting me escape into an equal ending - it is difficult to play 'normally' after a large advantage is given up.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

Vlad grinded down Melrose's hedgehog, while Andrew was lucky to survive with a draw against Emma Guo as Black, after a similar opening (trap) catastrophe to his loss against Moulthun at the Zonal in January occurred in the Grand Prix Attack (involving e4, Nc3, Nf3, Bb5-c4, Nf3xNd4, Qf3, Nc3-b5, Qa3 etc.).
With one round to go, the scores were:

5½ - Ikeda
5 - V.Smirnov
4½ - Xie, Brown, Mandla, A.Smirnov, E.Guo

Round 7

Needing at least a draw against Vlad to clinch the tournament, I decided to play the Exchange Slav with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.cxd5 etc, and offered a draw in the fairly equal middlegame, which was accepted after some thought.

19.Kc1-b1 ½-½

On Boards 2 and 3, George and Andrew beat Blair and Anton respectively, and the final scores of the leaders were:
6 - Ikeda
5½ - Xie, V.Smirnov, Brown
5 - Melrose, Ng, Ali, Grcic, Lo

The final crosstable can be seen here.

The overriding feeling when drawing Round 7 was of relief, that my nerves had held out over the 7 rounds. The overseas experience from June-September has definitely helped in my confidence, as I was playing strong opponents every game in those five tournaments, but there is still an awful lot to be done in my game.

The Vikings Weekender is the tournament I've had the most success in over the years, winning in 2004 (my first adult weekender win, in Year 7 - I still remember how happy that made me), 2005 (shared), 2008 and 2009 - although I fall into time trouble quickly with this time control, I usually handle it well as I'm able to play on intuition, on feeling - my intuition isn't too bad, but the biggest deficiency in my chess is that I find it difficult to trust my intuition and play quickly - hence I think too much, when I should also be tuning into my 'feel' of the position.

Many thanks to the organisers, Glenn Ingham, Jim Flood and Matt Radisich, as well as the Tuggeranong Vikings League Club, and DOP Shaun Press. The number of entrants have been unusually consistent over the last few years at 58 in 2008, 57 in 2009, 55 in 2010 and 56 this year - it's a great tournament to play in, so I hope there'll be more people joining to play this event in Canberra next year.

Vikings Weekender - Day 1

2011-11-22T14:44:00.004+11:00

by Junta

The Vikings Weekender, the third biggest tournament on the nation's capital's calendar, was held over the weekend (Nov 19-20).

This 7-round Swiss with the familiar Australian weekender time control of 60 minutes + 10 seconds / move was promoted to a Class 2 (ACF rated) event on the Grand Prix for the first time this year, attracting some strong players at the top - three IMs (Xie [NSW], V.Smirnov [NSW], Brown), one FM (Ikeda) and three others rated over 2100 (Mandla [NSW], Melrose, A. Smirnov [NSW]).

Round 1

The lower rated players are outrated by up to 1000 points or so at the start of these Swiss events, but several upsets usually occur, and this event was no exception - one of these was scored by an ex-junior who was Board 1 on my primary school team when we represented the ACT at the nationals 11 or 12 years ago.

Like the large part of once active Canberra juniors, he had drifted off the scene as college and university studies had got in the way of chess, but having completed his studies and a friend taking up playing, he had made a return. Another player who had come out of hibernation was an Australian Junior champion from the early 70's - it's great to see people like these come back and play again.

The top seeds won comfortably, with the exception of myself - as a dedicated time trouble connoisseur from my pre-teen years, I often exhaust most of my hour in the first 20 moves in this time control, and blitz from the middlegame - I hadn't been able to convert my slight advantage until my opponent blundered when down to his last 10 seconds also, in the last game to finish.

Round 2

Things went better for me this time, as the two bishops had their say;

I was satisfied to find a strong move here, 15.Bd4-b2 (Idea Qd1-d4), Houdini's first choice also. 1-0 (27)

It seemed like the top seeds would cruise through the round again, but as the games finished one by one, the Board 1 game between Xie (2460) and local player Sengstock (1723) had reached an intriguing endgame: Xie had sacrificed the exchange in the middlegame to reach an endgame with White having the two bishops, active king and an one or two-pawn advantage against Sengstock's rook, bishop and weaker pawns.

As more than a third of the 56 tournament entrants crowded around the table, Black defended brilliantly in serious time trouble to slowly whittle away the material, and a big upset draw was scored - White couldn't make any more progress.

Round 3

Following the top seed's draw above, the 2nd and 3rd seeds also dropped half points this round - Vlad Smirnov was held to a draw by his ever improving 10-year old son, Anton, while I was in big trouble on the next board against local veteran Grcic. A lapse of concentration in the opening resulted in making one pawn push too many, and White's 9.Qe2+ forcing ...Nge7 guaranteed my king would not be on time to board his scheduled flight to g8. White soon had a big advantage - down to my 10-second increment very quickly, I made a desperate draw offer, and to my relief he accepted after some thought - in the analysis we quickly established that White was probably just winning at the end.

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As the 4th-6th seeds survived to win, the leading scores after Round 3 were:
3 - Brown, Mandla, Melrose
2½ - Xie, V.Smirnov, Ikeda, A.Smirnov, Grcic

Round 4

A couple in the leading group, Mandla and V.Smirnov, took half-point byes - playing four games in one day can be quite demanding, so the players were allowed to take a half-point bye (or two perhaps, for good reasons) on the first day. There was some controversy after last year's event when one of the tournament winners had taken two half point byes in Rounds 4 and 5, so the rules were modified this year.

Board 1: In the clash of the leaders, Brown beat Melrose in a typically strong 1.d4 game from him, against a Nimzo/QID hybrid setup.
Board 2: Xie outplayed Grcic.
Board 3: Although getting in time trouble in the middlegame after trying my hand at the "beginner's" Giuoco Piano as White, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.d3 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Na4 etc., I managed to win against Anton.

The game ended: 36...Qd5? (...Qc5 += or ...Qb6 were better) 37.Ng6 Rf6 38.Rxf5 1-0

The leading scores at the end of the first day were:
4 - Brown
3½ - Xie, Ikeda, Mandla
3 - V.Smirnov, Melrose, E.Guo, Ng, Ali, Zulkifli, Press, Litchfield

Tal Memorial tipping!

2011-11-16T19:01:00.005+11:00

Superior knowledge of the rules will lead 'Charlsen' to victory

The highest rated 10-player round robin (Category 22 with average 2776) to ever grace the chess world begins tonight (Games at 10pm AEST).
The participants are below.

# = World ranking on the November FIDE rating list
#1 Magnus Carlsen, Norway, 2826
#2 Viswanathan Anand, India, 2811
#3 Levon Aronian, Armenia, 2802
#4 Vladimir Kramnik, Russia, 2800
#6 Vassily Ivanchuk, Ukraine, 2775
#8 Sergey Karjakin, Russia, 2763
#10 Hikaru Nakamura, USA, 2758
#12 Peter Svidler, Russia, 2755
#14 Boris Gelfand, Israel, 2744
#20 Ian Nepomniachtchi, Russia, 2730

Here are the predictions for 1st-5th from the FIGJAM contributors. As our World Cup tipping didn't go so well (though Fedja 'mysteriously' predicted all of the top 8), let's hope someone will hit the jackpot this time. With Nepom as bottom seed and each player capable of winning the big events, every game will be tough.

Andrew's predictions:
1st-2nd: Carlsen, Aronian 6/9, 3rd: Kramnik 5.5/9, 4th-5th: Anand, Svidler 5/9

Fedja's predictions:
1st: Charlsen 6/9, 2nd-3rd: Anand, Kramnik 5.5/9, 4th-5th: Nakamura, Aronian 5/9

Junta's predictions:
1st: Kramnik 6/9, 2nd-3rd: Carlsen, Nakamura 5.5/9, 4th-5th: Aronian, Gelfand 5/9

Moulthun's predictions:
Such a tough tip, and mind you I've never picked any winner right before.
1st-2nd: Karjakin, Ivanchuk, 3rd: Kramnik, 4th-6th: Carlsen, Aronian, Hikaru

Sam's predictions:
1st-2nd: Anand, Carlsen 6/9, 3rd-4th: Kramnik, Ivanchuk 5.5/9, 5th: Aronian 5/9

Final reports on last year's edition, won by Karjakin, Aronian and Mamedyarov with just 5.5/9, can be read here and here.

ETCC R7-9: Germany win!

2011-11-13T23:18:00.006+11:00

by Junta

Round 7

In the battle between two of the leaders, Azerbaijan crushed Bulgaria 3½-½, and with the other leader Romania beaten by Germany 2½-1½, the leaderboard showed:

12MP - Azerbaijan
11MP - Armenia, Germany
10MP - Hungary, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Romania

Topalov (2768, Bulgaria) - Radjabov (2781, Azerbaijan), Round 7.1.1, 09.11.11

After 43.Qc2 ½-½ - the finale of a King's Indian symphony with each side dominating their own colour

On Boards 2 and 3, Gashimov and Mamedyarov scored nice wins - you can see those games here and here.

Morozevich (2762, Russia) - Illescas (2609, Spain), Round 7.6.4, 09.11.11

A position with appealing geometry all over.
Morozevich won in style with 30.Rxe2 Rxe2 31.Qxe2! Qxe2 32.bxc7 1-0

Round 8

Sensation as the German team defeat the Azeris 2½-1½ to overtake them in the lead (Naiditsch scoring the crucial win against Radjabov on top board), with Armenia also keeping pace by defeating the Dutch 3-1. The Romanian team surprised yet again by holding Hungary to a draw, and Bulgaria were back to their winning ways, beating Italy 3-1.

Radjabov as White began with 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4, a line I am fond of playing also, although objectively, with Black playing the best lines I don't think White can hope for much of an advantage. I held a faint hope that he had found some new lines to disprove this, but it wasn't to be as Naiditsch comfortably gained the upper hand.

With only the final round to go, the standings (with the first tiebreak factor, game points in brackets) were:

13MP - Armenia (21), Germany (20), paired in Round 9
12MP - Azerbaijan (20), Bulgaria (18½)
11MP - Hungary (19), Romania (19), Russia (18½)

Round 9

Table 4 - Russia beat Slovenia 3-1, but the losses in Rounds 4 and 6 were too costly, so they did not have enough to reach the podium. As Ian Rogers commented on today's The Canberra Times chess column, a team of champions isn't necessarily a champion team - after the failures at gold over the years, it must be difficult to change the flow of things, but they will have to try and meet the expectations as the top seeded team again at next year's Olympiad in Turkey.

Table 3 - A demolition of Bulgaria by Hungary - 4-0!? Leko's win over Topalov was quite exciting, and his teammates also played strongly to win - but such a scoreline between two battle-hardened teams is difficult to explain with just the play. While Hungary had been bubbling a couple of MP's below the leaders for several rounds, eyeing chances of bronze, the Bulgarians had been leading the event at one stage, and perhaps they found it hard to play with both intensity and objectivity when their chances of gold were now very, very slim.

Table 2 - Gashimov and Mamedyarov won again, and the Azeris were victorious against the Romanians 3-1. So, at this point, the Azeris were on 14MP (23GP), and following on 13MP were Hungary (23) and Russia (21½).

As the leaders on 13MP had 21 and 20 GP, Azerbaijan could potentially take gold!
And thanks to their 4-0 win, the Hungarians now were real candidates for bronze.

Armenia beating Germany would lead to...Gold - ARM, Silver - AZE, Bronze - HUN
A 2-2 draw would lead to...Gold - AZE, Silver - ARM, Bronze - GER
Germany beating Armenia would lead to...Gold - GER, Silver - AZE, Bronze - HUN

Table 1 - Naiditsch and Aronian had a quick draw on Board 1, and Fridman-Akopian on Board 3 was also drawn. Germany's 2nd board Meier played a brilliant French game beating Movsesian, so everyone's eyes were on the Board 4 game which lasted over 5 hours - could German Board 4 Gustafsson hold on for a draw to give the team gold, or would Sargissian win to tie the match 2-2, giving Azerbaijan gold?

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So the medals went to:
Germany - 15MP (22.5), Gold
Azerbaijan - 14MP (23), Silver
Hungary - 13MP (23), Bronze;
Armenia (22½) and Russia (21½) missed out on tiebreaks.

No-one saw the 10th seeds as victors before the event - their first team gold since the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939! As has been mentioned in several places, the German team's success was a genuine team effort. Their only two losses were in Round 5 to Bulgaria, and from there - a 3-1 win, followed by tight 2½-1½ wins in the final three rounds - with a different member scoring the much needed point each time.

The final standings on chess-results.com is here.

The best performance ratings in the event were achieved by:
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Azerbaijan Board 3 (!), 7/9, Rp 2866
Michael Adams, England Board 1, 6.5/9, Rp 2841
Alexander Grischuk, Russia Board 2, 5.5/8, Rp 2838
Levon Aronian, Armenia Board 1, 5.5/8, Rp 2833
Zoltan Almasi, Hungary Board 2, 6/8, Rp 2809

The Womens' event was won convincingly by top seeded team Russia (17MP, 25½GP), with Poland taking silver (14MP, 23GP) and Georgia bronze (14MP, 22½GP).

Final round reports with lots of pictures and games on some major chess news sites are below, which are highly recommended viewing.
ChessBase, ChessBase (pictorial), ChessVibes, WhyChess

The 10-game Women's World Championship match between Hou Yifan and Koneru Humpy starts tomorrow, and a few days later the elite Tal Memorial also (16th-25th).

European Teams - Rounds 1-6

2011-11-12T16:22:00.009+11:00

by Junta

The European Team Championships was held in Greece from November 3rd-11th, at Halkidiki which hosted the World Youth U/12's back in 2003, my first overseas event.

The Open section had 38 teams, of which the top four teams had an average rating above 2700, 20 teams were above 2600, and 28 teams were above 2500 - a very strong event. If Australia could have sent in a team with the highest rated lineup possible (average 2480), we would have been seeded 33rd.

I was sure that the battle for gold would be between the highest seeded teams:
#1 Russia (average 2758, determined to win their first team gold in years),
#2 Ukraine (2010 Olympiad winners),
#3 Azerbaijan (2009 European Teams winners) and
#4 Armenia (always formidable in teams events, winning the '06 and '08 Olympiads, and this year's World Teams).

However, with so many strong GMs playing, there were many big upsets and surprises throughout the 9 rounds, and the race to the finish was unusually dramatic, with the leaders changing round by round. Last night, I was up until 3:30am watching the live games, as the allocation of the medals hung on the result of the nervy last game...

From the start of the tournament, though. After the first four rounds, things had already took an unexpected turn, with Azerbaijan, France (6th seeds), Bulgaria (7), Germany (10) and Spain (13) leading on 7 match points after 3 wins and 1 draw each - while Russia, Ukraine and Armenia had only scored +2 =1 -1 (losses to Bulgaria, Germany and Azerbaijan, respectively).

And after Round 5: Bulgaria were sole leaders on 9MP, with Azerbaijan, France, Romania (17) and Greece (19) following on 8MP. Though around the middle of the field in seeding, even these latter two teams had an all-GM team, capable of fighting against any of the stronger teams on a good day.

Round 6 was hard fought at the top, with a single win deciding the winner on Tables 2-4. Bulgaria drew with France at the top, so the standings were now
10MP - Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Romania, and
9MP - Armenia, France and Germany.

By now, the prospects looked grim for Russia and Ukraine, behind on 7 and 6 (!) MP respectively. Although Russia recovered to score =3rd, Ukraine had a shocker, finishing with 4 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses (including one to Switzerland [26]!) at 15th.

Here are some crisp game climaxes from the first two thirds of the event:

Morozevich (2762, Russia) - Svetushkin (2621, Moldova), Round 1.1.3, 03.11.11

An obvious draw. Unfortunately, the worst blunder of the tournament occurred:
76...Rg2?? 77.Rxg2 1-0

Grischuk (2752, Russia) - Laznicka (2703, Czech Republic), Round 2.1.2, 04.11.11

Another drawn position with a Russian player as White.
But the game continued: 39.f4 h5?? 40.Kf5 Ke7 41.Kg6 Kf8 42.Kxh5 1-0

Outspoken Russian team manager Evgeny Bareev commented (from WhyChess):

"In order to complete the rout Alexander Grischuk used a cunning trick: when his opponent had managed to defend a difficult position Grischuk looked from side to side to where his opponents had won, sighed and offered a draw. The pawn ending really was drawn, but could the proud Czech guy agree to that so easily? Of course not, and having used up all his remaining time thinking Viktor boldly advanced one of his pawns. When time trouble ended you could observe the scene, as Laznicka, who was sitting up straight on his chair, found out that he was lost. He slowly started to slide from his chair and found that his feet were far ahead of the table in the aisle, while his head was almost under the table. A painful loss, but a deserved victory for the Russian team."

Mastrovasilis (2621, Greece) - Short (2698, England), Round 2.5.2, 04.11.11

White has a decisive advantage, so Black decided to lose in style:

24.Rhd1 Qc7?? 25.Bf8 Qxc4 26.Bg7# 1-0

Miezis (2547, Latvia) - Navara (2724, Czech Republic), Round 3.9.1, 05.11.11

An attractive finale: 86.Ka6 Bb8 87.Nd7 Bxa7 88.Nc7# 1-0

Gustafsson (2633, Germany)-Efimenko (2702, Ukraine), Round 4.3.4, 06.11.11

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A nice attack!

Hansen (2566, Denmark)-Aronian (2802, Armenia), Round 5.6.1, 07.11.11

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A memorable swindle.

November in chess

2011-11-03T01:27:00.007+11:00

November 1st
- The November FIDE rating lists were published. For the first time, there are four players with a published rating of 2800 or above, with Carlsen near his PB (of 2828) at 2826, Anand at 2811, Aronian at 2802 and Kramnik at 2800 (his first published rating of 2800 or over since January 2003).
There are 47 players rated 2700 or over, and about 175 players rated between 2600 and 2700.

The top end of the (active) Australian list sees just a little bit of change, most notably the juniors Max Illingworth rising from 2358 to 2401 and James Morris from 2327 to 2364. Assuming they will also play in the Australian Championships at Geelong (Dec 27-Jan 8), the field looks to be quite strong, with Li Chao (!), Zhao, Xie, Johansen, Solomon, Ly, Ikeda, Cheng and Steadman (NZ) being the titled players already registered.

- The Category 4 Melbourne Club Cup Weekender concluded, with George Xie scoring an impressive 8.5/9, followed by Bobby Cheng 2nd on 7.5, and Morris, Solomon, Brown, Rujevic, Garner, Tan on 6.

November 3rd-11th
- The 18th European Team Championships kicks off in Greece. Although the biennial Olympiad is of course the most colourful competition on the chess calendar, this year has seen a wealth of strong team events, with the World Team Championships in July and the European Club Cup which concluded a month ago; not to mention the strong national leagues in Europe and Asia, especially the Bundesliga. David Smerdon had a taste of the Dutch League very recently when he played Yasser Seirawan on top board for his team.

Russia hopes to stop its drought of gold in recent years with an elite team of Svidler, Karjakin, Grischuk, Morozevich and Nepomniachtchi (Kramnik is conserving energy towards another tournament later in the month) - but the other top seeds, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia will not make it easy for them.

The Open Section results are here, and Womens' here.

November 13th-30th
The Women's World Championship match between Hou Yifan (China) and Koneru Humpy (India) will be held in Albania, consisting of 10 games followed by a tie-break if necessary. The official site is here.

November 16th-25th
An absolutely mouthwatering field is assembled for the 10-player round robin, Tal Memorial in Moscow. The four players in the 2800 club are all playing, followed by world #6 Ivanchuk, #8 Karjakin, #10 Nakamura, #12 Svidler (2011 Russian Champion and World Cup winner), #14 Gelfand (his game against Anand should be interesting to watch) and #20 Nepomniachtchi (2010 Russian champion)!!
The average rating: 2776, surely a record for a 10-player round robin. Throw in Radjabov, Topalov, Morozevich and Grischuk for a dream Wijk aan Zee.

November 19th-20th
The Category 2 Vikings Weekender will be held in Canberra.
At the moment George Xie, Vlad Smirnov, Andrew and Junta are the top players entered.

November 26th-27th
The Category 1 Caloundra Open will be held on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Hungary - Part 2

2011-10-23T19:53:00.014+11:00

"There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar."
Garry Kasparov

"Only those with inferior taste prefer the unnecessarily complicated to the simple. Sound human understanding chooses from two equally appropriate moves the one which is more straightforward and less complex."
Emanuel Lasker

"If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid."
Murphy's Laws of Combat

by Andrew

After a dismal start, I was paired against GM Gyula Sax (2491) in the fourth round, who apparently is an ex-candidate for the World Championship, and is still remarkably strong at the age of 60. Luckily I got the Queen's Indian I was hoping to get, and I gained quite a bit of time by being able to bash out theory and leave my opponent either trying to remember or trying to work out the best moves - perhaps a bit of both.

I got exactly the position I'd looked at up until move 19, and all I had to do was play a simple knight retreat and continue with a straightforward plan that is hard for Black to do anything against. Instead, as you can imagine, I played a rather dubious but very exciting move that adequately bamboozled my opponent for him to think for half an hour and miss the simple win. However, after the first few moves of the combination I decided, yet again, against the straightforward option which would have given me very decent compensation and this time had to suffer with a clearly worse position. Fortunately though, due to my opponent's time trouble, I was able to swindle a draw out of the resulting ending.

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Okay, so I didn't win the next four. Actually from the fourth round on I continued as "expected", more or less. My next game against IM Julian Estrada (2285) was very interesting, and although I made another of my typically unnecessarily complicated moves (as in, the reasoning behind the move, not the manner in which the move is carried out - for example using one's elbows to move the piece and pressing the clock with one's head) I felt it could have gone either way until just a few moves before the end.

After 40.g5

Resorting, once again, to my bamboozling tactics I played 40...Rf2?! (according to Houdini 1.5a w32 Black can achieve a draw with 40...Ra8 41.Ra1 Kh8 42.Bd3 Rd2 43.g6 Rxd3 44.Rxd3 b2 45.Rdd1 bxa1=Q 46.Rxa1 Ra3) which allowed for a study-like finish after 41.Kxf2 Rf8+ 42.Rf3 Rxf3+ 43.Kxf3 b2 44.Kg4! a1=Q 45.h7+ Kg7 46.Rf7+! Kxg6 47.h8=N#! (D)

The (almost) Paradox Knight-mate

The final position deserves its own diagram. It looks almost paradoxical at first, as the knight can't have got there from any other square; then you realise that it was just promoted. I think this must be the most beautiful final position I've ever had.

Another loss, but I guess I don't mind losing like that. My Round 6 game was against yet another GM - this time against Serbian Zlatko Ilincic (2467) - again with the Black pieces. It started off as a Fianchetto King's Indian with his normal deviation of the mainline with 9.b3. I played an early queen move that, although not altogether bad, was probably not the best option. My pieces got a bit cramped up in the middlegame and I made an interesting sacrifice which was probably the best move this time, but eventually my opponent proved that it wasn't enough for me to be able to hold the game.

Hmm... 0.5/6. Could be worse, I guess.

Who knows, perhaps the man in the foreground was on 0/6.

And at least I'd got all the GMs out of the way.

Round 7 I was White against American FM Erik Kislik (2320). It was a Grunfeld with Bb5+ on move 7. I got what I felt was quite a reasonable position and in the middle game I would have had quite a bit of an advantage had I not carelessly swapped off into an endgame. The game ended in a draw. I got to know Erik pretty well over the course of the tournament and it was nice not to have to eat lunch on my own every day. I often had dinner with him too, as well as Julian Estrada and Carla Heredia Serrano (who played in the IM group).

On top of the mall, looking out over the city.

In Round 8 I had my best game of the tournament, or at least the most entertaining. I played the Chinese player Qiang Hou (2320) as Black. It started in a very long line of the Sveshnikov where I'd sacrificed two queenside pawns to get a kingside attack. He missed a tricky move in the middlegame that would have given him a definite advantage and made a "safe" move when it was unsafe to do so. Then a final time-trouble-assisted blunder from him allowed me a nice way to finish.

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So after a late tournament comeback I was on par with my expected score, but unfortunately I was defeated swiftly by FM Tamas Fodor (2458) in the last round when I ran out of theory quite literally on move 4 and then proceeded to self-destruct, probably more due to apathy or exhaustion than anything else.

As was the case in Sunningdale, there was no presentation or closing ceremony after the tournament. And all the people I'd met and friends I'd made were no longer there the next day, such is the case in many a chess tournament. Before my trip I tended to be more reserved during tournaments for a mixture of reasons, and I've learnt a great deal now about independence and taking care of myself with out the support of friends or family. But I've also come to realise the importance of making the most of those opportunities, as it really enriches the whole experience when there are like-minded people to share it with. This realisation helped to make Hungary one of the best parts of my trip.

And although I would have felt quite disappointed with such a tournament earlier, it doesn't worry me too much now. As Zong-Yuan Zhao said to me just before I left Australia, "Remember, it's just chess; it's not life". I did my best, and while I didn't perform as well as I wanted to, what I've learned from these tournaments and experiences is simply invaluable. A physical, mental and emotional journey I'll never forget.

P.S: Max Illingworth has written a great article on deciding between the straightforward and the complex on the Sydney Academy of Chess site, which can be reached here. The article happens to contain my most flattering example of the latter over the former.

Hungary - Part 1

2011-10-17T13:17:00.006+11:00

"You'd better make a GM norm. Just pretend you're in NZ."
Correspondence from Fedja before the tournament.

A wise man once said, 'Hungarians are strange creatures'.

by Andrew

I arrived in Budapest on the afternoon of the 16th of September, and stayed at the Medosz Hotel on the street Jokai Ter in the centre of the city. I woke up quite late the next morning - getting to breakfast just before they were about to close the restaurant - and then headed out to Oktogon Square. While my brain pondered the validity of the concept of a square being octagonal, I walked around there and found an ATM and the Ferenc Liszt (Franz Liszt) music store to browse through some very cheap selections of sheet music.

Opposite Jokai Ter in Budapest

After checking out at 11am with my 21kg suitcase and 10kg backpack, I asked the lady at reception for directions to the nearest train station. She told me that if I walk to the end of this street, turn left, and continue walking for 5-10 mins, the Nyugati Train Station (which would take me directly to Kecskemet) will be on my right. Easy enough, I thought and said, 'I'll be okay', when she offered me a map. So, naturally, I arrived at Nyugati Station two and a half hours later, after taking a route that looked something like this:

Blue = Walking
Red = Train
Green = Correct Route
Yellow Highlight = Origin (Jokai Ter - with the red balloon) and Destination (Nyugati Station)

Distance Covered: 13.3km - 6.2km by foot, 7.1km by train
Necessary Distance to Cover: 750m (5 - 10 minute walk or 2 minute bus ride from Oktogon Square)

Okay, maybe next time I'll take the map. Although I was quite sure I followed the lady's directions ... strange ... I wonder if your thoughts turn now as mine did to the quote from the wise man at the beginning of this post. I reflected on this observation many times over the course of my Hungarian journey.

One of the many train stations I went to

Anyway, I arrived at the Nyugati Station at around 1:30pm and after struggling for a little while to find where to buy tickets, finally made it onto the train to Kecskemet.

Aside from my week in England for the Sunningdale tournament, I had spent all my time in Europe in the Netherlands, where although English isn't the native language, just about everyone speaks it quite well and most of the signs are in English too. It was only after I got to Hungary that I realised I really should have looked up some common Hungarian words and phrases before I got there.

But I did manage to make it to the tournament venue/hotel - Caissa Panzio, near the centre of the city - by taxi (not taking any chances this time), and was greeted by the tournament organiser Tamas Erdelyi, who kindly showed me my room and then gave me a 30 minute tour of the surrounding areas.

Outside the Caissa Panzio

Park in the centre of Kecskemet, with chess players in background

When I got back it was just about time for the first round. None of us had any idea who we were playing until the player numbers were drawn immediately before the first round. Unfortunately I got paired with the GM Attila Groszpeter (2521) as Black in the first round. The game was a closed Sveshnikov in which a couple of my dubious moves in the opening lead to him being able to secure a slight advantage. I felt like I was defending the whole game and as if I never really made any big mistakes, but he ended up winning quite comfortably.

My second round was a bit of a disaster. I played the underrated 13-year-old Tibor Antal (2286) as White. I should have prepared better before the game, as it was quite clear what opening I was going to get, but it had somehow turned out reasonably well until I made a serious mistake that gave him all the initiative, and suddenly I was fighting to equalise. Before long I made another mistake and I had to sac a piece to have any hope of staying in the game (by perpetual check) but he refuted all my attempts and before long I had to call it a day.

The nice and cosy tournament venue, with organiser Tamas Erdelyi to the right.
The venue also had a lot of interesting chess memorabilia and artwork.

In the 3rd round I got paired with another GM as Black: top seed Levente Vajda (2557). Vajda is quite easy to prepare for as he basically only plays the Alapin (c3-Sicilian) after 1.e4 c5, but he is one of the world's leading experts in it and can easily turn an objectively equal, normal looking position into a dynamic, attacking position that is not easy to defend against. I got quite a decent position after about 20 moves but missed an attacking idea that he had, and before long I made a serious blunder that gave him a mate in 5. Interestingly, although I wasn't too fond of the position I got into after 24 moves, I looked at the game later with a chess engine and found another way to defend that probably would have resulted in a draw with best play from both sides.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

So by losing the first 3 games, I had not only lost all chances of securing a GM norm, but continued with the very pattern of results I had hoped to stop in this tournament - that of 4 losses, 4 wins, 4 losses from my last 12 games. But on the upside, I thought, at least I could look forward to 4 wins now...

Part 2 will be up in a few days.

My first steps in chess

2011-10-15T00:44:00.003+11:00

by Junta

The other day, we had guests over for dinner, and one of them was a 6-year old boy. There was some time until the meal, and I would usually push the responsibility of playing with young children on to my sister, but as she was busy, I had to face up to the giant task myself.

He wanted to learn how to play chess. Slightly reluctant at first, having never taught the absolutely basic rules to anyone as long as I can remember, it was an enjoyable 15 minutes or so, playing a game with him while teaching how the pieces move, capturing, checking, getting out of check, and checkmate.

Answering each of his careful, oblivious moves with a lightning-fast bang, I crushed the child's ego with 4.Qxf7#.

Just kidding.

After several moves, his dark-squared bishop gave a check on b4, and with some hints and encouragement, in the grasp of the little fingers, the wooden piece zoomed diagonally backwards and forwards, munching a large part of my army. As he finally got a rook out on the open e-file behind his queen, I moved my queen's rook to the undefended e1-square, next to my king on f1.

...Qxe1#, the first ever checkmate in the boy's life.
Jumping up and down on the sofa, he shouted in excitement and joy: "I won I won I won!!" He wanted another game, but it was time for dinner.

Later, I became curious about what my forgotten, first steps in chess were like.
My father explained: at first, he was teaching my sister when I was 4 or 5 - asking me if I wanted to learn also, my answer would be a no. A year or two later, the curiosity got the better of me this time, and I took up the game.

From that day on, chess became a big part of my life. Each night, after dinner, I would challenge my father to another game. For weeks and weeks, I would lose every game, but as 6 weeks or so had passed, the losses were alternating with wins. Some time later, I would win all the games.

It was time to look for more opponents. In 1999, I joined my first junior chess club (incidentally, I have been coaching at the club with the same name for some years now), and gained my first ACF rating of 315. 12 years later, and here I am.

I'm sure many have wondered: what would my life have been like without chess?

I must finish this post with the words of a world champion, from
The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal (2009 Reprint, Everyman Chess).

"... But about my first game. When one of us first plays chess, he is like a man who has caught a dose of microbes of, say, Hong Kong 'flu. Such a man walks along the street, and he does not yet know that he is ill. He is healthy, he feels fine, but the microbes are doing their work. Something similar, though less harmful, occurs in chess. ... You lose the first game. But at some time, if your father or elder brother or simply an old friend wants to be kind to you, then you win, and as a result feel very proud of yourself. A few days pass, and suddenly you involuntarily begin to sense that, without chess, there is something missing in your life. Then you may rejoice: you belong to that group of people without a natural immunity to the chess disease..."

Marvelling at Super GMs' play

2011-10-12T19:48:00.004+11:00

by Junta

A simplified banner - tempting to incorporate into FIGJAM

A great website I visit daily when elite tournaments are being held is
www.2700chess.com .

Conducted since May 1st, the website has:
1. a live, informative FIDE rating list of players rated over 2700; and
2. a game viewer with all of their recent games you can play through.

Personally, I find the quality of the top players' games quite inspiring, and although I usually just play over all of the games from the previous day, it can be a good training method to pick a game, choose a side (2700+) and after the opening stage, compare the moves you come up with to the one played.

Some memorable recent games (which made me smile while replaying them) are:
Caruana-Berg, European Club Cup (2) - great endgame technique.
Gelfand-Jobava, European Club Cup (3) - a queen sac in the style of Ivanchuk.*
Moiseenko-Morozevich, Saratov Governor's Cup (3) - a mobile queen.
Ni Hua-Morozevich, Saratov Governor's Cup (4) - R's+P's overpowering RBN.

* - Examples (I'm sure there are more of them in the database):
1. the famous 'Final Fantasy' game against Jobava in last year's Olympiad

After 11.Qd2xRe1

2. an interesting battle from this year's Greek Team's Championships

38...Be5-f6 0-1

3. the classic from the 1996 Wijk aan Zee with 21.Qg4-g7

4. the win over Karjakin in the 2008 Amber (Rapid) named 'Speed Racer'

14.Qe3xPe6+

Malaysian Open - Team Rapid

2011-09-27T01:49:00.003+10:00

"Can we order two crispy ducks please?" "...(waitress starts giggling furiously, is smiling for the whole time we are there, and whispers to many of the other waiter/waitresses, leaving us feeling quite awkward)"

by Junta

Didn't the Malaysian Open finish at the end of August? Due to extraneous circumstances, some understandable and some which might be better represented by the words 'lazy contributor', the draft of this post lay untouched in the 'Edit Posts' section for a whole month.

To wrap up the Malaysian Open Chess Festival, the 31st ASTRO Merdeka Rapid Open Team Championships was held on the last two days - a very popular event, more than 80 teams of 4 or 5 players (where there was one reserve) filled the spacious playing hall, causing the top five tables to be moved to a smaller but comfortable 'elite room', like at a recent Olympiad.

Our team, the Klang Valley Kangaroos, comprised of Gary Lane on Board 1, myself on Board 2, Fedja on Board 3 and Brian Jones on Board 4 for an average rating of around 2200, at 6th seed. Although this was rapidplay, it was my first teamplay event since the Singapore World U/16 Olympiad in 2007, and with the pressure of FIDE-rated games over, it was set to be an enjoyable 9 rounds.

Round 7, Table 3: Klang Valley Kangaroos vs. Dragon Two

Many of the 84 teams contained or were entirely made up of young juniors, and we encountered the wrath of youth from the very first round. Facing four players around four feet tall across the four boards, I honestly thought it would be an easy walkover, but I had to resort to converting a slightly better endgame in my opponent's time pressure. While Gary and Brian didn't struggle as much, Fedja was a slice of mangosteen away from humiliation in his game, as the talented little girl actually had forced mate in the final position, but her clock ran out before Fedja may have ran out of the room had he been mated.

As we later found out, these juniors possessed ratings of 1400 up to 1700.
Of course, we did underestimate them, but they played very strongly. As Brian quipped to us, "Are you guys feeling old now, up against these young players?" - surprised by our younger adversaries' talent, we indeed felt older.
We can understand now: how annoying it must have been for adults to play our generation when we were all so small and improving quickly!

To sum up our team's performance, Gary was incredible on Board 1, scoring 8/9 (+7 =2) against formidable opposition (performance: 2492), very unlucky to miss out on the board gold medal. Fedja started like a house on fire with 5/5 and then salvaged 1.5/4 (many points thanks to his 'flagging' skills) to be an impressive point-getter. Brian performed credibly on Board 4, scoring important points for the team. Sadly, I let the team down, losing to a 2000 in Round 3 and then finishing with triple castling (the first on this entire trip) in the all-important matches to finish with 4.5/9 and leave the team finishing only 10th.

Here are a couple of my games - I was quite happy with my Round 6 game, one of my best in Malaysia.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

But one round later, against a player I had beaten in the blitz and lost to in the individual rapid, I made some big mistakes in the tense middlegame and lost.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

Another of my exciting games, I found my opponent had annotated here.

Final standings of the event are here.

Due to higher-scoring teams receiving other prizes, we were moved up to 7th place

Amsterdam Adventures

2011-09-18T05:27:00.007+10:00

"So I told my friend, '12', and he asked me, 'How many moves do you think ahead?'"
Comedian and chess player Tex de Wit

"Whomever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one's opponent will never become a good chess player."
Max Euwe

"Is is is in Dutch, isn't it?"
My thoughts while trying to interpret what people are saying on TV.

by Andrew

The title I chose for this post is nice and short, but I instinctively decided to make another assonating title, which is shown below.

"An Actual Available Account Articulating and Appreciating Andrew's Absolutely Amazing Adventures Around Amsterdam - Are Amsterdam's Alcoholics Anonymous associations as awesome as Andrew's amazing adventures around Amsterdam? Answer: Affirmative." Although "Amsterdam Adventures" assonates accurately anyway and, as aforementioned, acts as an appropriate and attractive alternative.

Now that I've (hopefully) got your attention...

After my tournament in Haarlem, I once again came back to Amsterdam, where I was to spend the next two and a half weeks - from 29th August-15th September. In that time I saw and did a variety of interesting things - from visiting chess museums, to taking canal cruises, to seeing comedy shows - although I did refrain from going to some of the city's more disturbing of tourist attractions...

One of the city's more disturbing tourist attractions ... which I didn't go to.*

*In Amsterdam, a "coffeeshop" is a shop with the primary purpose of selling cannabis and hash (some actually don't even serve coffee), as opposed to a cafe, where drugs are prohibited and the normal stuff is almost invariably available.*

*Say 'invariably available' 10 times fast before you continue reading.

But although doing touristy things was a top priority, it was also nice for me to have myself a decent break: I had had four consecutive 9-round tournaments (following a 7-round Australian weekender) with only a few days between each one to relax and reflect.

Me relaxing and reflecting ... in Vlissingen.

Although I can't remember the order all that well, all the things I did are listed below - the most blogworthy things, anyway.

Museums

The first museum I saw was, I believe, Amsterdam's most famous: The Rijkmuseum. I was actually intending to go to the Max Euwe museum on this day, but I'd gone way past it and couldn't find it, so I decided to go here instead. This was a very old building that at the time was being refurbished. Thankfully it was still open for the general public. The Rijkmuseum contained a lot of fascinating history about the Netherlands, and, among other things, I learned about how the once very powerful Dutch Navy made it to America and founded the city of New Amsterdam. This city was then later colonised by the British and called New York (which made it clearer to me why there was a Haarlem and a Harlem).

Rijkmuseum near Museumplein

The next day I went out again to Leidseplein. Leidseplein (known by some English speakers as Led Zeppelin) is quite a common area for tourists to go to, being close to many museums and other interesting places (and of course coffeeshops), and also a common nightlife destination. In the area that the tram I took stopped at, there was also often live entertainment - bands playing, people breakdancing, and a guy hitting a tennis ball attached to an elastic band for hours on end, in the hope that it would sell his product. My intention on this day was once again to go to the Max Euwe museum, and this time I found a few people watching a giant chess game take place in Max Euwe Square, so I knew I had to be close. However, after looking around for quite a while, I yet again failed to find the museum.

Giant chess board at Max Euweplein

So instead I decided to go to the Van Gogh museum, where I found many fascinating works of his and learned a lot about his short but interesting life. The final museum I went to was the Rembrandthuis (Rembrandt House). This was where the famous painter lived and worked in his prime during the mid-17th century. Here I saw a huge collection of his art and many bizarre sculptures that he collected.

Canal near Museumplein

Max Euwe Museum and Library

I know what you must have been thinking up til now: What 19-year old male would go to Amsterdam and not visit the chess museum!? Well, luckily, one day I did manage to get there after not being able to find the entrance three times already. The 4th time came after I went to see Tex de Wit, whom I had met during the BDO. He had invited me around to his place to play blitz with himself and his friend. I told him about how I had tried to find the Max Euwe Museum and he said that I had to go in the building and press one of the numbers to be let upstairs, and then be taken in by the curator. It wasn't far from his place, and he liked the idea of going there, so we all went together anyway.

When we got there, the curator gave us a tour of the museum, however he only spoke in Dutch, so Tex had to translate for me. I saw lots of pictures of Max Euwe - as well as many other famous players whose faces I wouldn't previously have been able to identify - and learnt some interesting facts about his life. Max Euwe was only an amateur player when he became World Champion, which lasted from 1935-1937. He was also a mathematician, teacher and author. In fact he wrote around 70 chess books, much more than any other World Champion.

The museum also contained several other chess related things, including a timeline showing all the Dutch Grandmasters up to the present day - with 16-year-old Robin van Kampen about to be inlcuded - and an old specially-made Nazi chess set, with tanks, missiles, soliders, etc. for pieces. (The white pieces were the bigger and more powerful weapons, as they were supposed to represent the Nazi army.)

Nazi Chess Set in the Max Euwe Museum

After the tour of the museum, we were shown into the library, which had a collection over 10000 chess books inside. As there are so many different chess books, from opening, to endgame, to strategy, to biographies, etc., many keen chess players often come to this library to study. Also in this collection is one of the oldest surviving books on chess, 'The Bishop', by Ruy Loepez, dating back to the 1500s.

Blitz Tournament

A couple of days after visiting the Max Euwe Museum, Tex asked me if I wanted to come to his club to play in a blitz tournament on Thursday night at 8:00pm. By that stage I hadn't had any competitive chess (apart from the few games at his house) for almost two weeks, and so, eager to get my fix again, I replied with the affirmative. I left the house around 7:00, thinking that the two trams I'd need to take should get me there with 5 or 10 minutes to spare. However, I didn't account for the tram I was taking being 25 minutes late. Nor did I account for not being able to find the place when I got there. So when I finally found the place after 8:30, I was expecting to have already forfeited my first two games. But luckily for me they hadn't started yet.

The blitz was done as a 13 round all-play-all, with playing strength ranging from around 1700 to 2300. I've never really considered myself much of a blitz player, but for some reason today I was feeling pretty good. I got to 4/4, expecting I'd be playing Tex, who'd also been winning all his games. We both got to about 6/6 before he lost one game, but we still hadn't played each other. After several narrow escapes and lucky wins, I managed to get to 12/12, and I was paired with Tex (11/12) for the last round. After thinking for too long in the opening and then missing a nice exchange sacrifice he had, Tex beat me fairly comfortably, so 1st place was shared between us on 12/13.

Results sheet

Unfortunately the only prize for coming equal first in this blitz tournament, was the satisfaction of coming equal first in this blitz tournament. But we decided it was necessary to take a winners' photo, just for the record.*

Tex and me (winners are grinners!)

*This was actually the 8th photo we took... I guess that's what late-night blitz does to you.

Comedy show

At the blitz tournament, I had asked Tex what it was like being a stand-up comedian. He said he had only been performing for around 6 months, so it was a relatively new experience for him. But he asked if I wanted to come to a gig he was doing Friday night, which was going to be entirely in English. So before I knew it, I was at the

There were four acts of stand-up comedy altogether - three Dutch comedians and one English. I thoroughly enjoyed all the performances, but I think I understood some of Tex's chess jokes better than the rest of the audience.

After the show I had the luxury of hanging around with some of the comedians and listening to many entertaining stories about multi-functional steam-cleaners, politically-incorrect Australians, and elephant genitals.

Other news

Before I continue going on about myself, I would like to start off this section by congratulating Max Illingworth, who in the First Saturday GM Tournament in Hungary this September became the youngest Australian ever to make a GM norm, as well as the first to make a GM norm before getting the IM title. Max beat all 3 GMs who played (which could also be a record), and placed =1st in the tournament with 7/9 and a performance rating of 2638!

After suffering from the many disadvantages of not feeding myself properly during the BDO, I decided that it was important for me to find some wholesome, nutritious food to get me back into good condition. After all:

"The stomach is an important part of the chess master."

Bent Larsen

So I went and got the best food a chess player can possibly eat.

But unfortunately, the human-being part of me decided against having only chess-piece chocolate biscuits - which no doubt drastically enhance checkmating abilities - for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I went and bought a large range of ingredients, which I used to cook up my best meal yet:

Fried rice (already half eaten, believe it or not)

On my last full day in Holland, I went to the Rembrantplein, walked around some scenic areas, bought some souvenirs, and took a canal cruise to finish off a very relaxed and enjoyable day.

Seeing the Statue of Rembrandt at Rembrandtplein

Cruising the canals

And ~~swimming the~~ walking the canals

Having the opportunity to visit and enjoy spending time in one of Europe's most famous and exciting of cities was something that I came to appreciate a lot more during the final two and a half weeks I spent there - and I'm sure I will continue to appreciate it once I am back home, working, and attending my first year of uni. Now that it's time for me to leave Amsterdam, I hope that I will enjoy my experience in Hungary, and be able to come back to Amsterdam in the future.

Maybe even next year...

"Hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."

I'm writing now from Kecskemet in Hungary, and I am about to experience my first ever GM tournament. The Kecskemet tournament and the better-known First Saturday tournament take place each month in Hungary, with the latter being held at the start of each month in Budapest, and the former during the second half, taking place in Kecskemet (a city about 90km south-east of Budapest). My first round begins tomorrow at 3:00pm (11:00pm AEST), but unfortunately there is no website for this event, and nowhere online (at least, not that I've found) to check the results. However, I will be posting regularly during this tournament to keep you informed on how it's going. Until then, I feel it is only appropriate to finish this the way I started.

Adios, Amsterdam! And hopefully historical Hungary has hundred heavenly happenings happening half-hourly. Haha.

BDO Tournament in Haarlem - Part 2

2011-09-08T06:46:00.016+10:00

"Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays."

Omar Khayyam, around 1070

By Andrew

Two days prior to Day 5 (Day 3) I had learned that the food and drinks provided in our playing area were free, and until then I hadn't yet taken advantage of this rare opportunity. So before Round 5 I got there 15 minutes early and had as many sandwiches as I could eat in 15 minutes. Now that I was well- (and possibly over-) nourished and very keen to end my miserable losing streak, the gong sounded, and I began my Round 5 game with the white pieces against Dutchman FM Bart Gijswijt (2341). (There actually was a gong that the arbiter sounded at 1:00pm each day to signal the start of the round. So getting there early wasn't just to eat sandwiches, but also to make sure I didn't miss this battle-inducing BDO novelty.)

The opening was similar to the Cambridge Springs variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined, but with the moves a4 and a6 inserted. Whether or not it is advantageous for White to play this way, I wasn't sure, but I got quite a reasonable position after my opponent missed a couple of opportunites to combat my weaknesses. After a pawn sacrifice later in the game, my opponent made the mistake of offering a second pawn thinking that he would be able to trap my bishop, but missed a nice combination I could play to rescue the piece or win material.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

It seemed I was suddenly back on track and playing better. Was it the food? We may never know for sure. But I continued to eat better for the rest of the tournament just in case.

In Round 6 I played another Dutchman Tom Bottema (2247). The game started with the 3...g6 variation of the Rossolimo (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6), which lead to a very comfortable position for me after my opponent neglected to make an early pawn push and instead allowed me to take hold of the centre and enjoy a significant space advantage. After reaching quite a good-looking middle game, I found it very hard to know which plan to follow and after a thinking for a long time I chose the wrong one. After this he was well and truly back in the game, and soon he was a bit better but missed a few chances to give me serious problems. After we had both reached the time control (30 mins added on after 40 moves), I was a pawn up but with quite an unsafe king and I had to be careful. However my opponent made a terrible blunder on move 41 allowing forced mate in 6.

Position after 40...Kf7

After 41.Qf3?? the rest of the game went 41...Re1+ 42.Kh2 Bg1+ 43.Kh1 Bf2+ 44.Kh2 Rh1+ 0-1. If he had played 41.Qg3 Bf8 42.c4 instead, the game would probably be drawn with best play.

Playing area for GM and IM groups (before the tournament)

Playing area for BDO Open

In the 7th round I came to the playing hall expecting to be playing White against James Jackson (after not double-checking the pairings), and when I got to my board I realised with quite a shock I was actually paired with IM Piet Peelen (2354) whom I hadn't done any preparation for. But somehow, probably due to my morale-boosting rounds 5 and 6 I managed to play my best game of the tournament.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

In Round 8 I played Black against English player James Jackson (2157) who was asked to fill in for Reiner Odendahl on account of the latter falling ill immediately before the tournament. The game started with a variation of the Sveshnikov which lead to quite a blocked up position. My opponent made a mistake by castling, which allowed me to attack and develop my pieces on the kingside. Later in the game we both missed good some chances but eventually we got down to an interesting R+B vs. R+N where I was down a pawn but my strong knight on c5 gave me enough compensation for it. The rest of the game is shown below.

After 42...a4

43.bxa4 Rf3! 44.Rh8 Ra3 45.Rb8 Rxa4 46.Kg2? After this mistake White is probably lost. 46...Kf6 (Rxa2 was more direct) 47.h5 Strangely enough 47.Kg1 was probably the best move here. 47...Rxa2 48.Rxb4 (D)

48...e3 49.Rb6 Rxf2+ 50.Kg1 Rd2 51.h6 Kg6 52.h7 Kxh7 53.Bh3 Rd1+ 54.Kg2 e2 0-1

In going from having 4 losses in a row to 4 wins in a row my tournament had flipped upside-down, and suddenly I was doing quite well, coming 5th and gaining 17 points. However, unfortunately this run didn't continue into the last round (or did continue...?*), with me losing a miserable final round game to IM Fred Slingerland (2390), which sadly, this time, I don't think I can blame on the food I had the previous night.
*(Hopefully this isn't the start of another series of 4 losses.)

David Klein won the IM tournament outright with a very impressive 7/9, scoring an IM norm in the process. In the GM group, GM Maxim Turov continued his good form from the Dutch Open, scoring 6.5/9 and narrowly edging out The Netherlands' newest (and youngest) grandmaster, Robin van Kampen, for first place on tiebreak. Consequently Turov qualifies for the C group at the Tata Steel (formerly Corus) Tournament in 2012. Full results are available here for the Premier section and here for the Challengers. With my 4/9 I ended up tying for equal 5th in my tournament, winning 20 Euros.

All in all it was an enjoyable and memorable tournament for me both in the chess, and in seeing the very interesting and historical town of Haarlem. Since the end of the BDO tournament I've been in Amsterdam relaxing, doing a lot of sight-seeing and preparing for my next tournament in Hungary. I'll be sure to post more about my adventures - chess and otherwise - before then.

Walking around Haarlem

Teyler's Museum

BDO Tournament in Haarlem - Part 1

2011-09-06T03:39:00.006+10:00

"The business is above thy strength, thou alone canst not bear it."
Exodus 18:18

"Losing hurts more than winning is nice."
Nigel Short

By Andrew

After Sunningdale I came back to Amsterdam for a few days to relax before the BDO Tournament in Haarlem. Once the capital of Holland, Haarlem is only 15 minutes from Amsterdam by train, and is one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands. Many old buildings there have been preserved very well, with some dating back to the 13th century. These include the Teyler's Museum, which is apparently the oldest museum in Europe; the Grote Kerk (Great Church), which is a truly gigantic monument in the city centre built over a 150 year period starting in the 1300s; and the town hall, which was where the opening ceremony for the BDO Chess Tournament was to be held.

A small portion of the Great Church in Haarlem's town centre.

The opening ceremony was quite nice, with free food and drinks, and after a rather unusual presentation about the significance of the number 7 (this being the 7th edition of the BDO), the players in the GM and IM tournaments were called up to pick their numbers to sort out the pairings for each round. After the presentation I listened to a couple of performances from the Haarlem Jazz Festival which happened to be taking place on that weekend in the town centre.

In Round 1 I was white against the Bulgarian IM Petar Arnaudov (2439). The opening was a Blumenfeld Gambit, which I had just encountered in my last tournament (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nc6). At the start of the middle game, instead of playing it simple and enjoying my slight positional advnantage, I decided to go berserk and I ended up with a rook and two pawns for his bishop and knight. Eventually I managed to swap off queens, and the resulting endgame was fairly decent for me, but in time pressure I played some inaccurate moves and ended up with a very exposed king. Consequently he quickly found a way to force me to give up a rook to prevent mate, and so I resigned soon after.

Haarlem Jazz Festival

In my second round game I was black against the very appropriately-named Dutch stand-up comedian Tex de Wit. We got into a (double) King's Indian which soon lead to an interesting sort of position that neither of us had really come across before. Eventually we swapped off rooks and the position was looking quite drawish until Tex sacrificed his a-pawn for play on the kingside. I took the sacrifice and defended fairly easily, until we reached the following position:

Position after 35.Bg2

Here, after the obvious 35...Bd7 Black has no problems. However, I made the mistake of playing 35...Bf7? after which he continued 36.Nh6+ Kg7 37.Nxf7 Kxf7. And here I thought his best move was 38.hxg6+, completely missing the obvious 38.Qh6. After this I'm not lost; in fact my knight can fend off any mate threats exceptionally well here, but I proceded to make blunder after blunder and ended up two pawns down in a lost bishop vs. knight ending. After two rounds I was on 0/2... not a great start, but I expected that things would start to pick up in the next round. It was not to be.

My worst game came in Round 3 against FM David Klein (2366). Shortly after the opening I decided against a good opportunity to get a double-edged, but probably advantageous position for me, to play a move that looked more 'normal', and soon after I was paying the price. After a few more moves I was under quite a bit of pressure, and probably had to sacrifice a pawn to stay in the the game.

Position after 26...Qd2

Instead I blundered a piece - 27.h4?? Qxe2 - and resigned immediately afterwards.

I continued in similar fashion in Round 4, losing to English FM Peter Poobalasingam (2299) in 29 moves. After he played a dubious pawn sacrifice in the opening, I took it, then played several unnecessary 'safety' moves and gave him more than enough compensation for the pawn. Then after he played a couple of neat (and sound) sacrifices I was lost.

Of course, I was getting used to losing by then. I'd lost my last 5 tournament games, and out of my last 12 games I had scored just 2 points. When I got back to my apartment I decided something had to change. Whether it was my lack of exercise, my poor sleep pattern, my diet or something else, I wasn't sure. However, I had a feeling that since my last four nights' dinners had consisted primarily of two microwaveable meals, some chocolate biscuits and some grapes, diet probably wasn't a bad place to start.

Panoramic view of my apartment - Part 1

Part 2 - the alcohol is not mine... unfortunately.

I went to the shop and bought a range of ingredients that I could cook with for the next few nights, including some good sources of protein (brain food), such as chicken and what I thought was beef (which turned out to be pork). There I had my most embarrassing experience at a Dutch supermarket checkout thus far, (well in front of not weighing a bunch of bananas before attempting to purchase them) when after holding up the rest of the line for several minutes trying to get either of my cards to register, I had to put the majority of my items back so as to be able to pay for them with the few coins I had left in my wallet. Since the shop was meant to shut at 8:00pm, and it was already 8:05, I knew I was in with a chance, so I rushed out and managed to find an ATM that worked, got 50 euros and headed back in. The shop doors had just started coming down and I thought it would be another evening of sad malnourishment, but when I got there the manager reluctantly let me take back the rest of my items and pay for them. Tonight I would be having a proper dinner!

'A proper dinner'

Part 2 will be up within the next couple of days.

World Cup tipping!

2011-08-28T10:07:00.015+10:00

by Junta

The biennial, epic knockout event in the world of chess - the time for the World Cup has arrived. Just like in 2009, when 2012 World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand won through the 7 rounds as top seed, the drama will unfold in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The pairings tree (PDF) can be downloaded from here.

Moulthun's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Andreikin,

Vachier-Lagrave, Wojtaszek, Malakhov, Wang Yue

Top 4: Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Vachier-Lagrave, Wang Yue

Final: Vachier-Lagrave beats Kamsky

Junta's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Ponomariov, Adams,

Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Navara, Morozevich

Top 4: Kamsky, Adams, Radjabov, Morozevich

Final: Morozevich beats Adams

Fedja's predictions

Top 8: Polgar, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Svidler,

Navara, Radjabov, Grischuk, Gashimov

Top 4: Svidler, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov

Final: Svidler beats Grischuk

Andrew's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Adams,

Vachier-Lagrave, Mamedyarov, Navara, Morozevich

Top 4: Kamsky, Adams, Vachier-Lagrave, Morozevich

Final: Kamsky beats Morozevich

The Oceania region is represented by our very own GM Zong-Yuan Zhao [seeded 101 out of 128], who is up against Russian Super-GM Evgeny Tomashevsky [28] in Round 1.

from Wikipedia:

"Partly for being a mostly positional player, partly for wearing glasses and being well-educated, Tomashevsky, in spite of his young age, earned himself the nickname "Professor" among the chessplayers."

To try and prepare against such a strong opponent, we can only wonder how difficult it must be to think about anything else in the 2 months between when the pairings are released, and actually sitting opposite the player in a distant venue.

The official tournament website is at http://chess.ugrasport.com/ .

Games are at 7pm AEST.

The whole event (August 28-September 21) should be full of exciting chess!

Round 1 Game 1 results are here. Games can be replayed on the official website, or for those games involving players rated over 2700, here (on a game viewer).

Malaysian Open - Day 6 & Blitz

2011-08-28T00:30:00.002+10:00

"Lovely chess moves and lovely melodies and lovely theorems in mathematics have this in common; every one has idiosyncratic nuances that seem logical a posteriori but that are not easy to anticipate a priori" - D. R. Hofstadter

by Junta

From the 2nd rest day

The 8th Dato' Arthur Tan Malaysian Open came to a close with Round 9 on Thursday morning. It was a Chinese 1-2-3 finish, as GM Li Shilong drew to finish 1st on an impressive 7.5/9 (perf. 2681), and IM Lu Shanglei and GM Wen Yang were =2nd on 7/9, both winning their last game. Final ranking crosstable is here.

Gary Lane and Bobby Cheng were the top Aussies on 5.5/9. I finished my 5th and last tournament on this trip with a loss, resulting in the the same +5 -4 (not too solid) as at the World Open and Dutch Open. Fedja won to finish on 4.5.

I plan to do a post looking over stats of all of my games since June, next week, though it might bore some people to death.

Soon after the last games had finished, though, the Blitz tournament (G-5) got under way with a pretty strong field including 5 GMs and 11 IMs. Losing in Round 3 to the eventual winner in under 3 minutes (can't help going red in the face when beaten so easily) and via a tragic illegal move in Round 6, I still had hopes of making the top 8 who progress to the knock-out finals, but I was simply outplayed in the final, Round 9, finishing =10th.

[I failed to reproduce my sizzling form from the World Open Blitz , where I honestly played the best chess of my life (beating a 2700 2-0 in the last round mini-match) - I wish my games from that event could have been recorded, but I probably wouldn't be able to believe I really played them.]

The knock-out stage saw IM Lu Shanglei and Yu Ruiyuan reach the finals.

The former, ranked in the top 3 U/16 players in the world, with a GM norm achieved in the main tournament, was too strong, winning 2-0.

Ruiyuan (Black) - Shanglei (White)

The prizegiving for the blitz and main events had a pleasant atmosphere. Although the Merdeka Team Rapid has still to finish, the organisation for the tournaments have been superb, and I hope I can come back again next year.

The winners of the three main tournaments, with their trophies

Malaysian Open - Days 4-5 & 2nd Rest day

2011-08-25T03:25:00.003+10:00

"No. They come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality.
Who are you to say otherwise?"

Elderly man

"Hey, Justin Bieber! This is for you!"

A young Malaysian man as he tries to hand a flyer to IM James Morris in a shopping mall

There is only one more round to be played in the Malaysian Open after three double-round days, two single-round days and two rest days - it feels especially quick for us after the World Juniors went for two weeks.

After Round 8, Chinese GM Li Shilong has kept his lead with an impressive 7/8, followed by compatriot GM Wang Rui on 6.5/8, with three Chinese players and one Vietnamese player a further half point behind - a Chinese 1-2-3 finish is very likely. Final Round 9 pairings are here.

Leading Aussies are James Morris, Gary Lane and Junta on 5 points. James has performed especially well - after starting with a win in Round 1, he has scored +2 -1 =4 against average 2481-rated opposition for a rating performance of 2491!

A milestone game for Fedja came about in Round 7 when he managed to scrape to a draw in Round 7 against Filipino GM Darwin Laylo (2531) - his first ever half point from a GM!

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

For the rest day today, we went sightseeing around the KL city with the Japanese contingent.

Australian players (in front of the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world)

Japanese players

"Why are they all looking at me?"

"Because my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world."

Shinya making his move on an iguana

Baby, baby, baby oh..

These mice would probably rather be stuck in limbo.

And lastly,

If only we had that much energy...