CoffeeHouse Chess

MCC Australia Day Weekender

2012-01-30T19:04:00.000+11:00

I played my first tournament in quite a while at the weekend at my club, the Melbourne Chess Club (MCC). This has been a long weekend in Australia, as January 26th is a national holiday, Australia Day. The tournament was therefore spread over 4 days, with 2 games on Thursday 26th, Saturday and Sunday, and one game Friday evening. I took a bye on the Friday evening game, but played the rest and had a thoroughly enjoyable time of it. Saying that, I do have some gripes about the tournament, so I'll get them out of the way first before going on to the (mostly) good stuff.

The biggest complaint from most players was the heat. At the end of January there can be some fierce temperatures in Melbourne, and this weekend it was around the 35C mark. The playing hall of the MCC lacks windows and air conditioning and so the playing conditions were very hot and very stuffy. As a result there were players with headaches, and the tournament was physically draining. The arbiter, Kerry Stead did a great job at trying to cool the room down with ice, fans and towels but he was fighting a losing battle. Without air conditioning, tournaments at MCC in the summer are very uncomfortable, and I would only play if I absolutely wanted to, like was the case this weekend.

My biggest disappointment was concerning the Saturday afternoon game. In my time on the committee of the MCC, we passed a resolution that when we ran weekend events at the MCC, the club would not hold any other events. This was mainly because there is a weekly allegro tournament on Saturdays and people would choose to play in that rather than playing in the weekenders. Also, the allegro tournament creates a lot of background noise between rounds. So when I was playing my afternoon game on the Saturday, at times the noise levels were pretty high and this is simply unacceptable. If the MCC has changed the policy and has decided to run allegro tournaments at the same time as weekend events, then I will either take a bye for Saturday afternoon games, or more likely, not play weekend tournaments at my club anymore. It's a shame, because this is an easily remedied issue, but for me it tarnished an otherwise excellent weekend. And before anyone decides to take me on for knocking the allegro, I have nothing against the allegro which I think is an excellent event. I have encouraged many players to play in it. I just don't believe that 2 tournaments should be run at the same time and the few weekend events that the MCC run should take priority. I mean, the allegro still runs for about 48 Saturday's a year, it's surely not too much of an imposition to step aside!

Ok, rant over, now on to the good stuff. Even though it was like playing in a steam laundry, the games were hard fought, and the competitors were really friendly. There were lots of younger players who were in great form after the Australian Junior Championship, Australian Championships, and Queenstown Classic. Ari Dale and Max Chew Lee finished equal second with FM Patrick Scharrer visiting from Italy, while Jack Puccini was only half a point behind. Still the winner of the tournament was MCC FM Michael Baron who was probably not on his best form, but still good enough to win the tournament outright.

My own tournament was very enjoyable, but as is often the case with my play I seem to be more interested in my losses than my wins. In the first round I had a fairly comfortable win against Jason Chew but then struggled against Mario Palma where I snatched a pawn and then another. Mario missed some chances to put me under severe pressure before his initiative began to run out and leave me material ahead. That was Thursday, and I took a bye on Friday to leave me on 2.5/3 before the weekend itself. On Saturday I started with a win against Sylvester Urban who fell into an opening trap, but then lost to Italian FM Scharrer from a fairly level middlegame position. This was a little disappointing, especially after my opening experiment with the Hungarian ended pretty solidly. Still, I hadn't played too badly over the four games, and that was encouraging. I thought that I would really struggle to find form, but I was seeing stuff. Unfortunately, it took too long to see things, and that is what really gave me problems on the final day.

Sunday was the last day of the tournament, and there were 2 games to play. I have always thought of weekend events as being as much about endurance as about ability. While my physical fitness level has risen considerably, my mental fitness level was sadly lacking. In my first game against talented junior Max Chew Lee, I missed a number of things. I got a great position but then started to fumble for a plan, while Max realised he was worse, and went about improving his position. I wasted quite a bit of time over a middlegame plan, which I then didn't execute in the best way, and then lost my way in the transition to the endgame. In the meantime, Max seemed to perk up and looked really fresh the longer the game went on. He kept on defending well, and in the end the game finished a draw. To be honest, I wasn't too unhappy with this result as I'm well aware of the ability of young Max Chew Lee. This is probably why I was taking so long earlier in the game, constantly checking tactical possibilities.

After this I was paired with another talented junior, Ari Dale. Again I got a great position out of the opening and again I missed lots of things, but this time I was not so lucky to end with a draw. It was an unbelievably complicated game where I won an exchange early on, but this did nothing to make my life easier as the position was so imbalanced. White had a group of central pawns charging down the board, while black had 2 outside passed pawns on the queenside. I'll just show a position to emphasise the point:

It is black's move here and there is so much happening that I couldn't handle it. I played 33..b2 which turned out to be a losing move. I had originally chosen 33..a3 as a candidate move, but rejected it after not being able to find anything concrete. Amazingly though, this is winning, but it takes an incredible move to make it work, and this is what I missed! Funnily enough I saw the same move in a different line, but there it didn't work. After 33..a3 34.Nxb3 a2 35.Ra1 the following position arises

and now to win black has to play the amazing 35..Bf1!!, which I hadn't seen in that exact position. So I missed a very tough chance and Ari went on to beat me and finish in joint second, so congrats to him for fighting through to the last and taking his chance.

I scored a bit less than I expected, and will lose some rating points for the tournament as a whole, but probably not too much. I am glad to have played it though. I have the desire to play chess again now, and will be playing as often as I can. Also I am quite encouraged by my play. While there were mistakes, there was also a lot of good points. I reckon I'll be back to full form in the not too distant future, especially if I play a bit more!

Worst Tipster

2012-01-25T12:54:00.001+11:00

The next time I say someone will win something, then pick someone else to win it! It's official, my predictions are very poor. However, self knowledge is a great thing, and I know that this is a weakness of mine so I don't gamble. In fact, I don't even buy lottery tickets! Let's see my last set of predictions and assess their progress so far....

Wijk A: Aronian
Wijk B: Potkin
Wijk C: Sadler
Aus Junior: Justin Tan
Queenstown: Jones

Well 1/5 is not so bad, is it? Levon Aronian took the lead in the Wijk A group yesterday, after Magnus Carlsen suffered a defeat to World Number 7 Karjakin. So this leaves Carlsen in joint second place with Ivanchuk and Radjabov, but a whole point behind Aronian. There are 4 rounds to go, so nothing is clear yet, though Aronian is in the box seat.

In the B-group, I chose Potkin, the 2011 European Champion, but he has played well below that form and currently sits in the bottom half of the field. Indian GM Harikrishna is a point clear here of L'Ami, Bruzon and Motylev, and these are well clear of the rest. In the C-group, Matthew Sadler has been really disappointing in my opinion. He is at plus one but doesn't seem to be able to win games. With a strong finish he may still end near the top of the table, but he is too far back to win (2.5 points back with 4 games to go). After his comeback successes before Christmas, I thought Matthew would run away with this tournament, but 2 other GM's, Turov and Tikkanen lead the field.

Queenstown seemed like a great swiss event this year, but my prediction didn't live up to expectations. In the early rounds Jones was in with the leaders, but in consecutive rounds he faltered against young Victorian players. First he could only draw with IM James Morris, who produced a nice exchange sacrifice to stabilise the position, and then in the following game, he was outplayed by FM Chris Wallis. This game ended with the unusual material imbalance of rook and 4 pawns versus rook, bishop and knight. Chris had no pawns, but managed to exchange rooks and win all the pawns, finally showing he knew the technique to win with knight and bishop.

The tournament was won by Melbourne GM Darryl Johansen who was backing up from the Australian Championship that he also won. In Queenstown, he finished joint first but won on tiebreak ahead of Chinese GM's Li Chao and Zhao Jun. It's a great effort by Darryl and good to see him at his very best form. With the current crop of strong young players around Australia, it is important that older players retain their strength and force the youngsters to stretch themselves to overtake them.

The Australian Junior Championship concluded at the weekend and was certainly affected at the top level by the absence of players competing in Queenstown. However, there were still a group of talented players and there was no clear favourite for the under 18 Championship. All the results can be seen online at the site of the tournament management software, tornelo. It was a close affair in the end, but finally, South Australian third seed Alistair Cameron won by half a point from Justin Tan and 10 year old Anton Smirnov. All of these are very good players, and Alistair was a worthy and popular winner. The 9-round format which was used for the first time last year, again proved sufficient and all the age group championships were hard fought. On the tornelo site, there is a database of 1142 games, most of which were uploaded by the kids themselves during the event.

Australian Under 18 Champions, Miranda Webb-Liddle and Alistair Cameron

As the worst tipster, I thought it best not to predict any more results, bringing my kiss of death to players. However, I couldn't help myself when a friendly debate at the Australian Junior occurred between IM's Leonid Sandler and Vladimir Smirnov reagrding the upcoming World Championship. The upshot is that I have now officially tipped Anand to win, which I guess must dramatically increase Gelfand's chances in this match!

Record entries at 2012 Australian Junior Champioships

2012-01-19T12:43:00.001+11:00

The 2012 Australian Junior Championships run under the auspices of the Australian Junior Chess League (AusJCL) by the Melbourne Chess Club (MCC) has had the biggest number of entries in the history of the event. The tournament is being held at Spensley Street Primary School in Melbourne's Clifton Hill suburb, a short trip from Melbourne's CBD. The chief architect of the project has been Simon Dale, a 2011 committee member of both the MCC and the AusJCL which made him an excellent liaison. Simon has worked tirelessly throughout the year to make this event happen and I don't think it is unfair to say that the 2012 Australian Junior Championship and therefore the whole Australian chess community owes Simon Dale a big thankyou.

With 277 entries, the 2012 Australian Junior championship far outstrips previous events, and this may be attributed to the change of format that happened in 2011. The Hobart event of 2012 was a landmark event because it was decided to change the format from 11 rounds to 9 rounds, and the younger age groups changed to less days with multiple games on those days. The net effect is that families don't have to take a 2week break to play in the tournament, and even the older age groups (under 18 and 16) only have a week of play with the weekend before and after tagged on. Last year's event saw a huge increase in numbers compared to the Hobart 2010 Championship and this year, the numbers have far exceeded the previous biggest entry of 210 in Canberra 2007.

Chales Zworestine

David Cordover

The main arbiter's for the tournament are Charles Zworestine and David Cordover. Charles is generally happy with the event except for perhaps the under 16 event which could see extra numbers, and the girls tournaments which have seen perhaps a decrease in numbers. The under 18 event has lost some stronger players to the Queenstown Classic in New Zealand, but still has 21 players which is only 7 less than last year.

We already have some age group winners:

Under 8 - Bobby Yu (Vic)
Under 10 - Kevin Willathgamuwa (NSW)
Under 8 Girls - Emily Lin (Vic)
Under 10 Girls - Jody Middleton (Vic)

There are many adults around coaching, arbitering, and generally helping. The parents of the school have been great in running a canteen, while there has been a barbecue going each day run also by volunteers, sometimes from the school and sometimes from the MCC. Chesskids have been helping out with bulletin writing, game analysis and generally controlling the events. Chesskids have also pioneered the Tornelo system which is being used to manage the tournament. The game input feature has been a great success and already 640 games have been uploaded with some being loaded live by volunteers. And there have been some of the strongest players and coaches from around the country helping their protege's to score the best results. One game that came to the attention of IM Robert Jamieson was from yesterday's under 14 tournament.

I'm back...

2012-01-15T23:52:00.000+11:00

I have been in New Zealand for the past week and missed some action.

The Australian Championship was won by GM Darryl Johansen for a record 6th time! He took the lead before I left and never relinquished it winning the event by a full point from an elite group of players consisting of GM Zhao, IM's Xie, Solomon and Smirnov. The contingent of younger players failed to breach this experienced group, and FM Junta Ikeda and IM Moulton Ly led the younger challenge a further point behind, and alongside IM Wohl.

The Reserves tournament was won by MCC member Justin Penrose. I have never played Justin but my impression is a tough fighter who is happy to play difficult positions with a dogged determination. He will cause problems for his opponents at any turn and does not give up on positions which others might think too troublesome to continue the effort. Another MCC member came second, and pleasingly a junior. Like most juniors, Ari Dale has good days and bad days, but he is generally moving forward at an alarming rate. This result confirms that the MCC has another young player of 2000+ strength. Joint third were Omar Bashar, David Spuler, and another MCC member, Frank Lekkas.

All the games from the Championship are available in pgn format and the latter rounds of the Reserves have been made available as well. This is a pretty good effort seeing there was such a small staff on duty. I haven't been able to go through these games yet, but I will see if any interesting things show up over the next couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, the Hastings Congress reverted back to the days when the foreign visitors dominated. The event was won by top seed GM Wang Yue of China half a point clear of GM Istracescu of France and IM's Lalith and Shyam from India. The top English players were a further point behind in joint 8th, the GM group of Howell, Hebden, Flear, Williams and Nick Pert. This group on 6 points also included Icelandic IM G Kjartansson who seems to have had a very good tournament, scoring 2/3 in the final rounds against GM's Howell, Hebden and Istratescu!

So I have got back just in time for the start of 3 tournaments of interest to me. There is the SuperGM event in Holland, the Tatasteel Wijk aan Zee starring World number 1 Magnus Carlsen. The Australian Junior Championship started yesterday as well and runs until next weekend. And the Queenstown Classic started today and runs until next weekend. This last tournament is especially interesting to me as I've just been on holiday in Queenstown. This beautiful new Zealand town is a perfect holiday destination and I hope that the players will get some chance to experience some of the beauty of their surroundings!

Bob's Peak from Queenstown beach

OK, I suppose I better put my head on the block and throw out some tips for these tournaments:

Wijk A: Aronian
Wijk B: Potkin
Wijk C: Sadler
Aus Junior: Justin Tan
Queenstown: Jones

But good luck to all, and great to have so much interesting chess around!

Last post before holiday

2012-01-05T20:59:00.001+11:00

This time tomorrow I will be in New Zealand and within 48 hours I'll be on a trek around Milford Sound out of phone range, or internet accessibility. So I'll miss out on the end of the Australian Championships and other assorted events that I've been following at the start of this year. I will be back in time for the Australian Junior Championships, Wijk aan Zee, and ironically I will be able to follow the Queenstown Classic online as I will be leaving Queenstown just as it is about to start. In a way I do envy those guys who will be playing Queenstown, but given the choice of a holiday abroad or a chess tournament abroad, at the moment a holiday is more important to me. Unfortunately, playing chess would be too much like a busman's holiday for my liking!

On Tuesday I travelled down to the Australian Championship in Geelong. I must admit that while the tournament is strong, as a spectator I didn't get the 'Wow Factor' that I would expect from the National Championship, which was a bit of a shame. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but perhaps the playing room is a bit small and dark round the sides, there is hardly any space between the Championship and the Reserves so it looks like one big open. There is a stage area, but it isn't being used which is a shame, and there is no commentary of the games, or even displays of the games by monitor or the old fashioned demo boards. I would expect a bookstall, but there isn't one, and there isn't even a table with info and flyers about other events.

Ok, so I've had a whinge, now on to all that is good. That is the tournaments themselves and the organisation which is smooth.

IA Charles Zworestine (left) and FA Peter Tsai running the Champs smoothly

The Championship has kept taking twists. Darryl Johansen and Vlad Smirnov drew their game to stay half a point clear of the George Xie who was the only player on the day to capitalise on their draw by winning his game against Bobby Cheng.

George Xie with arms folded, facing the camera. The main winner of the day.

The tournament clarified a little the day after I left. Johansen had to play Xie, and the Grandmaster gave a display of his true ability grinding his opponent down relentlessly. This victory leaves Johansen a point clear, and in the drivers seat as he has played most of his main rivals. Darryl has a wealth of experience, and I wouldn't imagine him losing his grip on this tournament now. His nearest rivals, a point behind, are Zhao, Smirnov and Solomon. The last of these, Stephen Solomon had a slow start to the tournament, but is now in top gear after a victory in the last round against second seed George Xie in a long game with a difficult queen ending to finish off. Stephen's renowned tenacity saw him through in a game that many would have been happy to draw.

Back to back Champions, Solomon to the left, Johansen to the right.

The draw for the next round sees:
Ly-Johansen
Solomon-Zhao
Smirnov-Ikeda
Xie-Steadman

The Reserves tournament is also interesting, and that was an enjoyable part of my visit, seeing players I know who are playing in the events. From my club, the Melbourne Chess Club (MCC), it was good to wish Happy New Year to players like Domagoi Dragicevic, James Morris, Frank Lekkas, Michael Addamo (interesting fact of the tournament was seeing Michael sat cross legged on his chair while deep in thought), Elliott Renzies, John Beckman and many more! The reserves is currently being led by a player who we in Victoria know little about. David Spuler from Queensland is a mystery man, but there is no mystery to how well his chess is going. He is currently half a point clear of ex-Australian Champion (3 times!) Doug Hamilton, and the 2 will play in the next round. 4 players are a further half a point behind, Savige, Lekkas, Penrose and Omar Khaled who like Solomon in the Championship has started to come good at the right time. Omar had a tough event just before Christmas when he played the round robin Australasian Masters, and that experience will no doubt leave him a stronger player. Also picking up steam but a further half point back are Dowling, Kordahi and Dale who join Kinto Wan and Wenlin Yin. I would say with 3 rounds to go, the tournament winner has to come from the one of the players I've named. The minor places are still up for grabs, and anyone who puts in a good finish is in with a chance.

Some great coverage of this particular event can be found on Kerry Stead's blog. Getting the view of one of the competitors is always a unique view of the tournament.

IM James Morris planning strategy

Frank Lekkas awaits mystery man David Spuler

Box Hill Chess Club VP Frank Cheng and Chess Victoria President Leonid Sandler

Kerry Stead faces Vineetha Vijesuriya in the Reserves tournament

From left: Jason Tang (wearing red), Justin Tan, IM Stephen Solomon (drinking water), GM Darryl Johansen, IM James Morris, IM George Xie, Karl Zelesco

Great Tournaments Need A Few Twists

2012-01-02T20:49:00.001+11:00

The Australian Championship heated up today, and not just because of the 40C heat in Victoria. The four leading players met and in both cases the underdog prevailed! Now it's a bit rich to be calling 5 times champion GM Johansen an underdog, but when put against the current champ, Zhao who is over 100 rating points higher than Johansen, the tag underdog sticks. Likewise, Smirnov isn't much of an underdog against George Xie, but still an underdog nevertheless. However, Johansen and Smirnov both won on a day that saw Zhao and Xie both well below their best. This takes nothing away from the winners, who both played well, especially Johansen.

So with 6 rounds gone that leaves Smirnov and Johansen leading the field by a point and as they haven't played, that will be the top pairing tomorrow. In joint third are 7 players. Zhao and Xie are joined by young guns Ly, Ikeda and Cheng, 2008 champ Solomon, and Dragicevic who is having a rather good tournament here.

Round 7 Top Pairings:

1. Johansen-Smirnov
2. Xie-Cheng
3. Ly-Solomon
4. Dragicevic-Ikeda
5.Wohl-Zhao

I expect some fierce battles tomorrow especially on boards 2-5, as to win the tournament these players are going to have to win games from now on.

In round 5, joint leader Vladimir Smirnov showed his class with an excellent finish against Bobby Cheng.

Smirnov as white has control of the position, but chooses a radical, but quite correct way to finish things off. 35.Rxc6! [An exchange sacrifice that wins 2 pawns for the exchange and brings white's bishops to life] 35..Bxc6 36.Rxc6 Qd7 37.Rc5 [Now d5 will also fall] 37..Rd8 38.e3 [It was possible to just take on d5, but e3 avoids any tactics on the d-file] 38..Rc8 39.Ra5 Qb7 40.Qa2 [Again, there was nothing wrong with taking on d5] 40..Rc1

And even here, Smirnov is not happy to play prosaically, but looks for the best continuation. 41.e6! [Of course 41.Bxd5 also wins, but this is a fantastic knock out blow clearing the dark squares which the bishop on d4 looks at] 41..Nd6 42.Bxd5 Qe7 [Not 42..Qb1 43.e7+ Nf7 44.Bxf7#]

43.Ra7! an excellent move clearing the path for the e-pawn. Bobby resigned here [43..Rc7 44.Rxc7 Qxc7 45.e7+ Nf7 46.Bxf7#]

Also in the fifth round was this position and one of the reasons that Dragicevic is having such a good tournament is that when he is given chances he is taking them. Here, black has taken a nasty initiative on the queen side but ignored the classic advice to be aware of all checks and captures. 16.Nxd5! [completely turning the game round, this doesn't win any material but will expose weaknesses in black's camp, especially the back rank] 16..exd5 17.e6 Bd6 18.Bxd6 Qxd6 19.exd7 Qxd7 20.axb4 Rxb4 21.Ne5 Nxe5 22.Qxe5 Bb7

Now black's queen side activity seems pointless whereas white has control of the e-file and black pawns as targets. He also spots the weakness of black's back rank. 23.Bh3! Qc6 24.Qe7 h6 [No time to grab the b-pawn. 24..Rxb2 25.Bd7 threatening the queen and back rank mate.] 25.Bd7 Qc7 26.Rxa4 Rbxa4 27.Bxa4 Qxe7 28.Rxe7 Rxa4 29.Rxb7

And after all the exchanges white is a solid pawn up which he went on to convert to a win.

Rest Day at the Australian Championships

2012-01-01T23:00:00.001+11:00

Happy New Year! It is the 1st January 2012, and there is no play in the Australian Championship today. An interesting feature of tournaments that span the New Year is that players ratings change during the event. The top players haven't changed much:

Zhao 2568 (+4)
Xie 2459 (+19)
Khamparia 2414 (=)
Wohl 2412 (+8)
Johansen 2403 (=)
Illingworth 2388 (-13)
Solomon 2375 (-9)

So there has been a slight rise in the average of the top players in the championship.

Big jumps have been made by:

Bobby Cheng 2375 (+30) and moving into the top 10 Australian players
Domagoj Dragicevic 2277 (+30) close to the FM title, and I guess he's getting closer with his championship start.
Laurence Matheson 2167 (+41) the 2150 minimum rating limit for the Aus Champs would have had Laurence missing out if there wasn't a proviso for improving juniors.

Currently Australia is ranked 51st based on the top 10 rated players on the active list. The current crop of great juniors on show in this Championship may be able to help push this ranking up. If players such as Illingworth, Ly, Cheng, Morris, and Ikeda carry on as they are and get the opportunities to play in strong events (they are all prepared to travel overseas to broaden their horizons!) then the 2421 average for the top 10 players will surely rise.

In the 4th round, Bobby Cheng came up against Indian IM Akshat Khamparia who tried the unusual Snake Benoni. Unfortunately, either Bobby was prepared or he played natural moves which led to an advantage. Whichever, it was the Indian IM who blundered early.

Bobby played the natural 6.e4 (6.Nf3 is the mainline where 6,,Bc7 is one of 3 main moves, the others being 6..O-O, and 6..a6, though there are quite some transpositions) 6..Bc7? (While this is a move against 6.Nf3, it is a known blunder against 6.e4) 7.d6! Ba5 8.e5 (white is already winning!) 8..Ne4 (there is no good move) 9.Qg4

Black has a horrible choice of dropping a piece or allowing Qxg7. Black castled and Chen took the knight on e4.

So far, I haven't talked about the Australian Championship Reserves Tournament at all which is a shame as I know so many players involved. Tomorrow I hope to be in Geelong to spectate directly, and I'll try to bring some impressions of this event, which is just as competitive as the Championship if not more. I'll also try to find out who is in contention for norms at the Championship, though it might be a bit early to tell yet.

Last post of 2011

2011-12-31T21:48:00.002+11:00

I hope 2011 has been a good year of chess for you. I'm sure Alexander Morozevich will be happy with his year. He reappeared earlier this year to win the Higher League of the Russian Champs, finished second in Biel just half a point behind Carlsen, came second in the Russian Championship just half a point behind Svidler, won the category 19 Governor's Cup in Russia and should reappear in the top 10 in the World in tomorrow's FIDE rating list. He is currently playing in Reggio Emilia where he won his first 2 games to take a lead in the tournament. Among these was a textbook attack against a king in the centre against Anish Giri

Morozevich as black senses an attack against a centralised king, but must open lines of attack. 22..e5! 23.fxe5 fxe5 24.Rg5 pinning the e-pawn

and after lines are open the attacker shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice. 24..exd4! 25.Rxa5 Rhe8 26.Bg2 dxe3

and the final picture is an exposed king with black's major pieces all aiming at it.

Since those first 2 wins, Morozevich has drawn with Nakamura and lost to Ivanchuk, this final game I've only briefly looked at but it appears to be a very complicated Spanish where Ivanchuk won 2 pieces for a rook and pawn and created dangerous threats around Morozevich's king. Morozevich was unable to defend, and Ivanchuk takes the lead in the tournament equally with Nakamura.

The San Sebastian Centenary tournament in Donostia has a great new format where players play 2 games against the same opponent with different colours simultaneously! The tournamnet is a knock out, where losing players can join a swiss tournament that is running alongside. Players joining the swiss are put on the same points as the leader in that tournament. All in all, it is a refreshing change from the usual events of swiss or round robin, and the games are not FIDE rated so no one is playing to defend or gain points. While there have been some upsets, I think it's a bit rich to claim a victory by a 2600+GM is much of an upset. The field is very strong with the top 5 players:

Gashimov 2757
Mamedyarov 2733
Ponomariov 2723
Moiseenko 2715
Bacrot 2714

All these players got through their first round simuls and we are now at the last 16 stage, so we're soon going to get some 2700-2700 clashes!

At Hastings the preliminaries are over and the tournament is settling into a rhythm. There are all GM clashes and each game is important in this 9-round swiss. Only 2 players are on a perfect 3/3. Istracescu of Romania and Howell of England will meet in round 4 at the top of the table. 2697 rated Wang Yue was held to a draw in the third round by Indian GM Sengupta Deep, but Wang heads a group of 8 players on 2.5 just half a point behind the 2 leaders. In this group are 2 interesting players. Sam Franklin is 17, close to 2200 and playing well above it here. He has just beaten one GM in Glenn Flear and has to face another now. That GM is none other than the ginger Simon Williams, champion of the Dutch Defence and an all out aggressive styled player.

Like Morozevich, David Howell also knows how to attack a king in the centre. Here is his first round game against FM Ryan Griffiths from Ireland. Howell as white makes it as difficult as possible for black's king to find safety. When he eventually castles, he castles into an attack. 16. g4 Nfd4 17. Qe4+ Be6 18. Be3 f5 [18..O-O loses material to 19.Bxd4 Nxd4 20.Rxd4 Bxd4 21.Qxd4] 19. gxf5 gxf5 20. Qg2 Qd7 [20..O-O defends the Bg7, but also pins it, so it isn't defending d4] 21. Nf4

O-O-O [Finally black feels he can hide his king away, but..] 22. Bxd4! [Wins material] Nxd4 [22..Bxd4 23.Nxe6 Qxe6 24.Qxc6+] 23. Qa8+ Kc7 24. Qxa7+ Kc8 25. Qxb6 1-0

Australian Championship reaches halfway point

2011-12-31T18:42:00.001+11:00

The organisers of the Australian Championship have generously designated January 1st a rest day in the tournament, which will allow the players to celebrate the new year without the nagging worry of a game looming the next day. If I was being very cruel, I would be disappointed that we spectators are going to miss out on what could have been a day full of booze addled blunders. But then again, a New Year's Day round would certainly have increased the chances of the junior's and teetotaller's in the tournaments.

I personally had a rest day yesterday, but I'm back to blogging again. My New Year's resolutions are to write more, and play more, and hopefully these 2 will coincide as well! As for the Championship, the 2 top seeds were able to break the deadlock and pull away slightly from the field. Top seed Zhao defeated Ly while second seed Xie defeated Wohl to put them both half a point clear of the field. Victorian GM Darryl Johansen won again, to keep himself in the hunt, while Smirnov stayed in contention with a draw against Morris.

Then came the pairing we had all been waiting for with the top board for round 5 featuring:

Xie-Zhao

These 2 had a head to head in the last Championship in 2010 where they finished way clear of the rest of the field. In that Championship Zhao proved the stronger scoring a magnificent 10/11 including a win over Xie. George Xie also scored a great score of 9/11, a score that could have won him the Championships some years and left him 1.5 clear of 3rd place. This year, their meeting just before the halfway mark ended in a draw and helps build the tension of the championship with both players sitting on 4/5.

Here they are joined by Johansen who scores his third win in a row, and Smirnov. Johansen has won the Australian Championship a record 5 times and stayed in the hunt for his 6th victory by beating young FM Ikeda clinically. Smirnov also had a young challenger in FM Cheng, but the experienced IM who still represents his native Russia was too good on the day and took advantage of Cheng's adventurous play. These 4 share the lead going into the rest day, and will have to play each other in the next round.

Round 6:
Zhao-Johansen
Smirnov-Xie

Only half a point behind is Wohl and there is then a big pack a further half a point behind, featuring almost all the young hopefuls in this years Championship: Illingworth, Morris, Ly, Solomon, Ikeda, Cheng (spot the odd man out!). Also on 3/5 are 2 local favourites, Dragicevic, and Stojic who are both keeping up with the pace. Although there are still some strong players behind these, I don't think the winners and place getters are going to come from outside this group. Not unless someone starts to really up their game in the second week. However, almost anyone in the 3/5 group and above have a chance. Zhao is obviously still the man to beat being highest rated and defending champion, but there's a lot of talent at the top of the championship!

And at the other end, I'm glad to say that everyone has at least one point. This might sound patronising, but it really isn't. I have been in the situation where I'm not playing well and every game is a tough one and I know well the feeling of relief when you finally get off the mark. Even when you are scoring, if it's not at the rate you expect, it can make you put yourself under extra pressure to win at all costs. I wonder if this was what happened to Max Illingworth in this Championship? Max is undoubtedly one of Australia's stars of the future. He has had a terrific 2011 scoring a GM norm in Budapest and working his rating to over 2400. But the start of the Championship was mediocre by his standards. in round 1 he drew with Ferozkohi, in round 2 he scored another draw with Pengyu Chen, and then in round 3 he lost to Dragicevic. I'm taking nothing away from those 3 guys, who must have been doing something right, but Max would have expected more than 1/3 against those players. In his game against Dragicevic, he built an imposing position with the black pieces, but then made an inexplicable blunder.

Max as black has a powerful, mobile, advanced centre while Dragicevic as white is waiting for black to finally make his move. Black needed a preparatory move such as 27..Rce8 and then the pawns can be pushed. However, Max played 27..Qe5? which loses a pawn to the shot 28.Nxf4! where the knight is protected by the fact that the other knight can hop to e6 with check.

Happily, Max is back on track with 2 wins pulling him up to 3/5 and poised just behind the leaders. But I wonder if he was trying too hard to win his first few games, and not just let his immense natural playing ability just do the talking. If that is the case, he certainly wouldn't be the first player to have heaped too much pressure on his own shoulders. As a comparison, look at the most experienced player in the field, Johansen. He started with an unpretentious 14 move draw with local junior Laurence Matheson and followed that up with another draw against 2008 Champion Solomon. But since then he has gone about winning his games in whatever manner it took, and pulling himself into joint first.

Australian Championship Pack Mentality

2011-12-29T22:10:00.000+11:00

After round 3 of the Australian Championship, the tournament remains as close as ever. the only decisive result on the top boards was George Xie's victory over James Morris. This lets George leapfrog James and join the leaders.

2.5/3: Ly, Smirnov V, Wohl, Xie, Zhao
2/3: Cheng, Dragicevic, Ikeda, Johansen, Khamparia, McClyrmont, Morris, Steadman

This is a big pack separated by just half a point, and still strong players lurk behind these such as Illingworth, Solomon, Stojic and Wallis. It is far too early to tell where the prizes are going to go which keeps the excitement within the Championship.

24 hours can be a long time in chess. This time yesterday, James Morris was celebrating a win over Indian IM Khamparia, while today, he will be trying to regroup after losing to George Xie. However, he has the comfort of knowing that he has 2 of the top players behind him already in this event.

A critical position in the game Morris-Khamparia, where black couldn't find the best continuation. 23..Rac8? allowing white to win a pawn with 24.bxc4 Rxc4 25.Qb3 and here Black tried 25..Rc3

but lost the pawn after 26.Rexd3! Rxb3 27.axb3. James went on to win the ending in good style.

The top fourth round pairings:

Zhao-Ly
Wohl-Xie
Morris-Smirnov
Cheng-Khamparia
McClyrmont-Johansen

Can the deadlock be broken at the top of the tree? And for us locals, can any of the Victorians, Morris, Cheng or Johansen maintain their challenge?

Chess heroes

2011-12-29T01:04:00.000+11:00

There are some great tournaments around the World at the moment. Forgive me for promoting my English heritage, but tonight the annual Hastings tournament starts. It's an excellent field, and I know a few players and I've played against quite a few. Unfortunately, the time difference between here and England at the moment means that to watch the games, I'll have to stay up half the night which won't be happening. It's tremendous for the tournament to have a player of the strength of Wang Yue 2697 at the top of the field. But I'll be hoping that one of the locals takes the title. Top English player is David Howell 2633 and he is the second seed and main hope for England. But not the only hope. I'd love to see Mark Hebden or Keith Arkell do well even though (or maybe because) they kept beating me up in weekend tournaments in the UK.

Meanwhile, there are 2 top World class events happening this new year period. Reggio Emilia started yesterday with everybody's favourite comeback player, Alexander Morozevich.

Morozevich was the little player's favourite, he played unorthodox openings and had interesting games. Since his return this year, Morozevich has played much more orthodox openings, and had outstanding results. He still plays interesting positions, as can be seen from the complicated game he played last night against Fabiano Caruana. The Closed Spanish is the most orthodox of openings but when 2 dynamic players come together things can get very interesting.

Morozevich is black, and has given a pawn for amazing play, a knight on d3 is going to be a pain for white, and black's dark squared bishop will work its way to the long diagonal. This had all been played before in the game Anand-Kamsky (m7) PCA Candidates Final 1995, and is typical of Morozevich's dynamic style. It is great to have top players who are not scared to take risks to win games.

Later the game reached this position, where Moro has been outplayed by his younger opponent. Caruana took his advantage now by playing, 42. Nxc4 Qf6 43. Qf1 Be8 44. d6 Qd8 45. Nd5 Bb5 46. Rxf7 Nxe4

and could have won, but erred with 47.Nc7? [47.Nf6 Kh8 48.Qb1 wins] and Morozevich didn't need another invitation 47..Bxc4 48. Qxc4 Nxd6 49. Ne6 Nxc4 0-1

Nakamura also won a game against Vitiugov while Ivanchuk and Giri drew their game. Funnily enough, Morozevich wasn't going to be playing in this tournament, but rather Gashimov was in the event. However, Gashimov chose to play at the other interesting event, starting later today in San Sebastian. Celebrating the centenary of the 1911 San Sebastian tournament won by Capablanca, the Donostia Chess Festival will be a 7 round knockout event. With 10 players over 2700 in the field, it looks to be an exciting prospect.

In the 1911 event Capablanca scored 9.5/14 ahead of Rubinstein, Vidmar, Marshall, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Nimzowitsch, Bernstein, Spielmann, Teichmann, Maroczy, Janowski, Burn, Duras, Leonhardt.

Now that's a field to try to emulate!

Capablanca is 7th from the right, sitting and looking calm at San Sebastian 1911

Australian Championship Day 2

2011-12-28T22:30:00.000+11:00

Day 2 of the Australian Championship didn't really help to sort out the pecking order. There are a few players at the top, a few at the bottom, and the majority in between. In fact, the table looks more like a round robin after 2 rounds, which I suppose reflects the fact that there are only 30 players and many are evenly matched. This is an 11 round event and it's already looking like a plus score will be a good effort for most players. Those who are on 2/2 are GM Zhou, IM's Ly, Morris, Smirnov and Wohl. Half a point behind is IM George Xie and everyone else is on half points or less. The top pairings are:

Smirnov-Zhou
Ly-Wohl
Xie-Morris

For us locals, the interesting pairing of these is the bottom one as Victorian IM James Morris takes on number 2 seed George Xie. Now I know I said that I am supporting George to win this tournament. However, I will be loyal to my fellow Victorian, and friend James Morris, who lives just up the road from me and plays at the same club, the Melbourne Chess Club. James has had his supporters and some detractors over the years, which I've thought pretty unfair as he's only young. Ok, if a junior plays a bad game, then it's a fair enough to tell them, and junior's are generally sturdy enough to take constructive criticism. But James has copped it for a number of things, the most notable in my mind being when he became an IM. James won his title at a zonal tournament, rather than gaining norms and reaching 2400. However, becoming an IM at 15, most of us who knew James realised it was only a matter of time before he worked his strength up to 2400. (coincidentally, Bobby Cheng gained the FM title at the same zonal before reaching 2300, but has also fulfilled this potential!). This year has seen James reaching heights he has not previously achieved, and his win today against 3rd seed IM A. Khamparia of India is another confirmation of his great potential.

The organisation of the tournament seems to be well in hand, and the website is regularly updated. One thing I have not been able to find, is the results of the previous rounds, though that is probably more due to my ineptitude than the website. A pgn of the first round games was put up today, and there was a very nice attack pulled off by 2010 Victorian Champion, Dusan Stojic.

In the above position, Dusan Stojic as white played 24.Bh6 against Jonas Muller. The game continued 24..Rc8 25.fxg6 hxg6 to reach the following position where, Dusan tore black's defences apart.

26.Rxf7!! Kxf7 27.Rf1 Ke7

28.Qxg6 [28.Bg5 is preferred by Stockfish, but the text is certainly good enough] 28..Ne8 29.Bg5+ Nef6

and to finish things off in style, 30.Rxf6! Nxf6 31.Qxf6+ Kd7 32.Qe7+ 1-0

Christmas Chess

2011-12-27T22:17:00.000+11:00

Ok, where to look? Today the 2012 Australian Championship started....yes, I know its 2011, but when the tournament ends it will be 2012. The tournament favourite is GM Zong-Yuan Zhou and he had an easier than expected first round game as his opponent didn't show up. In fact, there is some sort of story here, but I'll wait till I see Bill Jordan to find out the full thing. I said that I would be following IM George Xie in this tournament. In the first round he drew with local player Domagoj Dragicevic. It was a pretty mad game, with Domagoj choosing a wierd b4 idea against the Sicilian.

Meanwhile, not all the favourites had their day. GM Johansen agreed to a 14 move draw with local youngster Laurence Matheson, while the 2008 champion Stephen Solomon also drew. However, the big upsets of the round came on the lower boards. Queensland junior Yi Liu defeated FM Bobby Chneg, while 2009 Victorian Junior Champion Jason Tang beat New Zealand FM Mike Steadman. I think this shows that while the battle at the top might be between a few, there is competitiveness in the middle and bottom half of the field.

The round 2 pairings have been produced, and the most intriguing one is between 2 of the players on half a point. The pairing Solomon-Johansen would have been expected at some stage in the tournament but probably not as early as round 2!

Across the world there are some great tournaments happening over the festive holidays. The traditional Hastings congress looks to be pretty strong this year (although I remember the round robins of the 1980's that were always great). I'll be following this one closely. Reggio Emilia is holding an elite round robin tournament which will be a good warm up for Wijk in January. Then there are strong opens in Groningen, Litomsyl, Geneva ( 2 live games happening as I write!) and Zurich.

Personally, the tournament that I would most like to play in at the present moment is in Davos, or Interlaken. The tournament is not strong, and not big, but what a place to hold a Christmas Chess Event!

Waiting for Wijk

2011-12-22T21:16:00.000+11:00

It's almost Christmas and chess is playing second fiddle to eating, drinking and making merry! But the festive holidays are a traditional time for chess and the break from work gives chess players time to recharge ready for the next batch of tournaments. Here in Australia, Christmas marks the start of the summer holidays, and with it comes the typical glut of chess tournaments.

First is the Australian Championship, and associated events, which are due to start December 27th in Geelong, Victoria. Geelong is about 45 minutes west drive from Melbourne so I guess players have the choice to commute if they want. Of course, the National Championship will have players from all over Australia and overseas. It is quite an impressive list of players, and it is a tournament that I would some day like to play in. Although I am currently English on the FIDE list, I think that I qualify as an entrant based on my residence and citizenship, which is now Australian. I think that by the next Championship (they are every 2 years), I will probably have Australia next to my name anyway!

After the Championship, 2 tournaments start. One is the Australian Junior Championships which are being held in Melbourne. The other is the biennial Queenstown Classic in New Zealand. I will be at the Australian Junior as a coach and helper so I should be able to report first hand on what is happening. The Queenstown tournament will be followed avidly here in Australia, as so many of our players will be playing. With 11 GM's already in the field, this is likely to be a great tournament. Congratulations to Murray Chandler, Paul Spiller and Helen Milligan (and everyone else) who have put together another great tournament.

I will be watching some of the action from New Zealand while at the Australian Junior Championship. Both tournaments start on the same day, Saturday 14th January. At a local level, these are hugely important events, but in the scheme of things both will be overshadowed by the traditional Wijk tournament in Holland. The Tata Steel tournament has an amazing field led by World Number 1, Magnus Carlsen. Probably the best thing for us in Australia, is that the games in Holland will be starting at night for us so it is doubtful we will be able to follow them live. However, the games and analysis will be followed closely while live action from this end of the World is also being watched.

I reckon that by the end of my holiday, which coincides with end of the Tata Steel Tournament, I'll be in need of another holiday!

Anyway, I suppose I better stick my neck out with some tips:

Australian Champion: George Xie (really nice guy, deserves it this time)
Queenstown Classic: Gawain Jones (go with the English!)
Tata Steel: Levon Aronian (Time for him to go for World number 1 spot!)

Following chess

2011-12-18T20:56:00.000+11:00

There have been 2 events happening in Melbourne this weekend. The Melbourne Chess Club hosted their traditional Christmas Swiss tournament. This was a 6 round event registered on the Australian weekend Grand Prix. I think the weekender suffered a little form the fact that it clashed with the last weekend of the Australasian Masters. At least a couple of the competitors in that would most probably have played in the MCC event if they had been free.

The weekender was a small and mostly local affair with about 30 players, most of whom play at the MCC. In the end, the tournament was won outright by FM Michael Baron. Michael is an interesting character at the MCC. His passion in chess for fast time controls, and when playing he is deeply competitive. Away from the games, he is more than willing to share his knowledge and ideas and it perhaps only when talking to him that I've been able to guage his understanding of the game. I played him once at long play chess a few years ago under terrible conditions (it was over 40C outside with no aircon in the building) and we both agreed to a draw in a position that was rich with possibilities. Michael is often underestimated as a player because he rarely plays long play events. When he does, he is, however, usually a force to be reckoned with.

The Australasian Masters is still in progress as I write, The last round started a little while ago with a couple of players still in contention for first and Bobby Cheng needing to win against Leonid Sandler to gain an IM norm from the event. (Actually, as I'm writing I've just noticed the event has been won by young IM James Morris). This tournament has been a triumph for the young players with James Morris and Bobby Cheng making most of the running. Experienced IM Stephen Solomon is also in the running, but times are definitely changing for him to be challenged so seriously by the younger generation. Actually, with these great young talents and the authors of the FIGJAM blog, Australian chess seems to be on the verge of a new top layer of players. Hopefully, at least one of these talented youngsters can make it to the GM level!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to see any games from either event, though this has been my own fault rather than because of the organisers. Also I was planning to drop into these tournaments yesterday, but with one thing and another, I couldn't seen to get to them. I think it's high time I tried to get some words of wisdom from some of those players that I'm quite close to, so that's my next task for this blog.....

Chess only

2011-12-13T22:33:00.000+11:00

From now on this blog will be devoted to chess only. Mostly, it will be about chess in Melbourne, and wherever I am, but there will be some other stuff (such as refuting the Petroff).

I've nearly finished work for the year and in retrospect I have to admit I overcommitted myself to chess activities in 2011. At one point I was working about 70 hours a week (coaching chess!), arbitering tournaments one night, running chess groups another night, trying to organise a teams tournament as well as captaining 2 of the teams in the event. I burnt out pretty badly, had to cut out all chess at my club, lost the thread of the teams tournament which luckily others were able to take on, and only just managed to hold the work together, though I was feeling pretty ill or just run down at times. Anyway, my New Year's resolution is to keep my activities to a manageable level, so if you ask me to help out with something and I refuse, please don't feel offended. I will still do what I can, especially around my club, the Melbourne Chess Club.

Around Melbourne there are some events in this lead up to Christmas. Box Hill Chess Club just finished what seemed an extremely successful tournament called the Canterbury Day Nighter. The tournament had a pretty good turn out and was won by popular local player Domagoj Dragicevic. Domagoj has had an active year, and seems to be moving up towards the FM level in strength.

Box Hill Chess Club are also hosting the annual round robin norm event, the Australasian Masters. This tournament has been organised by various individuals over the years (I had a go in 2006!) and is always a tough event to make happen. To qualify as a norm event, there has to be the requisite number of foreign players and the requisite number of titled players. Depending on who happens to be floating around Australia at any given time, this can make organising this a thankless task. This year the organisation has fallen on the head of Chess Victoria President Leonid Sandler. Leonid has taken it upon himself to organise this event for the past couple of years and has done well in the end to assemble a field this year. The tournament runs on a shoestring budget (big thanks must go to Eddy Levi for his continual sponsorship of the event) so it is difficult to pay out too much for titled players. However, IM's Rujevic, Morris and Solomon made up the requisite number for the 10 player round robin. Foreign players proved harder for Leonid, but he came up with the 4 players in the end (recently the Masters has been lucky to have strong foreign players Vladimir Smirnov and Erik Teichmann playing, but neither are in the event this year. I am nowhere near their strength, but I have also found myself in the tournament in years gone by as a foreign player but not this year). The main norm hunters in the event are local FM's Bobby Cheng, Dusan Stojic and Eddy Levi. The tournament finishes at the weekend and I hope to be there for a round at some stage.

Melbourne Chess Club are hosting their traditional Christmas Swiss Weekender this coming weekend, so I might pop in to see how this is going as well.

Leonid Sandler (right) with outgoing CV member David Hacche

Melbourne Chess Club had their AGM over the weekend and I couldn't attend because I was in Tasmania. I don't have the details of the meeting, but the main thing is the election of the office bearers. There has been some continuity and some change:

President: Grant Szuveges

Vice President: Elizabeth Warren

Treasurer: Andrew Saint

Secretary: Anthony Hain

Registrar:Justin Penrose

Assistant Treasurer: Jesse Jager

Committee Member: John Beckman

Anthony Hain and Justin Penrose are the new members on the committee, and there don't seem to be as many members as in the past couple of years. Hopefully this will not put too much strain on their efforts, especially seeing the MCC is organising the Australian Junior Championships in 2012.

Chess Victoria also held their AGM a few weeks ago at the MCC and from my club's point of view the news is that our President, Grant Szuveges has joined the CV committee. Good luck to all these officebearers in their positions for the next year.

A Weekend in Tassie

2011-12-12T22:04:00.003+11:00

This weekend I have been in Tasmania teaching chess at a chess camp. Each year, The Tasmanian Chess Association and Hobart International Junior Chess Club organised the camp, although as always, what makes these things happen is the vitality and energy of a few very special people. This camp was organised by Melissa Harvey with the help of Ross George and Owen Short, and Nigel Frame who came along to help with some coaching. There were about 25 kids at the camp, varying in ages from about 7 through to about 14, and varying in abilities. However, there was much enthusiasm, some amazing raw talent, and a few pretty strong young players.

My weekend started with a flight from Melbourne on Friday night where I was seated next to a woman with a baby, so by the time I arrived in Tasmania I wasn't particularly disposed to children! But then things started going good. I was picked up by a parent of one of the kids who drove me from the airport. Thanks Dave! We went to the camp where I met up with Melissa, Ross and Owen and a chat before bed. The following day was pretty much full on coaching, though there was some time to enjoy the scenery.

A 1 minute walk to this beach brought spectacular views of Mt. Wellington

I've done these camps before, and always enjoy them. This time the kids were averagely younger than in years gone by, so I chose my material to be a little less advanced than I have when I've been before. However, the material was quite interesting and challenged the kids. They rose to the challenge, and came up with some great ideas as I extended their thinking processes, and they learnt some technical and tactical ideas which they can work on from now. On the Saturday evening, we played a thematic blitz tournament in the Four Knights Opening. I had done some preparation with the kids on this opening and they had a chance to play 7 games in the tournament. The adults who were there also played and I played, though I gave everyone odds of 5minutes to 1 minute. The kids played unbelievably well on the whole, and I felt lucky to come through the tournament with just one loss, to one of the local adult players.

A great thematic opening for kids. Our games started from this position.

The Four Knights Opening proved popular with the kids. It is simple to learn, follows basic opening principles, but allows for some interesting lines as well. The tournament went well, but special mention should go to Will Warlaw-Kelly, a young player with great talent, who came equal first on 6/7 points!

Working out their strategies on the balcony...danger man Will is second from the right.

We also had a barbecue on the Saturday night (a Tassie chess camp tradition) and a great thing about these camps is that the kids do virtually all the cooking and cleaning up, with a bit of adult supervision.

A Tassie chess camp is not complete without the Saturday night barbie

On the Sunday we had more chess through the morning session followed by a simul. The kids had been pining for a transfer tournament, but the simul went down pretty well. I managed to go through unbeaten, but had a couple of scares along the way. Twice I blundered queens, but managed to get some compensation which later I used to gain material, but I was very lucky indeed. The last man standing in the simul was Bradley Vince who is quite an experienced player in the Primary School division. Saying that, I think he'll be a bit disappointed he didn't do better after winning my queen for 2 minor pieces and a pawn.

Yuvini won a queen against me by using a variation of a trick that I'd showed the kids the day before!

Then there was a big clean up before everyone headed off. I have to say that I was pretty exhausted by the end of the weekend, and I hope the kids took some ideas from this, but even more, I hope I gave them some inspiration to go away and continue the game.

Young Oliver has great talent for the game, and plays better with his teddy near him.

Chess Symmetry

2011-12-08T21:18:00.001+11:00

It's getting near the end of the school year in Australia, so I've been showing my students a light hearted idea this week. A casual game by Capablanca, had the great World Champion being copied for most of the game. In the end Capablanca broke the copying with a deadly check which lead to either winning his opponent's queen or checkmate.

Funnily enough, this "absurd" line has some theory about it. Capablanca's 11.Qd2 was a novelty, and in fact the game Forgacs-Teichmann San Sebastian 1912 saw 11.Kh1 Kh8 to retain the symmetry. This game ended a draw a bit later, after white had spoiled the fun by attacking one of black's minor pieces which was moved. However, they "transposed" to the symmetrical line, a little later and the game finished in a completely symmetrical position!

Final position of Forgacs-Teichmann San Sebastian 1912. Perfect symmetry!

This got me thinking about various symmetrical systems, and generally about openings. And I've come to a conclusion based on my own personal feelings. And that is that the opening which I dislike the most is....

Actually, before answering the above statement, this is something that pretty much all chess players go through. I have had fun times with openings that I've grown to distrust. I've had serious misgivings about some openings which I now play. There are certain variations which make me laugh or make me cringe but there may be others in the same opening which have a complete opposite effect (how can Karpov's Be2/Be3 and Polugaevsky's ..b5 in the Najdorf be compared?). There are even major opening systems that I've had to just take my hat off to and say that I have little clue about what is going on, and little feel for the positions (the Grunfeld is one such opening for me, and watching the Tal Memorial recently did nothing to build my confidence about understanding this opening).

So, the opening which I dislike the most and I would love to see refuted and taken off the tournament shelves? The Petroff! I am not playing 1.e4 at the moment, and will not play the Petroff as black, so I won't be encountering it anytime soon over the board. So watch out for some subjective commentary against the Petroff in posts to come. :D

Running Diary 7/12/2011

2011-12-07T21:28:00.001+11:00

Today I was scheduled to run, but it was one of the hottest days of the summer so far. Even now, at 9.30pm it is 22C, but earlier it reached 33C. Now I'm not saying that it was 33C when I went out to run, but it was still pretty warm, and I'm not really used to it.

So I took it pretty steady. Even so, my legs felt heavy to begin with. I dropped into a nice rhythm, but knew fairly early on that 10km was going to be a tall order today. I ran 5km in about 29.30 and then stopped for a couple of minutes to just enjoy the view of the bay. I then took a slower run back home, about 3.5 km. So all in all, I managed about 8.5km, which is more than I thought I would reach.

This means I'm definitely getting stronger and fitter. However, this is just the start of the summer, so I guess I'm going to have to prepare for the conditions. One thing I didn't realise is that one runs slower at hotter temperatures. I knew that running in heat was harder, but didn't realise that it actually slowed you down. I also didn't realise just how cool it needs to be for better running conditions. Apparently, if the temperature is 13C or above, you are likely to run slower through heat build up. There are plenty of interesting articles on this subject.

I am now having a bit of a break from running as I am going away this weekend, so my next run is not scheduled until Monday. That should give my body plenty of recovery time :)

Running Diary 5/12/2011

2011-12-05T19:31:00.001+11:00

My reward at 6 km!

I wasn't supposed to run today, but I came in from work, it was a beautiful day outside, and I felt good so I thought I'll have an easy run. It has been nearly 36 hours since my last run, so I'm more or less sticking to the recovery program. And after this I will not run for 48 hours. I put myself under no pressure and ran a different route to the normal ones I take. One of the good things about running longer distances, is that it gives you a wider choice of places to go! I still ran to the bay, but took a more round about trip to get there.

Elwood Beach with the West Gate Bridge in the distance. My 6 km point today

And I still have to go round the bay to Brighton, about half way on the far prom.

After running this evening, and the other morning, it suddenly dawned on me that there might be better times for me to run. Amazingly, there are, and these have something to do with circadian rhythms....ok, I haven't really got any idea what these are about, but basically the body has natural rhythms which make it function at certain activities better at certain times of the day. There is a great article that explains it better than I can :)

And last, there was a bit of excitement on the run home from the bay, when I was diverted by a policeman from going down my usual road. I ran round the block and there were dozens on police, armed and with protective gear on. Don't know what was going on, and I didn't hang around to find out. I'll check the news later like everyone else!

Armed Police block the road off, but even that doesn't stop me running!

Chess professional and amateur

2011-12-04T14:34:00.001+11:00

There are 2 news stories about chess that have grabbed my attention that couldn't be more different. One involves the Super Grandmaster tournament being held in London at the moment, the other a story about 2 primary school boys being asked to leave their school for travelling to Brazil to represent Australia in the World Youth Chess Championships.

The London Chess Classic has the top 4 players in the World playing, along with World number 10 Nakamura and 4 top English players. The Tournament started with a match between the Grandmasters and anyone via Twitter and there is an odd number of players in the tournament so that the player with the bye can provide commentary on the other games. There is something for everyone at the tournament, with the GM tournament great for chess spectators, a FIDE open with 10 Grandmasters and a host of International Masters and other strong players, shorter events, fast chess events, a women's invitational and junior events. There are simultaneous displays, and film screenings and free coaching to schools.

This festival of chess brings professional chess players and amateurs together, and creates great press coverage. When the top players go to battle every chess player takes notice of their games and results. At London this year, ex tennis Champion Boris Becker made an appearance to make the first move against the Grandmasters in the Twitter game.

Unfortunately, chess in Australia is anything but professional. This doesn't mean that there aren't good players, or that it isn't run to the best of the ability of the organisers. However, there are limitations when a game which is considered a profession in some countries, is not considered a profession in others. In Australia, funding for chess has been non existent (at least in the 7 years I've been here). Our top players have to find their own way to the events, even when they are representing their country. Chess players in Australia do the right thing and donate from their own pocket to help our top players travel to Olympiads and World Championships, but mostly the players themselves have to fork out, or do some fundraising themselves.

The funding issue follows on with tournaments. Without decent government funding (chess isn't a sport or an art according to government, so they don't have to fund it via either of those avenues) chess tournaments seek private sponsorship which has created some great events (Doeberl, Sydney International Open, to name just 2) but these are few and far between. And more often than not, tournaments will be funded by the entry fees of the competitors, or may even just accept a small loss.

Of course, when an activity like chess isn't recognised by the authorities as anything other than a pastime, then incidents will occur like the one in Sydney last week. There should be no greater honour for a school than to say that one of their students has represented their country, but alas this was not the case. And things will continue to be marginalised for Australian chess players as long as they are seen as happy go lucky amateurs. If there is one thing that chess players and administrators should be doing in this country, it is working towards getting chess accepted as a sport and then applying for funding from the government. Getting recognition is the first step towards greater professionalism of chess in Australia, and until that is done, tournaments such as the London Chess Classic will sadly not be happening on Australian soil.

Running Diary 4/12/2011

2011-12-04T13:15:00.001+11:00

After running a fairly quick 10 km last time (quick for me, anyway) I decided to take it easy with a free run of whatever distance felt good to me at the time and whatever speed felt comfortable. I didn't want to push myself at all. I still managed a bit over 6 km and ran at various speeds, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. I tried to concentrate on a regular breathing rhythm, and running with looser arms than I usually do.

The more I run, and the more I read about it, the more I realise that exercising is as much about recovery and looking after your body when you're not training. Cooling down after exercising can help to reduce, or even avoid sore muscles. A few weeks back, I was getting some pains in my lower back and backside after exercising, but I now ensure that my run finishes short of home, so I have to do a cooling down walk. Since then, I've started feeling better after running.

Today when I started to run, my legs felt a bit heavy which was one reason that I didn't push things too much. Recovery training is an important part of an exercise regime and my last run had come just 36 hours before this run, so I took it easy. As it was, my run today felt pretty good once I'd shaken the cobwebs from my legs. And, of course, if the views are good when you're running, then it is an extra incentive to get out!

Melbourne CBD in the distance on the left. This was taken from the end of North Road near Brighton, with Elwood the nearest beach.

Running Diary 2/12/2011

2011-12-02T22:00:00.001+11:00

My first run of December was a good one. I felt really good and was able to keep a steady pace for 10 km. My aim for December is to run 100 km and I've joined the same challenge on Endomondo that I tried in November. Last month I only just made it, running about 103 km. This time I'd like to add a few more kilometres to the tally.

Today I also reached a personal goal running 10 km in less than an hour. However, one end is only another beginning and my next goal will be to run under 55 minutes for 10 km. This will be a stern test as I will have to run at a pace that is quite quick for me for a long period of time. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it's not as if I have to do it tomorrow!

Exercise has been for me a combination of fitness gain and weight loss. Besides building my fitness level, I was overweight when I started running, but I'm coming down to my correct level. I have a little bit more to lose, but feel great and am confident that it will happen sooner than later.....of course, Christmas goodies might have something to say about that, but my running will not stop through the holiday period. Reading about disease risk associated with being overweight is enough to make anyone think about their body. When, like me, 50 is not that far away, and diabetes has been in both sides of your family, it is even more important to make sure that your body is healthy and your weight is correct.

Running Diary 30/11/2011

2011-11-30T21:41:00.001+11:00

I had set myself the challenge of running 100 km's in November and I achieved that today. Using endomondo I was able to track the distances I ran, and I came out at about 102 km's total. I'm pretty happy with this, and I'm going to set the same challenge in December and gradually build my strength until the next step up is possible, where I might go for 150 km's in a month. I'm not sure I'm ready for that quite yet, though.

Today's run was a bit of a shock though. I decided to go out for a short sharp burst, but surprised myself with the speed I went. I ran 5 km and I have set myself the aim of running this distance in 25 minutes. So far, my best time has been just under 28 minutes, and an interim goal was to get down to under 26 minutes, beating the world record for double this distance, 10 km! My run today was recorded at 25.40 for 5km, which is a lot quicker than I'd run before. I suspect that my GPS was being a bit generous to me, but even so I was running faster than I had ever run before, and even if the GPS was a minute off, I still ran 5 km in under 27 minutes.

I had 2 worries as I was running today. Firstly, there was the natural phenomenon of being short of breath. I sometimes wear a heart monitor with the idea of staying within a zone. I am usually trying to stay within 60-70% of my maximum heart rate. There are many good sites to learn about this king of thing. Obviously, I was pushing a little harder today. The second worry was what we commonly know as a stitch. For most of the last kilometre I was running with a stitch, though it wasn't too bad. After reading about the causes, I guess the most likely explanation for me developing a stitch is lack of fluids. I try to drink before running, but don't drink much on the run itself. Still, it is just a little discomfort that I endure during my fitness program which is helping me lose weight, and get fit! It could be worse

Chesskids National Interschool Championships

2011-11-29T19:47:00.001+11:00

The last 2 days have been quite a manic affair for me. I have been getting up in the middle of the night (well, quite early) to drive to the finals of the Chesskids National Interschool Championships, provide lectures and post game analysis, and then driving back. The finals were held in Kyneton which is about an hour and a half from Melbourne by car, and most of the teams (if not all) stayed on site over the couple of days. The Interschool tournament was preceded on the Sunday by our last RJ Shield of the year. These one day tournaments are 7 round 15 minute tournaments for kids divided into age groups. They are a great introduction for young chess players to tournament chess, though there are quite a few experienced players who still love competing in them.

The beautiful countryside around the Campaspe resort provided open air facilities for the kids when they weren't playing

The Interschool tournament started on the next day, Monday 28th November, and was played at a slower rate of 25/10. Players were required to record moves until the final 5 minutes of their game. Although this may not strictly be required by International Chess Laws, this tournament is still an educational event for the players. So the emphasis is on improving a players ability through imitating proper tournament standards, and then analysing games after they've been played. The players could consult a host of coaches who were on hand to look at games and give post mortem analysis. The tip of the iceberg of the coaching staff was Mr. RJ himself, ex Australian Champion, and Olympiad player, International Master Robert Jamieson, but the rest of us are pretty good players as well :)

Mr. RJ, IM Robert Jamieson giving a well attended advanced lecture.

There were 2 tournaments, a Primary Schools event and a Secondary Schools event, and teams from new Zealand also competed. In fact the teams from New Zealand walked away with both titles this year. The Secondary division was won easily by Auckland Grammar School who came over fielding a remarkably strong team: Daniel Shen (FIDE 2182), Luke Li (FIDE 2105), Alex Huang (FIDE 2060), Hans Gao (FIDE 1898). It is no surprise that this team won their division comfortably! The Victorian Champions, Glen Waverley Secondary College finished in the runners up spot.

The playing venue

The Primary section was much closer and with 2 rounds to go, any one of about 5 teams could have won first. But the strongest finishing team was the New Zealand Takapuna Normal Intermediate School who ended up one and a half points ahead of Melbourne team, Doncaster Primary.

The smallest sometimes have to stand on their chairs to reach the far end of the board!

Running Diary 28/11/2011

2011-11-28T22:18:00.001+11:00

Today was a tough run. It was very humid and I didn't sleep well last night. However, I came home from work (which involved a 300km round trip today!) and was determined to rum. I had missed out on a work out at the weekend and was itching to get out.

So I started off at a reasonable pace with every intention of getting to 10km. Then the first issue was that my GPS didn't kick in and I ran for about 1.2km without endomondo registering it. So my goal of reaching 100km for the month of November would take that little bit longer (in fact this is the second kilometre I lost this month!). But although it's a bit annoying, it still didn't stop me from running, so I carried on and just tried to stick to a pace. At about 5 and a bit kilometres, I had to stop for a drink at a water fountain, and was more tired than I really should have been for the time I'd run.

A much needed refreshment on this run.

So I had a drink and then ran for about another kilometre and a half and found my legs just turn to jelly, and I felt a little light headed. So I stopped and walked a bit, then took off again for a final kilometre and a bit before I had to just give up and walk home. I stopped at a shop and picked up a Gatorade, but I was pretty peeved with having to quit short of my goal, but was very happy that I take a small amount of money with me just in case of this happening.

It's getting dark as I run by the bay. In the distance the Spirit of Tasmania ferries out of the bay.

Since coming in, showering, and cooling off I've had time to think about things. In reality, instead of regretting not making 10km, I should really be congratulating myself on running about 9km, which is no mean feat. A month ago, this would have been well beyond me, so I've come a long way. :) And another positive is that I forced myself to run when the easy thing was to cry off claiming tiredness. Running is a fun pastime, so I'm going to try to take the positives from it whenever I go out.

I actually played some real chess!!

2011-11-27T22:12:00.001+11:00

It's been quite a while since I had a real game of over the board chess, and I was a bit rusty. I played slower than I normally would have, which tends to be an indication that I'm not in great form. Saying that, I played ok until I got into time pressure. I had a formidable opponent, Australian IM Igor Goldenberg, and was black as well. I chose a defensive policy which worked well to a point, but in the end Igor's constant pressure told.

I was playing on board 1 for my team in the Victorian Teams Championship, so a draw would have been a great result. Unfortunately, I was unable to hold the position, and eventually lost the plot after playing the last 7 or 8 moves with only a minute on my clock. Check out Igor's technique at maintaining an edge. He didn't really do very much, but really stopped me from getting any counterplay.

There were a couple of interesting moments from my point of view. After move 23, I thought I was beginning to make some headway, but then played 24..b4 when I think 24..a4 with ..b4 to follow would have made more sense. The whole idea of this plan was to clear some of the queen side and all my b4 move did was block it up and give me weaknesses to worry about.

And of course the final move by Igor was a very nice way to finish the game. I had quickly made my last move while he had gone to get a drink, and immediately saw my blunder. Instead of 32..Nf6, 32..Rd6 was more stubborn, but I've probably let things slip by then anyway.

White played 33.Nge6+ and I resigned straight away as I'm losing a heap of material after 33..fxe6 34.Nxe6+ Kg8 35.Nxc7+

Running Diary 25/11/2011

2011-11-25T22:27:00.001+11:00

Today I did a shorter run, a bit under 6 km, as I'm planning to run a long way next. I wanted to exercise, but in an easy sort of way, so I ran for 30 minutes, and even had a little break by the bay after about 3 km. I ran at a decent sort of pace, under 29 minutes for 5 km but nothing special. It was more of a relaxing sort of run.

Elwood Pier overlooking Port Philip Bay, a beautiful running spot.

I have set myself some goals, besides the challenges on Endomondo. These are long term goals, but there are markers along the way. For instance, I'd like to be able to run 5km in 25 minutes, that's even 5 minutes per kilometre. This would also bring me below the World record for 10km which stands at 26 minutes and 17.53 seconds. I find it quite amazing that there are people who can run twice as fast as I can for such long distances!

As for 10 km, I would like to do it in under 55 minutes which is an average of 5.30 minutes per kilometre. That would enable me to finish before the fastest runners in the world finish 20km, the World record currently standing at 56 minutes 26 seconds.

Other goals that I have set myself are basically to do with distance. I think I would now like to be able to run a half marathon. That is 21km, and seeing the furthest I've run so far is about 10km, I'm going to have to start building up. But before doing this, I want to see how hot it gets in our Australian summer. I might consolidate where I am before I start extending myself, and wait for the autumn.

Goal setting is a skill that most of us are not good at. We either set goals that are unrealistic and then lose interest in the activity, or we don't understand what truly motivates us and set goals that are not a challenge, or that we're not really bothered about. I hope the goals I've set myself are attainable. My fastest 5km so far has been about 27.30, so to reach my goal I need to cut 2 and a half minutes off my time. For 10 km, I have run just over an hour, so need to drop this by 5 minutes. As for extra distance, I am breaking new ground all the time, so I don't know where it will end.

Running diary 23/11/2011

2011-11-23T20:37:00.001+11:00

Running every second day is working out great for me at the moment. I can put a lot into each run, and recover fully before the next one. I am sometimes a little stiff, or heavy legged, but that usually disappears once the run starts. I try to make sure I don't run 2 long runs (for me) back to back. Tonight I got home from work, changed into my running gear and just went straight out after a stretch. The last run I did was about 8km at a pretty slow pace, and before that I did 10km at an even pace. So I decided to try for 8km at a fairly decent pace. I am lucky with where I live as it is only 2.5km to the bay in Melbourne, so I am able to run along the sea for a part of the time. It's really pleasant to run in a beautiful environment, and sometimes, I just stop and admire the view around the bay. Today my run was broken up after 5km, when I stopped for about a minute to just look at the bay. The Spirit of Tasmania was turning around, presumably on it's way out of Port Melbourne, and I even saw a Rakali (water rat) scuttling about around some rocks and scrub near the waterfront.

The Rakali, a native of Melbourne

More rakali info can be found out at this website.

So I have been looking at running about 6 minutes per kilometre as a basic benchmark. Sometimes I might try to go quicker, and if I'm running a longer distance, I might try to hold back a bit. Today, like most of the time, I went with what felt comfortable and that was a bit under 6 minutes per kilometre. In fact, when I stopped at the 5km mark, I'd been running for just under 29 minutes. The last 3 kilometre's were run at a decent pace as well, and my 8km took about 46 minutes to run, compared with the 48 minutes which would have been even 6 minute kilometre's. You can check out my run for yourself, including a map of the route I took.

I know lots of runners listen to music while they run, and I would love to know what they are listening to. I am currently listening to some old punk stuff that I used to listen to when I was a bit younger. I have just over an hour's worth on my playlist, good enough for my 10km run. See if you know any of these old classics:

Oliver's Army, Elvis Costello

(Get A) Grip (On Yourself), The Stranglers
Here Comes The Summer, The Undertones
Hanging Around, The Stranglers
Promises, The Buzzcocks
Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)?, The Buzzcocks
I Wanna Be Your Dog, The Stooges
My Perfect Cousin, The Undertones
No More Heroes, The Stranglers
Lust for Life, Iggy Pop
London Calling, The Clash
I Don't Mind, The Buzzcocks
What Do I Get, The Buzzcocks
Wednesday Week, The Undertones
Peaches, The Stranglers
Teenage Kicks, The Undertones

I must admit, there are times I feel like singing along, but then remember I'm running, and other times I just feel like sprinting when certain tracks come on. It's difficult to hold on to a pace when Iggy Pop is belting out Lust For Life!

Tal Memorial - some strange impressions

2011-11-21T21:21:00.001+11:00

I hope I'm not the only chess player baffled by some of the strange manouvres that are being played in this tournament. I mean, the field is great, and they are putting together some excellent combative chess, but some of the opening play is way beyond me.

Round 1

Ivanchuk plays around with his queen. The opening moves of the game between Ivanchuk and Svidler were:

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. e3 Bg7 5. Qb3 e6 6. Qa3 a5 7. Nf3 Nc6 8. Bd2 Nb4 9. Qa4+ Bd7 10. Qb3 leaving this position

Now Ivanchuk has moved his queen 4 times in the first 10 moves but isn't worse?

Round 2

The 2010 Russian Champion Nepomniachtchi was playing against Ivanchuk and decided he could outdo his illustrious opponent.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 e5 5. Nb5 d6 6. N1c3 a6 7. Na3 Be7 8.Nc4 b5 9. Ne3

The beautiful knight on e3 has had an amazing start to this game, 6 times it's moved in the first 9 moves. Saying that, it does seem to have found a good square for itself. The same theme was used by Magnus Carlsen in the following round.

Round 3

It seems the world number 1 ranked player can get away with anything. Here he is playing no rabbit, but ex world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who has had a recent burst of form.
1. c4 e5 2. g3 Nf6 3. Bg2 h6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. e4 Nc6 6. Nge2 Bc5 7. d3 d6 8. h3

Nh7 9. a3 a6 10. O-O Ng5 11. Kh2 Ne6

Magnus has an amazing knight on e6, much the same as Nepomniachtchi's in the previous round, and he has only moved it 4 times in the first 11 moves Nf6-h7-g5-e6, so has been economical compared to the ex Russian Champ. However, Magnus has had the grace to throw in the moves a6 and h6 and lose a tempo with his dark squared bishop on the manouvre Bf8-b4-c5, and this bishop is heading back to a7 in a couple of moves as well!

Round 4

Nepomniachtchi is at it again, this time against Nakamura.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be2 Bg7 7. O-O O-O 8.
Re1 Nc6

Hold on I hear you say, that looks like a fairly regular Sicilian, doesn't it? Yes, it is. Look at the next few moves 9. Nb3 Be6 10. Bf1 a5 11. Nd2 a4 12. Ndb1 Ra5 13. Na3

The only difference in white's position is that his bishop has retreated to f1 and his centrally placed knight has moved to the edge of the board via the cumbersome manouvre Nd4-b3-d2-b1-a3.

Round 5

Nakamura decided to get in the act himself. The American number 1 decided that the best way to play against world number 3, Aronian was to move as few pieces as possible and shuffle his pawns a bit!

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Be7 4. cxd5 exd5 5. Bf4 c6 6. e3 Bf5 7. g4 Be6 8. h4
Nd7 9. Bg3 Nb6 10. f3

Nakamura as white has played 7 pawn moves in his first 10 moves.

Strange opening choices, throwing conventional wisdom out the window:

- don't move the same piece twice in the opening until you are fully developed.
- don't waste time bringing your queen out early.
- develop your pieces quickly making as few pawn moves as possible.

The morals of the story?

Don't be dogmatic in chess. None of the players breaking these opening moves rules lost their games!

BUT!!! Don't try these things at home without some serious thought!!

Get Fit, Get Running

2011-11-21T19:22:00.001+11:00

There are loads of ways to get fit, but the hardest part of any of these is actually getting started. About 7 months ago, I hadn't taken part in any meaningful regular exercise for quite some time, so I decided to plunge into the deep end and started running. Running is a cheap and effective means of getting fit. It's cheap as you don't need special equipment or a designated space to do it. I literally open my front door and start running, and the only expense I've had is a new pair of running shoes. It is an effective means of raising your fitness levels and burning off excess calories, as it is incredibly demanding. It can also increase your confidence and relieve stress or decrease depression! Check out some benefits of running!

Of course, the difficulty with any fitness or weight loss program is motivation. It is all too easy to miss a turn, or not put in a full effort. There are plans to help you out, though. I started with one that would get me to 5km. I liked the discipline of following a plan that had been designed for people like me, that is completely unfit slobs. But by the time the course is over, which is just 9 weeks, these slobs are running non stop for 3 miles/5km. I didn't actually follow the program religiously. I was ill for a couple of weeks and did no running at all, then eased back by repeating a level I'd already done, but in the end I got through the plan.

It felt absolutely great, a huge achievement, a personal goal conquered. In fact, it felt so good I started looking for another plan that could take me further. I found a plan that takes people from 5km up to an hour, or 10km of running. Again, I didn't religiously stick to the plan, but found that I wanted to run and was happy to step up the distance. Last week I completed the the one hour runner course, and I ran my second 10km run at the weekend.

Setting goals and staying focussed.

Once you get to a comfort level, it's pretty easy to set your own goals. How hard you push yourself to achieve these is a different matter. With running, the obvious goals are going further or faster, so for instance, I've set myself targets to reach for both 5km and 10km, and I also have a target for how far to run in 1 hour. These at least keep me constantly going out to run. I, like many others run alone, and to test myself against others, I have joined a running community. There are a number of good apps that you can get for your phone based on tracking you via GPS as you are training. I belong to Endomondo but there are heaps to choose from. In this community I can join challenges such as distance or speed tests (I am currently running 100km in November) and track your performances to see how (or if) you are progressing. There are forums, and blogs as well but part of the idea of exercise is to get out and away from the computer.

You can also plan to run a race, or a charity run. I am going to run the 2012 de Castella run for mental Health. I started a little late to enter the 2011 event. But who knows, the future might bring half marathons or full marathons?

Problems

Anyone who exercises encounters some problems. Firstly, there is a great risk of doing too much too soon. This can lead to injury and it is the best reason for following a fairly easy training plan. I am currently running every second day so as to give my aging bones and muscles some recovery time. Today I ran about 8km, but felt pretty heavy legged as I had run 10km in a fairly fast time just 2 days ago. It's a good idea to get to know your body and its limits.
Then there may be times that you can't keep up with the plan. Well don't worry, life goes on. It is not imperative to fulfil a running program in a given time to have a rewarding and meaningful life. Again, knowing your limits, including when you might need to take breaks, are important.
Tonight I had a technical problem with my GPS system. It didn't start for the first kilometre, and the app on my phone, and the home page online disagreed as to how far I actually ran today. Am I bothered? No, I ran about 8km after work and felt great :)
I'm in my 40's and soon after the program started on the build up to 5km, I had some aches in my knees and ankles. So I laid off for a bit, and started taking an omega 3 supplement. I initially started with wild krill oil tablets, but I'm currently on plain fish oil tablets. About a week after starting the supplements I had no problems with my joints. I have subsequently discovered that the supplements I'm taking are good for many other things as well.

Polish Festival in Melbourne

2011-11-20T14:10:00.001+11:00

It was a lazy Sunday morning where I had few plans, so I thought I'd head into central Melbourne and visit the Polish Festival in Federation Square. My father is Polish, though he has lived in England for over 60 years, so I have an affinity with Polish culture. I have never learned the language, but I do know a few words, and even more than I realized I knew started coming back to me as I wandered around the festival. The stage in Federation Square hosted a series of traditional Polish folk entertainment (I thought I could hear Chopin at one point, though it was probably coming from a stall I was passing). There were children singing when I was there this morning, but adults were waiting in the background in traditional dress.

There were a number of stalls around Federation Square where local Polish businesses were selling goods, such as Polish language books, jewellery (a lot of amber), and homewares. There were some handmade gifts being made as you waited, and stuff for the kids.

Carved wooden gifts, and hand loomed materials

Along the Yarra, there were plenty of food stalls. For me, this is always one of the highlights of the various cultural festivals held in Federation Square.

Mmmmm, pretzels

Granny's (Babcia) Kitchen

Europa Bakery

Lots of stalls spread along the Yarra River

There was an excellent Festival Guide given out for free with loads of information about Polish culture, history, language and contacts around Victoria. I live fairly near to a large Polish community in Bentleigh. In Centre Road, Bentleigh, the excellent Europa Bakery and cakeshop is situated, though there is another in Acland Street in St. Kilda.

Poland and Chess

Of course it also interests me to follow Polish chess players. Poland have never had a chess World champion, but they have certainly had their share of great players. Perhaps top of the list was Akiba Rubinstein, who for a couple of years before the First World War was considered among the very best in the World. He won a string of strong tournaments, but didn't get a shot at the World Championship. A contemporary of Rubinstein's was Savielly Tartakower, who was a probably a greater writer than he was a player (though he was a strong enough player). These 2 spearheaded Poland's victory in the 1930 Olympiad, and Tartakower was the teacher of the next great Polish player, Najdorf. Although Najdorf lived for most of his life in Argentina, he was born in Poland and represented Poland at an Olympiad before the Second World War. During the Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe after the Second World War, no great Polish players emerged, and it was not until recently we have seen an upsurge in Polish chess again, most notably with Wojtaszek being chosen to be part of World Champion Anand's team. But he is just one of a number of young strong Polish players, so the future of chess in Poland looks pretty bright.

Time to....

2011-11-19T22:56:00.001+11:00

....start blogging again. I really like blogging, and the best thing about it is if your life gets too busy, you just can lay off for a while until you have time. I have had to take a break, feeling not so good at times, and being really busy at work. But the light is at the end of the tunnel :)

I now have a new hobby which is running, and I will be posting more about that in the future. It took a while to get to a consistent level, but it finally seems to have got there. I've been unbelievably busy teaching, helping to develop teaching programs, and developing chess coursework material. I've also been writing a little bit for the British Chess Magazine. I have played virtually no chess over the past 3 months but this will be changing soon. I have already started working on my game a bit, and intend to play more in 2012. Saying that, I will still help out at the Melbourne Chess Club, and will probably try to be arbiter of at least 1 tournament next year.

Coffee is my other passion, and I'm hopefully going to get some to some more cafes around Melbourne bringing my own opinions of the good, and not so good. My beautiful wife has passed on her old camera, so I might be able to get some good shots of my good shots!

Ok, I'm off to watch the games of the Tal Memorial, which has really caught my interest and has me working hard on some analysis.The official site is in Russian, so I'm following it on the Internet Chess Club, and The Week in Chess.

MCC Endgame Group 28/09/2011

2011-09-28T22:37:00.001+10:00

Besides some of the regulars, we were pleased to have Sylvester Urban and Anatoli Sirota at the group. The subject of the evening was assessing positions with 2 minor pieces for each side. I'll post the positions we looked at, but try to pay particular attention to general ideas:

1. Who is better? And why? (It is white to play in all of these.)
2. Which minor pieces are good or bad?
3. Are there any plans which come to mind?
4. What are your candidate moves?

I'll come back to this with the game scores, and some of our ideas in 3 days time.......

City of Melbourne Open round 3

2011-09-26T19:14:00.000+10:00

After an absence last week, the live commentary is back! (but I will warn you that I won't be around next week). This week is significant because after 7.15pm tonight, no new entries will be accepted into the tournament. There is a rumour that Felix Wyss has returned from his travels and is looking to enter the tournament. If he shows up, then there will be an even number of players in the event, solving the bye issue....unless, of course, someone else enters! The big result of the last round was the top board loss of IM James Morris at the hands of Justin Penrose.

I've had a few clerical things to do around the club, but the early signs are already interesting. Dusan Stojic has had to delay his game as he has been in a car accident. He will still come in to the club to play his game against Michael Addamo but a little later, which Michael has agreed to.

Since then, Roger Beattie has left the club, without finishing his game, though I'm not sure what the circumstances were. I'll check it out in a bit.Felix Wyss is in the building and as far as I know in the tournament, though without a game tonight. And Tom Kalisch is also in the building, so Felix does have someone to play some blitz with.

1 hour update

James Morris was an early winner tonight:

The board 1 game between Mirko Rujevic and John Dowling sees the IM pushing hard. Follow it live. The game on board 3 is interesting with David Beaumont playing the ever popular Dragon against Domagoj Dragicevic and David is not afraid to sacrifice to open lines.

The Dragon seems very popular at the club at the moment. Both Rad Chmiel and John Beckman are facing it and have chosen Maroczy set up's. Marcus Ogden preferred a Hedgehog type Sicilian against Ari Dale.

In the top room board 3 sees an open centre between Thai Ly and Malcolm Pyke. There could possibly be some active piece play or exchanges to the endgame happening here. Urban-Penrose is an unclear position that started from 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd6.

Dusan Stojic finally arrived at the club looking hassled but has started his game with Michael Addamo choosing a Benoni. Michael has used as a classical set up with Be2 and Nf3-d2.

In the main room, both McCart brothers are in even and tough looking games that one would imagine will not be finishing too soon. Damien Feaine has chosen the solid London against Shaun Hose, and is playing much more safely than he has in the past. But the strangest position is in the game between Zachary Loh and Kerry Stead where neither side seems to want to develop before creating a number of weaknesses within their positions!

2 hours down

We have a number of winners already. Besides Morris, there have been wins for: Ari Dale, Peter Wolf, Paul Kovacevic and James Martin. Abraham Widjaja has been awarded a full point for Ian Stone's no show, but the most bizarre result of the night was Ruben Nowak's win over Roger Beattie. I don't know the details but after about 10 moves Roger left the board and the game. As he didn't return the game counts as a win for his opponent.

I am having to leave fairly soon but I will collect the score sheets on Wednesday when the MCC holds its endgame study group. Perhaps we may be studying the position of the game between Alex Kaplan and Richard Voon which has all the major pieces gone, but no minor pieces. Richard has some space but neither side has what could be called a harmonious piece deployment.

Ok, my final report. On the top boards, Domagoj is 4 pawns up on David Beaumont who's attack never really seemed to happen. I prefer Mirko on board 1, but that is probably because I enjoy space. John Dowling is a tough player to put away. Board 3 was a draw between Thai Ly and Malcolm Pyke, while board 4 is still too early to have settled in to a pattern. David Garner and Dean Hogg both ended up winning their games, and Dean Hogg's was a particularly nice effort against Garth Fitzmaurice who is another player tough to put away. There is still plenty of chess happening at the MCC, but I have to go now. I will leave you with another minor piece endgame, this time between Jim Papadinis and Roger McCart.

A couple of games that I have to hand:

MCC Openings Group

2011-09-22T22:32:00.000+10:00

The Melbourne Chess Club hosts an openings study group every second Wednesday. The last time we met we looked at a copy of the openings report from the ChessVibes website. That report is written weekly by 2 Dutch IM's and though interesting, tended to go a bit over our heads. The general opinion of our group was that the publication aimed at players much higher than your average Aussie club player assuming a great deal of prior opening expertise. Of course, this can be labelled at loads of openings works (such as New in Chess Yearbooks) and that players should just start to get down to some work and catch up with the rest of the World.

Whether an article is too high brow, or the readers too lowly in expertise is an interesting philosophical issue, but not one we dwelt on. Instead it was decided that rather than buying openings works, it might be more interesting and useful to try to create one ourselves using the games played at the MCC. So that is what I did, and here it is: (feedback about what you'd lie to see in future copies would be appreciated - Thai Ly already suggested repertoire profiles for prominent players!)

MCC Openings Bulletin

Retain the tension?

Young International Master James Morris decided against themore traditional clearing of the central tension against Jim Papadinis’s Colleset up.

The most popular move here is7..cxd4. White scores a miserable 37% against this in big database 2010. Themost popular reply is 8.cxd4 which seems natural but after 8..d5 9.e5 Ne4,black does not appear worse. So perhaps white could try 8.Nxd4, but after8..Nc6 black again has nothing to worry about.

Taking that intoaccount, why would an IM play 7..Bg4in the above position? It has been played rarely and impresses the analysisengines less than 7..cxd4. But can a simple developing move really be that bad?Papdinis replied with the natural 8.0-0and Morris dramatically changed the position by voluntarily exchanging hisbishop, 8..Bxf3. This move is anovelty in the position though the other 3 games in Opening Encyclopedia 2011all end up in white wins. (8..Nbd7 and 8..cxd4 have been played before) After 9.Bxf3 Nc6 10.d5 [10.dxc5 dxc5 11.Nc4Qc7 12.Qe2 also has its points, opening the position for the 2 bishops] 10..Ne5 11.Be2 h6 12.Be3 and whiteenjoys a decent edge. Black’s knights are not secure in the middle of theboard, and white can advance on the king side and in the centre quickly.

StudyGames:

Costa,PauloCesar (2228) - Delai,Paula Fernanda (2014) [A48]

Sao Paulo-ch fin Serra Negra, 2002

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.d4 g6 3.Bg5 Bg74.Nbd2 0–0 5.e4 d6 6.Be2 c5 7.c3 Bg4 8.0–0 cxd4 9.Nxd4Bxe2 10.Qxe2 Nbd7 11.N2b3 a5 12.Nb5 a4 13.N3d4 Nc5 14.f3 Qb6 15.Be3 Nfd716.Rab1 e5 17.Nc2 f5 18.exf5 gxf5 19.Rfd1 Rf6 20.Nb4 Rg6 21.Nd5 Qd8 22.b4 axb323.axb3 f4 24.Bxc5 Nxc5 25.b4 Nd7 26.Ra1 Nb6 27.Nbc7 h5 28.Qc2 Rg5 29.Ne6 1–0

Sosna,Jan(2416) - Nabaty,Tamir (2156) [A48]

Brno DS IM Brno (11), 09.07.2006

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bg5 Bg74.Nbd2 0–0 5.e4 d6 6.c3 c5 7.Be2 Bg4 8.0–0 cxd4 9.cxd4Nc6 10.d5 Bxf3 11.Nxf3 Ne5 12.Nxe5 dxe5 13.Qd3 Ne8 14.f3 Nd6 15.Rfc1 Qd7 16.Rc5Rac8 17.Rac1 Rxc5 18.Rxc5 Rc8 19.b4 f6 20.Be3 b6 21.Rxc8+ Qxc8 22.a4 Qc7 23.Bd1Kf7 24.Qc2 Qc4 25.Qxc4 Nxc4 26.Bc1 Ke8 27.Be2 Nd6 28.Be3 Nf7 29.a5 Bh6 30.Bf2Bd2 31.a6 Nd6 32.Bxb6 Nc8 33.Bb5+ Kf8 34.Bc5 Bc3 35.Bd7 1–0

Fedorov,Efim- Shpartko,Grigory (2019) [A48]

St Petersburg Winter op St Petersburg (6),05.02.2007

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bg5 Bg74.Nbd2 d6 5.e4 0–0 6.c3 c5 7.Be2 Bg4 8.0–0 Nbd7 9.h3Bxf3 10.Bxf3 Rc8 11.Qb3 cxd4 12.cxd4 Qa5 13.Be3 Qc7 14.Rac1 Qxc1 15.Rxc1 Rxc1+16.Kh2 b5 17.Qxb5 Rb8 18.Qa6 Rb6 19.Qa3 Rc7 20.b3 Ne8 21.g3 Rb8 22.Nc4 e5 23.d5f5 24.exf5 gxf5 25.Bh5 Ndf6 26.Bxe8 Nxe8 27.Qa6 Bf8 28.f3 Rbc8 29.h4 Rd8 30.Na5Rc2+ 31.Kh3 Rxa2 32.Qxa7 Nf6 33.Bg5 Rd7 34.Qb8 Nxd5 35.Bh6 Rf7 36.Nc4 Nc737.Bxf8 Ra8 38.Qb4 Raxf8 39.Qxd6 e4 40.fxe4 fxe4 41.Qe5 Re8 42.Qg5+ Rg7 43.Qa5Re6 44.Ne3 Rf7 45.b4 Rf3 46.Qxc7 Rxe3 47.Qc4 Kf7 48.Qc7+ Kg6 49.h5+ Kxh550.Qxh7+ Kg5 51.Qh4+ Kg6 52.Qg4+ Kf7 53.Qf4+ Ke7 54.Qxe3 1–0

2. Another g4 attack

20 years ago therewas the “risky” Keres Attack and that was about it for g4 attacks. Now, themove g4 gets thrown in all over the place, but especially in the Sicilian.Anthony Hain used g4 in an unusual position against Malcolm Pyke.

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 d6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4Nf6 6.Bc4 e6 7.Bb3 Be7 8.Be3 0–0

In this position, the move 9.g4 is a risk as black can win a pawnby force with the sequence 9..Nxd4 10.Bxd4 e5 when white’s g-pawn is doomed. Isuppose the question is whether white is really bothered about losing his g-pawnin this position? It will open the g-file for attack. However, this still seemslike a premature flank attack and white’s central king will need to get out ofthe way or it will become a target.

So should black accept the pawn?

A)9..Nxd4 10.Bxd4 e5 11.Be3[11.g5 Ng4 12.Be3 doesn’t look too appealing. Black can choose between 12.Nxe3or 12.Bxg5] 11..Nxg4 [11..Bxg4 12.f3 Be6 might also be good for black. Whitewill probably castle long and mass his forces on the king side for an all ornothing attack.] 12.Qf3 Nxe3 13.Qxe3 [13.fxe3 Bh4+ will keep white’s kinguncomfortable for a while] 13..Bg5 14.Qg3 Bf4 15.Qg2 Be6 seems to leave black asolid pawn to the good, and with the safer king.

B) Malcolm Pyke decided on a safer method (and I must admitthat without knowing this line, it would be a huge risk to open the g-file forwhite’s benefit) eliminating white’s light squared bishop and then meeting thepremature flank attack with the classical response, a central reaction.

9..Na5 10.Rg1 [10.g5seems more in spirit 10..Ne8 (10..Nd7? 11.Bxe6 fxe6 12.Nxe6 Qe8 13.Nc7 with anadvantage to white; 10..Nxb3 11.gxf6 Nxa1 12.fxe7 Qxe7 13.Qxa1 again whitelooks good here) 11.Qd2 Nxb3 12.axb3 with a bit of a mess on the board. Blackhas some untangling to do but is solid, while white has weaknesses, but a lotof potential especially to mass a king side attack with the simple advance ofthe h-pawn. I’m not sure who I’d rather be here.

Back to the game: 10..Nxb311.axb3 d5. This is a critical position.

Anthony’s 12.g5 seems misplacedhere as it seems more important to deal with the central tension. 2 moves cometo mind:

B1) 12.exd5 I’m not sure that I’d betempted to exchange in the centre with my opponent having 2 bishops and my kingin the middle. However, after the exchanging sequence 12..Nxd5 13.Nxd5 Qxd5 andnow 14.Qf3 white will be able to castle and his pieces will become quite activein the near future. Black is less developed and will have to defend for sometime before his permanent advantages can be brought to the table.

B2) 12.e5 Nd7 13.f4

I am sure Malcolm would haveaccepted this sort of position as black having great experience with the FrenchDefence. But perhaps this was Anthony’s best chance of a reasonable attackinggame without the unnecessary risks he took during the game.

Assess the Novelty

In this position in the gameRujevic-Loh, black played the novelty 9..h6

The position hadoccurred in a famous game, Fischer-Petrosian Herceg Novi Blitz 1970. In thatgame, the ex World Champion chose to play 9..Bc6 and didn’t castle king side atall:

Fischer,RobertJames - Petrosian,Tigran V [C19]

Herceg Novi blitz Herceg Novi, 1970

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c55.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Qc7 7.Nf3 Ne7 8.a4 Bd7 9.Bd3 Bc6 10.0–0 Nd7 11.Ba3 h6 12.Re1 b6 13.Nd2 Bxa4 14.dxc5 bxc5 15.Qg4 Bc616.Qxg7 Rg8 17.Qxh6 Nxe5 18.Bxc5 d4 19.Be4 dxc3 20.Bxc6+ N7xc6 21.Ne4 0–0–022.Red1 Ng4 23.Qh4 Rxd1+ 24.Rxd1 f5 25.Nd6+ Kb8 26.Nb5 Qg7 27.Bd6+ Kb7 28.Rb1Kc8 29.Qg3 Qb7 30.Nxc3 Qa6 31.h3 Nf6 32.Qh4 Nd7 33.Qh7 Rd8 34.Qf7 Qc4 35.Rb3Qd4 36.Qxe6 Qf6 37.Qd5 Nde5 38.Nb5 Qf7 39.Qc5 Nf3+ 40.Rxf3 Kd7 41.Rd3 1–0

There have been a number of moves tried inthe position:

9..Bc6

9..b6

9..Qa5

9..c4

9..Nbc6 (transposing to the main lines ofthis opening)

9..h6

Of these moves, 9..Bc6 has been played the most often (notcounting the transpositional 9..Nbc6) though Stockfish regards it as a bitdubious after 10.Ng5 h6 11.Qh5.

The powerful engine prefers a move which will not pleaseFrench players, 9..c4. Closing the centre is not natural to French players andthe bishop on d7 looks very sad. But after 10.Be2 Qa5 it looks as if black iswinning a pawn either on c3 or a4

Of course, black has used up alot of time to get this pawn, and white will be able to launch some king sideactivity, but black has a concrete plan of action, and a winning plan!Exchange, nullify any king side attacking threats, and push the passed a-pawn!

So what about youngZachary Loh’s novelty 9..h6? Well onfirst glance, it seems to be a waste of time. However, time is not the biggestissue in openings with a closed centre. Zachary obviously wanted to stop Ng5and so his move is playable. The fact that a master could prove no advantageagainst it over the board shows it is definitely ok. Although Zac lost the gameit wasn’t due to his new move.

Rujevic,M -Loh,Z [C19]

City of Melbourne Open (1), 12.09.2011

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3Qc7 7.Nf3 Bd7 8.a4 Ne7 9.Bd3 h6 [9...Bc6 10.Ng5 h611.Qh5; 9...c4 10.Be2 Qa5 11.0–0 Bxa4] 10.0–0 0–0?! [10...c4!? 11.Be2Qa5 12.Rb1 Qa6 13.Ba3 Bxa4=] 11.dxc5 [11.Ba3! b6 12.a5] 11...Nbc612.Re1 Rac8 [12...Qa5 13.c4] 13.Be3 Rfd8 14.Bd4 White is a bitbetter 14...Be8 15.Nh4

15...Nxd4? 16.cxd4 White is a solid pawn to the good now, and close to winning 16...Nc617.c3 Qe7 18.Nf3 Nb8 19.Bc2 Nd7 20.Rb1 Nf8 21.Qd2 Bc6 22.g3 Qe8 23.a5 Bb524.Nh4 a6 25.f4 Ng6 26.Ng2 Ne7 27.Ne3 g6 28.Ng4 Qf8 29.Nf6+ Kh8 30.g4 Ng831.Re3 Nxf6 32.exf6 Rc6 33.Rh3 Kg8 34.Qe1 Rdc8 35.Qh4 Be2 36.Rxb7 R6c7 37.Rb6Rc6 38.Kf2 Bb5 39.Qxh6 Qxh6 40.Rxh6 Rxb6 41.cxb6 Bc6 42.Ke3 Bb7 43.Kd2 Rc444.h4 Rc6 45.h5 gxh5 46.Bh7+ Kf8 47.Bd3 Kg8 48.gxh5 Rc8 49.Rh7 Rf8 50.Rg7+ Kh851.h6 Bc8 52.Kc2 Bb7 53.Bg6 fxg6 54.Rxb7 Rxf6 55.Rc7 1–0

Odds and ends

Why is transposing to thePhilidor better than playing the Philidor straight off?

Urban,S -Chmiel,R [C41]

City of Melbourne Open (1), 12.09.2011

1.e4 d6 2.d4Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.h3 Be7 6.Be3 c6 7.Bd3 Qc7 8.a4 a5 9.0–0 0–0 10.Nd2exd4 11.Bxd4 d5 12.exd5 cxd5 13.Qf3 Rd8 14.Rfe1 Bf8 15.Nf1 Bb4 16.Ne3 Qd617.Nb5 Qc6 18.c3 Bc5 19.Nf5 Kf8 20.Qf4 Ra6 21.Qg5 1–0

Systemic chess…cop out or challenge? 2 gamessaw white choose a system. In the first the system was used aggressively, whilein the second white took a more passive approach.

Dragicevic,D- Kovacevic,P [A08]

City of Melbourne Open (1), 12.09.2011

1.e4 e6 2.d3d5 3.Nd2 c5 4.Ngf3 Nc6 5.g3 Nf6 6.Bg2 Bd6 7.0–0 Qc7 8.exd5 exd5 9.Re1+ Ne710.c4 0–0 11.d4 h6 12.b4 b6 13.dxc5 bxc5 14.Bb2 cxb4 15.Bxf6 gxf6 16.cxd5 Ng617.Rc1 Qd8 18.Nd4 Kg7 19.Qh5 Re8 20.Rxe8 Qxe8 21.Rxc8 Rxc8 22.Nf5+ Kg8 23.Nxd6Rc1+ 24.Nf1 Qf8 25.Nf5 Kh7 26.d6 Rc5 27.d7 a5 28.d8Q Rxf5 29.Qxf8 1–0

McCart,Ri - Stojic,D[D94]

City of Melbourne Open (1), 12.09.2011

1.d4 Nf62.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.Nc3 d5 5.e3 0–0 6.b3 c5 7.Bb2 cxd4 8.exd4 Nc6 9.Be2 Bg410.0–0 dxc4 11.bxc4 Bxf3 12.Bxf3 Qxd4 13.Qe2 Qb6 14.Bxc6 Qxc6 15.Rac1 e6 16.Nb5a6 17.Nd4 Qe4 18.Rfe1 Qxe2 19.Nxe2 Rfd8 20.Nc3 Rd2 21.Ba3 Ng4 22.Rf1 Bd4 23.Ne4Re2 24.Rce1 Rxa2 25.Bc5 Bxc5 26.Nxc5 Rc8 27.Nxb7 Rxc4 28.h3 Nf6 29.Nd6 Rc630.Rd1 Kf8 31.Rfe1 Rcc2 32.Rf1 Ke7 33.Rd3 a5 34.Rf3 Kxd6 35.Rxf6 Rc7 36.Rb1 Ke737.Rf3 a4 38.Rb4 Ra7 39.Rff4 f5 40.g4 e5 41.Rfc4 Kf6 42.h4 e4 43.Rc5 a3 44.gxf5Ra1+ 45.Kg2 a2 46.Rb6+ Kg7 47.fxg6 Rb1 0–1

City of Melbourne Open

2011-09-16T22:45:00.000+10:00

The Grand Prix idea for Monday night tournaments at the Melbourne Chess Club seems to have increased the numbers playing in events. While the MCC has often attracted quite top heavy fields, we are now seeing more of an even spread of players. Extra rating prizes will only increase this trend. The upshot of the policy has been bigger fields, more competition and a general rise in standard of those players who were below the half way mark earlier this year. Of course, it takes consistency to generally move up the ratings, but giant killing certainly helps players along the way, and Roger McCart, Anthony Hain and Charlotte Dilnutt should all be lloking forward to this event after their performances in the recently finished Malitis Memorial.

There were no surprises at the top with all the seeds coming through unscathed. There were some giant killing feats lower down the field. Marcus Ogden took out Kerry Stead, while Alex Kaplan continued his upward trend with a win against Frank Lekkas. 8 players requested half point byes in the first round, but there were no other draws, an interesting statistic!

Here are some games and images from the first round :)

Justin Penrose tries to obscure giant killer Alex Kaplan

Gyula Plaganyi, a welcome visitor to the MCC from WA

James Martin

Sylvester Urban has struggled to find time for chess this year, so it is good to see him playing again!

2010 Victorian Champion, Dusan Stojic

Kerry Stead was one of the seeded players upset in this round.

Tanya Kolak and Damien Feaine

David Beaumont will hope to repeat his excellent performance from the MCC Open

City of Melbourne Open

2011-09-12T20:29:00.001+10:00

I was so looking forward to coming into the Melbourne Chess Club tonight as a spectator and possible blogger, with no intention of playing in the City of Melbourne Open or having no duties as arbiter. I knew that I may have to help out a bit, but that goes with being a member of a club. The tournament itself didn't get underway until about half an hour after the due start time of 7.15pm, due an influx of late entries, and the fact that the ACF master list which holds all players data has not been updated for the September listings yet, and so we had to do a lot of manual cross checking work. However, the players were very tolerant and with a field of over 40 the event has now started.

At the top it is very competitive. Top seed is IM James Morris, who drew the black pieces in the first round and has been paired with Jim Papadinis. There is also IM Mirko Rujevic, 2010 Victorian Champion, Dusan Stojic, Domagoj Dragicevic and Malcolm Pyke rounding off the top 5 places. We see a welcome return to Sylvester Urban who is now the 6th seed on the night (David Garner has had to take a first round bye, along with a number of other players) and there are over 20 players in the event rated above 1800. However, there is a good demographic of ages and ratings playing in the event, and it is particularly pleasing to see so many juniors in the tournament.

First results:

As always in a decent size swiss tournament, there are some rating gaps in the first round. At the top end, Jim Papapdinis 1785 is playing James Morris 2309 so there is a difference of over 500 points there. At the other end, Shaun Hose has the best part of 1000 rating points more than James Brennan. Saying that, there are usually some first round upsets, or at least, some nearly upsets. First winner of the night is Richard Voon who was rated more than 600 points above Ruben Nowak. Ari Dale is another early winner of the 18 boards in play tonight.

The closest game in terms of rating difference is between James Martin and John Dowling with only 250 points between them! Saying that, there are some giant killers around, and some players who are doing well in the MCC's Monday night Grand Prix. Players like Kerry Stead, John Dowling, Roger McCart and Anthony Hain will be trying to rack up the points keeping their high positions in their Grand Prix sections.

Time for some games....

Board 2 opening:

Stojic, and Penrose look to be solid pawns to the good in their games. Pyke looks as if he has just won a piece to a nice tactic, but my eyes might just be deceiving me. Hose, Fry and our visitor form Western Australia, Gyula Plaganyi are all heavy material ahead, while Peter Wolf is having a struggle to get anything against Charlotte Dilnutt.

However, there looks to be a real upset happening in the game between Alex Kaplan and Frank Lekkas. Alex is an exchange ahead and it doesn't look to me as if Frank has much to show for that....if anything.

Board 4 is a very messy position between Dragicevic and Kovacevic:

9.30pm

I will only be staying at the club for about another hour at the most tonight. However, I believe I will see James Morris convert against Jim Papadinis as he is a piece up at the moment.

Right, that is me off for the night but I leave the following still happening:

Mirko is a pawn up against Zachary Loh, while Dusan is 2 pawns up. John Dowling is also a pawn up, while Alex Kaplan has retained his exchange advantage against Frank Lekkas. Justin Penrose is a piece up. The other games are quite tense. Beaumont has a great centre against John beckman, while the Ogden-Stead and Urban-Chmiel games are totally unclear to me. Dragicevic has 2 pieces for a rook in the following position against Paul Kovacevic:

Malitis Memorial Round 7 Commentary

2011-08-29T20:02:00.008+10:00

The final round of the Malitis Memorial is underway and I am unhappy to say that a number of forfeits have occurred in the last round. This is very inconvenient to the organisers, arbiter, and opponent's and I for one would like to see some form of penalty apply to players who pull out at late notice, or even worse, just don't show up without telling anybody.

So the early winners of the night included Gary Bekker, who's opponent called in about half hour before the round was due to start to say he couldn't play tonight. Charlotte Dilnutt also won, but had to wait the full 30 minute default time before knowing her opponent wasn't going to show up. Anthony Hain's opponent called in sick about 30 minutes before the game, but Anthony sportingly agreed to be re-paired against Ruben Nowak who was due a bye.

The first game to finish on the night was the top board affair which was not exactly the most exciting finish to the tournament. Jesse Jager needed half a point to ensure a victory and offered a draw after 9 moves which were Kerry Stead agreed to. Tournament over, congratulations to Jesse for winning the event, and Kerry needs to wait to see if he finishes equal second, third, or equal third.

Half way through...

About an hour and a half through the session and things are heating up. John Dowling has sacrificed an exchange against Justin Penrose in a typical Dragon type position. It is utterly wild. Ari Dale is fighting a typical Grunfeld against Michael Addamo's centre. Richard Voon has an IQP, but plenty of activity against Peter Fry. Thai Ly has 2 bishops against Jim Papadinis. Philip Drew has a shocking bishop, but some good major pieces against Paul Kovacevic. Roger McCart is continuing his good tournament, 2 pawns up against Michael Hain, while James Martin and Alex Kaplan are a pawn up.

On to some concrete positions:

Philip Drew as black has a shocker of a bishop!

Thai Ly has a comfortable edge, with 2 bishops.

On board 2, John Dowling just sacrificed the exchange on c3.

Some results in the meantime: Anthony Hain beat Ruben Nowak, Roger McCart won against Michael Hain, and Phillip Drew and Paul Kovacevic was a draw.

The third hour:

Justin Penrose wins!! Justin guarantees himself outright second with an excellent victory against John Dowling, both players displaying excellent fighting spirit. Rad Chmiel also wins, and we now have only 5 games left:

Addamo-Dale: a complex Grunfeld middlegame that I cannot judge....I have no idea!

Voon-Fry: Q+R+ 5 pawns each, probably a draw, though Richard seems to have a little initiative.

Ly-Papadinis: Thai Ly is 2 pawns up, and looks to have this ending in the bag

Stone-McCart: Ian Stone has the 2 bishops, but the position is half closed. Ian is better, but is it enough to win?

Puccini-Frantzeskos: Robert Frantzeskos is a pawn ahead for no compensation. Jack is beginning to mass pieces on the king side to try to drum up some counterplay.

Thai Ly has won, but there are still 4 games left, with 2 interesting endings:

Richard Voon as white is a pawn ahead, but it might be difficult to win this position. Peter fry has excellent piece placements

A very tough endgame between Ian stone and Richard McCart

On board 3, young guns Michael Addamo and Ari Dale battle it out. I would like to think Michael is a pawn up and better, but they are both down to about 10 minutes and the position is still very complicated. Black to play here.

10.30pm:

Addamo-Dale is simplifying with Michael maintaining his pawn edge. However, with bishops of opposite colours that may make the drawing chances higher. The game Voon-Fry hasn't moved far since the above diagram, though Peter is down to 1-2 minutes, and his scoresheet is getting quite messy. Ian Stone is wirking hard on the pawn endgame but that hasn't moved too far either. I would love to analyse this endgame when they've finished with it. The last game however has taken a dramatic turn, as Jack Puccini has somehow ended a piece up against Robert Frantzeskos. I'm not sure how this happened, but Jack is in the box seat now and has more time on the clock.

11pm:

Jack Puccini and Ian Stone both score full points which leave the 2 games in the top room still in progress. Michael and Ari are both looking tense and it could swing either way. Michael still has an extra pawn, but it isn't clear how he can make use of this at the moment. Richard Voon is also a pawn up, but has his pieces in a bit of a tangle. Peter Fry has a mate threat on the board and his queen and rook are generally becoming very active.

It's a win for Addamo! Michael jumps into equal third in the tournament. That leaves just one game which has reduced to a pure rook ending. Both sides have 2 pawns, but Richard still has the initiative. I think it will end a draw, but most of my predictions have gone astray tonight.

That's it for this tournament. The results will be posted on the MCC website as soon as the event is finished, and sent to the ratings officers immediately the final game finishes.

MCC Endgame Group 17/08/2011

2011-08-17T23:00:00.000+10:00

It is always good to look at endgames by our club members, and tonight and last time we have looked at endgames played by MCC members. Tonight was a game from the Victorian Reserves tournament played between Beattie-Lekkas last night. The position that was of interest was:

In this position there was some debate as to what black's best plan was, though it was generally agreed that black was better. Plan A was to immediately bring the bishop to b4, swap minor pieces and leave white with a series of weak pawns that black's active rook would have excellent chances of exploiting. The main downside of this plan is whether black wants to exchange his good bishop for white's bad bishop.
An alternative Plan B was to probe a little on the king side, hoping to either close that side of the board, or to create a second front, possibly aiming for the invasion of black's king.

Candidate moves in the above position were:
1..h5
1..Kf7
1..Bf8
1..Bf6

They all have their points, and I would be interested to know what others would play in this position.

The last endgame group saw an analysis of the endgame between Jesse Jager and Justin Penrose from the Malitis Memorial, our Monday night tournament. We actually got a bit carried away, and looked at some theoretical endgames with rook versus knight and 2 pawns going beyond the usual time for the group to end. Hope you enjoy the analysis.

Malitis Memorial Round 5 live

2011-08-15T19:58:00.007+10:00

Round 5 of the Malitis Memorial tournament starts soon, with Ari Dale currently in clear first, facing his biggest challenge yet against top seed, Jesse Jager. Meanwhile there are interesting match ups through out the event. I particularly like the battle of the veterans on board 3, where Richard Voon and John Dowling play, though it is tough to beat sibling rivalry, so the match between McCart and McCart will be good.

From an arbiter's point of view, the tournament has become rather frustrating. I walked into the MCC tonight and was immediately hassled about pairings. I made it perfectly clear that this tournament would be run using a pairings program and I would interfere with the pairings absolutely minimally, and probably not at all. Still this doesn't stop some people from moaning, and after a while it can start to grate. It is no wonder that so many volunteers are short lived in their activities, with the amount of hassle they get, and I applaud all who work voluntarily for the good of the game :)

The first round has started, and we have one non-show in Jack Shanks, so it is an easy point for Thai Ly, though no doubt a bit frustrating for him. All the other games are under way and i will update some positions shortly. James Brennan had a bye this round, so there are still 13 games in progress.

1 hour into the games:

Interesting fact for the night....the role of James Bond was turned down, by among others, Prisoner and Danger man star, Patrick MacGoohan. What has this to do with chess? Absolutely nothing, but then again, so does a lot of the conversation that happens at the Melbourne Chess Club. However, there is also some interesting chess discussion as well. Pre tournament announcements included adverts of upcoming events, the Fitzroy Skittles on September 4th and the next Monday night event starting on September 12th, the City of Melbourne Open, a 9-rounder.

I've also had some time to kibitz over a position that occurred in one of MCC committee member's Paul Cavezza's games. But as the friendly chess continues to all comers to the club, the real stuff is happening in the tournament.

The board 1 game is a complex Grunfeld where white has fianchettoed on the king side. Board 2 is intersting with a QGA/Slav structure with a number of weak central and queen side pawns for both sides. Kerry Stead seems to have a winning material advantage against Michael Hain, being a piece up, as is Alex Kaplan against Tristan Rayson Hill. Anthony Hain is developing a nasty looking attack against Jim Papadinis from an Italian type opening. And th girls both have solid but passive positions with even material. Structurally, Charlotte Dilnutt and Sarah Anton are better in their games, while their opponent's Jack Puccini, and ian stone have the greater dynamic chances in the short term. Finally, it looks as if Rad Chmiel has found a nice tactic to break through Ruben Nowak's defences. I'll get some concrete positions now.

Board 1: is the white pawn strong or weak? The MCC welcomes IM James Morris into the house. Regarding this position Morris said "White is better, the d-pawn is huge"

Anthony Hain as white has a massive looking attack against Jim Papadinis.

A mess on board 2 as Michael Addamo and Justin Penrose both have weaknesses.

Rad Chmiel was the first winner of the night. I'll get his break through against Ruben Nowak as it was pretty nice. The battle of the McCart's is heading Roger's way, at least if his extra queen has anything to do with it!

In this position, Rad uncorked 1.Bxe6! and won soon after.

Alex Kaplan hasn't been having a good tournament, and was "thrilled" with his win tonight. Maybe this will kick start his tournament. Roger McCart has won his game, even though Richard did get a pawn back for the queen!

I've just been kibitzing the top board game with James Morris and Paul Cavezza. Ari has an extra piece for 2 pawns, but Jesse has a lot of threats. A tough position for both players.

Kerry Stead has won, after Michael Hain miscalculated some exchange sequences and lost a piece. Justin Penrose seems to have a mass of pawns while Michael Addamo has some knights and his queen near Justin's king. Is it a winning attack or has he sacced too much? Anthony Hain is an exchange up in the endgame but is making slow progress against Jim Papadinis. Peter Fry has dropped a pawn to Robert Frantzeskos, but the position is anything but clear. And Charlotte Dilnutt has 2 pawns advantage against Jack Puccini, but young Jack is trying to create some king side threats.

Frantzeskos-Fry with black to move.

The games are getting to critical point now. Jesse Jager has just walked out after a win against Ari Dale. The final position I saw looked like:

Typically, there have been a number of games where one side has found themselves material down, and tried to create threats against their opponent's king. White was too much ahead here, and the threats were not great enough. Jesse as white won.

Michael Addamo has chosen the same strategy as Ari in his game as white against Justin Penrose. How much white has in this position will be seen over the next few moves.

Another interesting position is on board 6 where Paul Kovacevic has a massive pawn on e7, but it can't quite get any further. It is tying James Martin up at the moment. Who will be able to coordinate their forces over the next few moves?

Jim Papadinis has made a miracle comeback against Anthony Hain and won the endgame an exchange down. Anthony forgot that in the endgame, the king can still be a target. I am sure Anthony missed some knock out blows earlier, but there are many players who will know how hard it can be to put Jim Papadinis away.

10.30pm

Looks like we might get an early night as there are only 2 games left. Philiip Drew won against Gary Bekker. Gary never really got going in a Sicilian where they castled on opposite sides. Paul Kovacevic won his game, and the girls had a good night, with Sarah drawing against Ian Stone, and Charlotte winning against Jack Puccini.

The 2 games left are between Voon and Dowling and Addamo and Penrose. Michael has an exchange for a host of pawns, and both kings look a bit dodgy. Richard is a pawn down against John Dowling, but John is down to just 2 minutes and will be playing on his increment soon. Both of these games could go either way.

It's all over, with John Dowling and Michael Addamo coming out victorious. This leaves Jesse Jager as sole leader half a point clear of Ari Dale and Michael Addamo.

Thanks for following this blog, I'll be putting some games up in the next couple of days.

MCC Openings Group 10/08/2011

2011-08-10T23:07:00.000+10:00

From a competitive perspective in chess there is definitely something lacking in short draws. It is as if the fight is about to begin, but both players have decided to call it off for the day. However, from an openings perspective, short draws can be quite interesting, at least some short draws. Some short draws see new moves, and then that game may be suddenly cut off. A flurry of research may then take the new move a bit further, and further practical tests may be seen.

Other short draws can be examined by players who aren't familiar with a certain opening. That is what we looked at tonight, a recent game that was cut short on move 11 in a position full of interest. Of course, this sort of short draw leads us to examine early middlegame positions which is generally good for our chess. If the positions are unusual, or different to what we normally play, then it may broaden our horizons and offer new experiences.

A look at this opening, the Trompowsky, saw most of us at the group tonight out of our theoretical knowledge, but 8..Qd8 looks bad after 9.d6. We then added the moves 9..Qb6 10.Qe2+ Kd8 and played some games from this position.

In this position, 11.Na3 was the move of choice so as to answer 11..Bxd6 with 12.Nc4. Frank Lekkas tried to sacrifice his queen and got very good play with his pieces against me in some games, but that might be more to do with my lack of defensive skills against Frank's excellent attacking abilities rather than anything regarding the position :)

Malitis Memorial Round 4 live

2011-08-08T19:39:00.006+10:00

The fourth round of the Malitis Memorial has just started and we are privileged also to be hosting a postponed game from the Victorian Championship between 2 of our members, Domagoj Dragicevic, and GM Darryl Johansen. There has already been some complaint about the pairings for this round as Jesse Jager wan't floated up to play against Ari Dale, but then again Kerry Stead who is playing Ari on board 1 was floated down in the last round and the pairings program wanted to equalise that issue.

We have one player who cannot play due to work commitments, Sarah Anton and she has been replaced in the draw by Alex Kaplan who is playing James Martin. This leaves me free to blog and fulfil my role as arbiter, as Michael Hain requested a bye in this round due to work commitments, and John Dowling decided not to play as he was competing in the Oceania Seniors tournament at Box Hill Chess Club. Congratulations go to MCC's very own Mirko Rujevic for winning this event. I was at the event yesterday for some time and it was great to see so much experience behind the chess board gathered in one place.

1 hour of chess played:

Today I will be kibitzing with FM Bill Jordan. A couple of quick winners tonight were Charlotte Dilnutt over James Brennan, and Jesse Jager over Jack Shanks.

On board 1 we have a Czech benoni with a huge wedge of interlocked pawns. Something will give at some stage. On board 2 Anthony Hain looks to have lost his queen for not enough compensation. On 4 there are 2 very tired looking guys playing. Richard Voon has been playing in the seniors, while Gary Bekker has been conducting an arbiter's seminar and course. Other games of interest include pawn advantages to Jamie martin and Paul Kovacevic, while Ruben Nowak has 2 pieces for a rook but his position is still very bad.

2 hours down.

Justin Penrose won against Anthony Hain on board 2:

Board 3 is very interesting, with Gary Bekker as black down to 8 minutes against Richard Voon.

The board 1 game between Dale and Stead is reaching critical point.

Around the boards, Peter Fry appears to be a piece up against Richard McCart. while Paul Kovacevic seems to have an extra 3 pawns in a rook ending against Robert Frantzeskos.

Amazing how soon things can change. The time issue hassled Gary Bekker who is now a piece down. Ari Dale looks to have a big position now. He has got g6 in and looks to be opening up Kerry's king side.

The game on board 8 is quite interesting, between Thai Ly and Rad Chmiel. Thai has the 2 bishops but it is a bit of a mess. Quote of the night goes to Jesse Jager, "Isn't white just a pawn up?" Actually, no, it's materially level, but we still like white :D

It's great taking the fun out of someone for counting the board wrong like I just did to Jesse. Deservedly, I now have to admit I did the same thing in the Voon-Bekker game. Gary isn't a piece down, but an exchange up! However, he has the 30 second increment to finish his game. I have had to remind a player about making a number of draw offers again. This time, after making the draw offer, he was unsure that his opponent had heard so he asked again....and again....and again....and....you get the picture!

Some interesting endgames:

Roger McCart seems to be winning as white against Ruben Nowak

Thai-Ly Rad Chmiel is still unclear.

Currently in the Victorian Championship game, Johansen as white is a pawn ahead against Dragicevic and with the move, should be considered favourite.

We're getting into the last parts of the games now. Ari Dale looks comfortable now against Kerry....in fact they've just come through and Ari has won and stays clear in the tournament. There has been a deal of criticism of the draw which was produced by swissperfect without any interference by me. To be fair, I did say that I wouldn't be changing the pairings without exceptional circumstances as I don't have time to work on them, but that hasn't stopped some from displaying their disgust with the draw. The issue is whether the top seed should have floated up, and to some extent I have sympathy with this as it seems natural. But is it right? I don't know, especially with Kerry already having floated down.

Anyway, back to the games. Phillip Drew has an exchange for some pawns against Michael Addamo, and Wichael only has 3 minutes. The only other game is Thai Ly and Rad Chmiel which hasn't changed much from before.

Vic Champs update: Johansen has 2 pawn advantage, though it's all on one side now.

Michael Addamo's pawns smashed through the centre, and Johansen converted his advantage in the Victorian Championship. There is still one game going, between Thai Ly and Rad Chmiel, but that is it for me for tonight. I will post some games in the near future, and the full results on the MCC website soon. The pairings for round 5 will be posted probably Wednesday night.

Tactics Friday

2011-08-06T16:46:00.000+10:00

In this position, black had just played 14..c5, but it loses material to an exchanging sequence, though you have to be able to see the fork at the end of it. 15.Nxd7 Opening the 5th rank and removing a vital defender 15..Nxd7 This is the defender....not of c5, but of h7 16.dxc5 will now win material. Black can't allow c6 forking 2 pieces so would have to take on c5 but loses a piece after 16..Nxc5 17.Nxc5 Bxc5 18.Qh5 forking h7 and c5. In the game black resigned after 16.dxc5, Arutinian-Bystrov Czech Open 2011

Todays puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer Monday ;)

Tactics Thursday

2011-08-04T23:08:00.000+10:00

Well, my daily tactical exercise doesn't seem to be happening, so it will from now on be an occasional tactical exercise!

Solution to the last puzzle:

The World Junior Championships is currently underway, and this is from the 2007 edition:
White has a mating net, Popov-Priborsky World Junior 2007: 1.Rd6+ and it's mate in all variations. The game went 1..Ka5 2.Qc7+ Kb4 3.c3+ Kxb5 4.Qb6+ Ka4 5.b3+ Ka3 6.Qc5+ and black resigned in view of the mate in one to follow.

Todays Puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

Malitis Memorial Round 3 games

2011-08-02T23:20:00.000+10:00

The top games from the Malitis Memorial were engrossing last night, with games swinging to and fro.

Malitis Memorial Round 3 live

2011-08-01T20:10:00.006+10:00

The Malitis Memorial is entering its third round, and that is when entires officially close. With the late inclusion of Ian Stone, the tournament is back up to even numbers which may mean me playing in future rounds, but we'll see about that. The tournament has been caught by late winter illness, with both Roger McCart and Jim Papadinis calling in sick. Roger's opponent, James Brennan has generously agreed in principle to rearrange the game, while Jim is getting a bye and his opponent, Jack Shanks has agreed to play Ian Stone. The other game not started tonight is between Sarah Anton and Robert Franczeskos as I as arbiter had made an error forgetting that Sarah was unable to play the game tonight. They will also try to rearrange their game. All the postponements will count as draws for pairing purposes.

Before the tournament I asked some of the senior members of the club what they remembered of the man who this tournament is named after. Besides being a former club champion of the MCC, Edwin Malitis was a dedicated committee member and long time treasurer of the Melbourne Chess Club. A group of current members including current President Grant Szuveges, and former Preisdents Bill Jordan, Greg Gatto and David Beaumont all reminisced about a man who was first and foremost devoted to the Melbourne Chess Club, and along with another former President Bob Brooking steered the club through some difficult times and brought the club to its current premises at Leicester Street. He is remembered as being tight with the financial reigns of the club, a necessity of any good treasurer, and a man who didn't allow reputations to cloud his judgement. As part of the group of Latvians who emigrated to Australia after the Second World War he made his life in Australia and was a successful businessman. But the reason his name is commemorated in this tournament is that he devoted so much time and effort to working at and for the Melbourne Chess Club.

I would love to hear any more stories or anecdotes that would shed further light on Mr Edwin Malitis.

First Hour:

We have a number of strong players hanging around the club tonight so I'll try to get some kibitzing from the likes of Bill Jordan, James Morris, Frank Lekkas and David Beaumont. There have been no early casualties. It looks as if Jesse Jager is a comfortable pawn up on board 1, and John Dowling is a pawn up against Ari Dale on board 2 but it is a bit more complicated. The board 3 game game is a young guns Najdorf between Hain and Drew which is yet to really get started. On board 4, according to FM Bill Jordan, Kerry Stead ahs a promising position against Thai Ly. Board 5 is a typical Dragon with Richard Voon as black with Rad Chmiel playing a quiet line castling king side. Michael Addamo seems to have a space advantage on board 6, but whether he can convert it is another matter.

In the main room, Gary Bekker is an exchange up against Richard McCart, and Paul Kovacevic is a piece up against Charlotte Dilnutt. The other games are all tight, with the notable interest for me being how long Ian stone is taking over his moves. He is already down to 37 minutes. The bottom board between Ruben Nowak and Tritan Rayson Hill has already hit the following tricky endgame. Who will be the master of the heavy pieces?

2 hours gone:

Bill Jordan was a little surprised by Jesse Jager's decision to sacrifice the exchange. Bill, and myself, would have preferred a slower approach to the position. The resulting ending may still be won for white, but we are not certain. Follow it live to see the conclusion. Dowling-Dale is an interesting material imbalance with Ari having a queen for rook, piece, and pawn.

Anthony Hain is a pawn up, with double rooks and opposite bishops on the board against a cold ridden Phillip Drew. Stead-Ly is beginning to build into a tough game. Chmiel-Voon is a tough queenside battle. Michael Addamo seems to have a comfortable position with some space and the bishop pair. It is the sort of position that he would convert if he was in good form, but I'm not sure how much chess he has played recently. Gary Bekker has won, the first winner of the evening, and Michael Hain and Paul Kovacevic (who was actually only a pawn up, I miscounted) soon followed. The M. Hain-Martin game had an interesting position.

Michael as white solved his problems by playing Qg4, which at least wins a pawn by force. Our endgame from earlier has moved forward a little with Ruben Nowak's rook getting amongst black's pawns, and it is advantage to Ruben.

Jack Shanks has a clear pawn advantage against Ian Stone.

And the kibitzing is liking Penrose on the top board at the moment, bringing into question Jager's earlier exchange sac. Beaumont thinks black is winning....hold on, he is wondering about a mating net in the corner..."it wins for white" D. Beaumont

The top board game is causing big headaches. Jordan and Morris are unsure, Beaumont wavers between white win, black win and draw, and I am playing devil's advocate. Frank Lekkas with the help of Rybka 4 thinks the position is technically a draw.

Black here played 1..Rc6. We were wondering about 1..c4?

Dowling seems to be in control against Dale and is now picking off pawns. Ari needed to create some king side counterplay and it never happened. Actually, I was just called to this game as John complained about his opponent adjusting one of his pieces away from the centre of his square. I told Ari to readjust his piece, and the game continued, but I'm not exactly sure of the rules here.

On board 3, the game has levelled out with 5 pawns each and opposite bishops. I expect a draw here relatively soon.

Jager looks absolutely gutted. We have the theoretically drawn ending or king and rook versus king and knight. Will Justin play it out? John still looks good against Ari, and Hain-Drew looks dead drawn now. Thai Ly has a mterial advantage against Kerry stead, an exchange, but time is getting short. Richard Voon has just won, and Michael Addamo is showing his lack of match practice as he is now very low on time and his 2 bishops have gone. The only other game is between Jack Puccini and Alex Kaplan where the young Jack looks good, but again he is low on time.

There are some vigorous and interesting post mortem analysis going on at the moment, so with just a couple of games left I will leave you with Richard Voon's efficient victory against Rad Chmiel tonight. The rest of the games will be published soon, and I will try to include some post mortem analysis ideas. Thanks for following this blog :)

Tactics Friday

2011-07-31T20:37:00.000+10:00

Yes, I know it's Sunday but I was so exhausted at the end of the week that the Friday tactic had to wait unto today.

Both queens are en prise, but it's white's move. 1.Bxh7+ Kh8 [1..Kxh7 2.Qd3+ wins a queen] 2.Qg4 leaves black insurmountable problems. The game ended quickly: 2..d4 3.Ng6+ Bxg6 [3..Kxg7 4.Qh5+ Kg8 5.Nxe7#] 4.Bxg6 and black resigned as he will have to lose too much material just to avoid immediate mate, Samsonkin-Inigo 2011

Today's Puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer tomorrow;)

Tactics Thursday

2011-07-28T22:45:00.000+10:00

Yesterday's position came from the recently concluded Condom GM event, and in a fit of schoolboy giggles, I had to choose a position from this tournament (I was looking for a prophylactic move, but couldn't find one...) Black to play came up with 1..Rxf2 which busts white as he cannot take the rook. The game concluded 2.e4 Rxg2+ (no half measures here) 3.Kxg2 Rb2+ (the point in all lines) 4.Qf2 Qg5+ 0-1 Barsov-Demuth Condom 2011

Today's Puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

MCC Openings Group 27/07/2011

2011-07-28T00:11:00.000+10:00

Tonight we had a good number of people at the Melbourne Chess Club discussing the recent novelty played by Aronian against Harikrishna at the World Team Championship. Aronian's 10.h4 (in the position above) looks to our amateur eyes as the start of a mad king side attack. A closer look at the game shows that it may just be a space gaining operation on the king side.
The question that was posed was "is 10.h4 a move that black should really be scared of?" In the game Harikrishna never really got going, dropped a pawn and still hadn't developed properly. In the end, Aronian's advanced king side pawns tied black's king and rook to the back rank leaving black with nothing.

So we looked at some candidate moves starting already from move 10. In the end, it seemed the idea of 10..Nd7 followed by e5 was ok, and the exchange sequence seems forced, but the following moves weren't so hot.

In this position Frank Lekkas suggested 14..e4 with the idea of 15.Nd2 hxg5 winning a pawn. It looks mighty dangerous for black to open the h-file, or to encourage white's pieces to the king side, but it appears that black is holding.

a) 16.hxg5 Rh5 17.Qg1 (Lekkas again) and we couldn't find anything for white.
b) 16.Qh5 (Kerry Stead said that he'd heard Alex Yermolinsky talking up this move on ICC) 16..g6 (16..g4 was also touted as an idea) 17.Qxg5 (17.Qh6 g4 18.h5 g5 and white's going nowhere) 17..Qxg5 18.hxg5

This is the position we looked at mostly. Black has a weakness on d5, but it isn't easy to get at, while white has a weakness on g5, which again is difficult to attack. The position appeared to be balanced to the group. I reckon this position may see some games in master practice over the next 12 months, and it will be with interest that we will look at these games.

Tactics Wednesday

2011-07-27T23:34:00.001+10:00

On Monday the British Championship started, which is always usually good for some tactics during the games. Yesterdays puzzle came from the British Championship in the year I was born, 1966.

Black to play was Sir Stuart Milner Barry who played the elegant 1..Bc2 attacking a rook, but more importantly, trapping white's queen. So white doesn't have time to move the the rook away, or black will simply play 2..Nb6.

Todays Puzzle

Black to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

Tactics Tuesday

2011-07-26T22:34:00.000+10:00

So the plan is now to offer a tactical puzzle every weekday (I have already failed yesterday!)

First the solution to the last puzzle:

1.Bg5+ forces mate in 3. 1..hxg5 2.Qxg5+ Kd7 3.Qf5+ Ke7 4.Qe6# Zukertort-Anderssen Breslau 1865

Todays puzzle:

Black to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

Malitis Memorial Round 2

2011-07-26T21:32:00.000+10:00

The day before the second round of the Malitis Memorial Tournament I received a message to say that David Lacey had to withdraw from the event. It is regrettable that anyone has to withdraw and I hope that David is ok. But in one respect it made the tournament easier as we now had an even number of players, meaning that I could carry on my role as arbiter. However, on the day of the second round, Tristan Rayson-Hill joined the tournament and I was back in the field playing as a reserve if someone doesn't want a bye. This will be my role in this tournament from now on, fulfilling the role of stand by if the numbers become uneven. So hopefully next week, I'll be back to doing a live blog from the MCC.

As I was playing, I didn't get to see as much action as I would normally have seen. I did hear a draw offer on about move 7 in the game between Thai Ly and Anthony Hain. It was a Najdorf with 6.Be3 Ng4. Thai retreated his bishop to c1 and Anthony took his knight back to f6 and they repeated moves, though I don't think the same position was reached 3 times. There was a rearranged game in the draw. With David Lacey's withdrawal, and with Michael Addamo out of the country, Paul Kovacevic and Jim Papadinis agreed to play each other so they both got a game. The result was the second longest game of the night and a hard fought draw. The longest game of the night was once again played by Jack Puccini, who has no sympathy for his mum who comes to pick him up, and invariably ends up waiting for young Jack for hours. The one time she decides to risk turning up later, at say 10.30pm, he will no doubt finish by 8pm!

The top games had carbon copies, and I did my best to decipher the moves. I found it impossible in the game between Robert Franczeskos and Ari Dale which is a shame, as this looked the most interesting the back room. The full scores can be found on the MCC website.

Tactics 4

2011-07-22T23:12:00.000+10:00

This was from one of my games. As white I had some inspiration and found 1.Nf5 and after 1..exf5 2.Nd5 threatens 3.Nc7# and costs black a load of material to prevent mate.

Today's Puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer on Monday ;)

Tactics 3

2011-07-21T23:25:00.000+10:00

Yesterday's position was from a simultaneous game by William Steinitz. As White, Steinitz played 1.Qh5 and won after 1..Rxh5 2.Ng8+ Ke8 3.Bxf7# In fact, 1.Ng8+ may be even better as after 1..Rxg8 2.Qf3, mate is unstoppable, a sample being 2..f5 3.exf6+ Ke8 4.Qh5+ Rg6 5.Qxg6# But who can deny the beauty of a move like 1.Qh5?

Today's Puzzle:

White to play and win

answer tomorrow ;)

MCC Endgame Group 20/7/2011

2011-07-20T23:43:00.000+10:00

Tonight the group looked at some positions where both sides have a rook, and there is a 3 v 2 pawn situation, but all the pawns are passed on opposite sides of the board. These endings are very exciting, with the possibility of both sides promoting, and many other tactical possibilities. Games can reduce to rook versus pawns endings, or queen versus rook and pawns endings, or even crazy heavy piece endings (when both sides promote). I had the inspiration for this ending by analysing an endgame a couple of weeks ago.

I admit that I got a bit carried away analysing this endgame, but it gave me inspiration to show some interesting positions to the group.

This occurred in the game Yates-Watson London 1922 with white to make his 66th move. The Australian playing black escaped with a draw, but perhaps could have counted himself a little lucky. White's king and rook can do a comfortable job of stopping black's pawns, while the white pawns are threatening themselves.

This was Laurentius-Keres Latvian Ch 1936. The great Keres as black (about to play his 42nd move) wastes little time in pushing his outside pawns, demonstrating that a king generally would like to be stopping an opponents pawns, and white king is misplaced for this.

White here offered a draw, but we at the MCC endgame group came to the conclusion that he let his opponent off a bit easily and should have forced his opponent to find an accurate plan.. The game Grechkin-Lisitsin USSR 1938 could have continued 1..Kg6 2.Rh4 Rb1![The only way to try to draw] 3.Kxg4 Rxb3 4.Rxh3 Rb4 with the following position which is a tabebase draw, although without knowledge of the technique, it can still be difficult for black to hold:

Tactics 2

2011-07-20T23:14:00.000+10:00

Yesterdays puzzle was from the game Vesselovsky-Misiuga Karvina op 2011. White played 1.Nc6! with the point being if black moves their queen to c7 or b6, then 2.Qxe6+ forces mate. 2..fxe6 3.Bg6#

Today's Puzzle:

White to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

Tactics

2011-07-19T23:09:00.000+10:00

I am working on some tactics for Juniors, so I'll share some nice ones here.

White to play and win

Answer tomorrow ;)

Edwin Malitis Memorial 2011

2011-07-19T11:10:00.000+10:00

Victorian chess is at a bust time of year. The Victorian Championships and reserves are on the verge of starting, the Victorian Junior Championships have just finished, and we have just had a weekender at Croydon Chess Club, the Guy West Classic. Still the clubs move ahead with their own internal schedules, and the Melbourne Chess Club is no exception. On Monday nights, the MCC Grand Prix continues with the 7 round swiss Edwin Malitis Memorial. Now personally I never met Eddie Malitis, so I will take it upon myself to find some things out about the man and his relationship with the MCC during the course of the event.

The 3rd tournament of the year always has somewhat of a down turn in numbers compared to the 2 9-rounders that precede it, and this year was no exception. However, the tournament still attracted a field of probably more than was expected, especially seeing many of our higher rated regulars from Monday night (Mirko Rujevic, James Morris, Domagoj Dragicevic and Malcolm Pyke in the Championship, David Garner, Frank Lekkas, Roger Beattie and John Beckman in the Reserves) are participating in the State championship tournaments. We at the MCC wish all these players the very best of luck in their events, as well as newly returned Sylvester Urban playing in his first Victorian Championship after winning last year's reserve tournament, and Kerry stead and Sarah Anton who are masochistically playing in both the Victorian Reserves and the Malitis Memorial. Currently there are 30 players in the Malitis Memorial, including myself as player/arbiter, although I only played int he first round to even the numbers and should there be an even number to the field with more players entering, then I will happily withdraw and resume the task of arbiter and live blogger.

The field has Jesse Jager as its top seed, a number of Monday night regulars, and a few players newer tot he club, or at least to Monday nights. A few players took byes in round 1, but still 26 players competed. As usual, the majority of the games went according to rating, but still there were some giant killing feats. If Anthony Hain keeps giant killing, he will soon become a giant where others are looking to take him as a scalp. This round he took out experienced campaigner Richard Voon in a complex Poisoned Pawn Najdorf. Anthony's dad, Michael was also on the giant killing list. Michael needed the MCC Open to refamiliarise himself with tournament chess, and has started the Malitis Memorial off with a good win. Robert Frantzeskos is a new name to me, and a new name to Rad Chmiel who after their game described the unrated Robert as 'at least 1900 strength'. You can check out all the first round results at the MCC website, and here is a selection of games from the first round.

Back to work tomorrow

2011-07-17T17:59:00.000+10:00

I'm lucky to work alongside schools in as much as I get school holidays off (mostly). But today is the day before work, when all the freedom comes to an end, and the daily routine changes. I will be getting up a couple of hours earlier each day, going to bed a couple of hours earlier each day and instead of being wherever I want and doing whatever I want, I will be where I'm supposed to be, doing what I need to do. To be honest, although it sounds bad on paper, I'm pretty lucky to have a job I love to do, so it's not exactly back to the grindstone for me.

I wonder why it's called the Yellow Door Cafe?

Plenty of outdoor seating makes this area a great summer hangout, though it was bit cold for that today.

However, on my last day off, I was even luckier as my wife also had the day off, and with our best friends we went out for lunch to Albert Park Village. This is really a great place to eat, drink and hang out with short walks to Albert Park, Gasworks Park, and the Bay when you've finished pigging out. I wanted to go to the Dundas Place Cafe, but it was packed out, so we went to a place called Yellow Door, and weren't disappointed. Funnily enough, I've noticed in Melbourne that generally speaking, if an area has a great cafe, then most of the other cafes nearby are usually pretty good too. I suppose someone sets the standards so the others have to keep up, or at least stay close. We had 4 different breakfasts and we were all happy with our meals. The coffee was Grifffiths, and though it wasn't the best I've had, it was still full of body and without deep bitterness.

In fact, earlier in the week, I was here with Caroline and we went to a different cafe (which wasn't open today) and had one of the best coffees I've had in Melbourne. The Combi Coffee Espresso Window looks a bit quirky, and inside it is pretty minimal, but if you try it out, you'll be rewarded with an amazing coffee. My long black held its crema (I take a long time over my coffee), and the flavour oozed a great combination of sweetness and acidity.

Doesn't look much? Amazing coffee inside.

Next to the cafe, if you want al fresco, you can sit in the combi garage.

Albert Park Village is a chilled out place to hang out on a nice day (or even a not so nice day), drinking coffee, good eating and people watching. From the green there is the dominating view of the Biltmore Apartments, with local historic interest, and to the side even an open air chess board, just in case someone like myself fancies a busman's holiday!

The big colonnaded building behind this has an interesting history.

Open air chess

Chess by the green. Across the road, the grey building in the centre is the Biltmore Apartments.

Another Day at the Victorian Juniors

2011-07-14T13:03:00.008+10:00

What makes a chess tournament important? Well in global terms, the best players may be playing, or at least an interesting maverick. Or perhaps the tournament is of historic importance, such as a World Championship match. I have just seen a report for next years match on the chessbase site stating that the match will be played in the Champion's home country of India. This gives an interesting contrast to the last match played on the challengers home soil!

In local terms, the issue of what makes a tournament important is more complicated and may be different for each individual. At the Victorian Juniors, it is plainly evident that the players fighting on the top boards, in with a chance of winning a title, are fully focussed. Some players who are playing in their first State Junior Championship are relishing the experience. However, there are a group of players in the field (and no doubt many who didn't enter) for whom this is just another tournament, and to some extent a tournament that is not particularly exciting compared with the big adult weekenders, and even some local club tournaments. This is an issue that needs to be addressed and it may be that I will be hassling some people to answer the question, 'what can we do to make state title events more attractive?'.

Today, the tournament is reaching the pointy end. The number 1 and 2 seeds meet on the top board in the first game of the day, and it looks as if the top seed James Morris will prevail. There is a jostling for positions behind James, with Matthew Cheah and Sam Gluzman fighting above their weight. By the end of the day, the fight for age group titles will also be more clearly drawn.

Once again live games are being broadcast by Box Hill Chess Club the hosts for the event. Once again, the games are over running. There is still one game going from the first round of the day, and the second round was due to start 10 minutes ago. I have it from the arbiter that the second round will start at 1.30pm, a half hour late, but the game still going has some play left in it.

White has less than 1 minute and had to cope with the move 49..Nxf3 unleashing an attack on his queen along the long diagonal. Kyle Gibson as white responded with 50.Qc1, and black's knight jumped away having won a pawn. The game continues, black is also down to 5 minutes now, so nerves will be a big factor in who wins this game.

It is now 1.30pm and the game is still going, albeit in its final stages now. White has succumbed to the time pressure and is material down. The game should be over soon, but the next round is now going to start well over 30 minutes late. There is a lot of hanging around for the kids here, and a lot of nervous energy being used up. I really do believe that organisers have to consider their scheduling when multiple games are being played in a day. Well, let me eat my words. Zach Loh won material, then lost a piece when he played a double check, which wasn't in fact a double check anymore! Kyle was then an exchange up, and it was heading to a king and rook v king and knight ending, when Zach allowed his knight to get skewered. An amazing game, but both Kyle and Zach looked thoroughly exhausted, the round has over run by an hour and the boys are going to be made to play in 15 minutes. Not much of a break!

Board 1, Michael Chan (left) against James Morris

Sam Gluzman faces us and his opponent, Karl Zelesco.

Matthew Cheah (left) and Max Chew Lee both punching above their weight.

Alana Chew Lee (left) against Denise Lim

Boys in blue and girls in pink!

Freak out your opponent by wearing the same top!

There isn't too much time between rounds for some players, but Maling Road is 5 minutes away, and well worth a visit for great coffee, good food, and award winning hot chocolate. It may not be brain food, but it certainly is soul food!

Walking around the hall, there is always a few interesting positions to look at. I wonder who will win this one?

Victorian Junior Championship - into the eleventh hour

2011-07-13T17:43:00.002+10:00

The third round in a day is always somewhat of a lottery, a test of stamina as much as a test of skill. And when the games over run it is doubly hard for the competitors. So far, both the rounds have gone over time today, and the third round started an hour later than advertised. I don't think that anyone is too bothered of the last round starting at 5pm, but when it was scheduled to start at 4pm it is rather annoying, especially if anyone had plans in the evening (like me, for instance!).

Board 1, no surprises with IM James Morris (left), but Matthew Cheah upset second seed, Zelesco in the previous round

Board 2, Zachary Loh (left) against Michael Chan

Board 3, Savithri Narenthan (left) against Karl Zelesco

The main playing area

Talented Girls (Gawin and Dilnutt) against talented boys (Yung and Yuan)

All MCC clash, Ari Dale (left) against Nicolaas Schroeder

The back of Sam Gluzman is nearest to us, while Jimmy Ying faces him, on board 5. The line of top boards is Box Hill Chess Club's DGT transmission boards.

In round 3 we saw Max Chew Lee's great victory against Ari dale, and that looked like being the upset of the day. However, he was trumped in the next round by Matthew Cheah in the 4th round, beating Karl Zelesco. This means that only one of the top seeds remains undefeated, and that is James Morris. He has to play Matthew Cheah in the fifth round. The other top seed is Michael Chan, who had dropped a half point to top girl, Savithri Narenthran, in the third round this morning. Michael found top gear in his next game beating Ari Dale.

The juniors in the hall are not looking their brightest at the moment. In fact exhaustion is the best description of the character of the main playing hall. Half the games of the round are already finished, and mistakes are being made across the board. Arbiter, David Hacche, who hasn't fitted in an afternoon nap today, has just commented on an inaccuracy by the top seed, though I haven't actually seen the game. I'm sure it is nothing too major, though.

I would definitely be looking at scheduling as an issue to remedy from this tournament. Earlier I talked with CV Treasurer Trevor Stanning, and CV President Leonid Sandler, and the general feeling is that there is too much tournament chess being played for our population in Victoria, which means that tournaments such as the Victorian Juniors, and even the State Championship do not seem overly exciting. I will be coming up with some formulae and ideas to try to remedy this situation, because the State Championships and the State Junior Championships should be flagship events.

Victorian Junior Championship 2011

2011-07-13T11:12:00.005+10:00

It is day 2 of the Victorian Junior Championship for the titles of U-18, U-16 and U-14. There has already been some speculation that the tournament is not particularly representative of the older age groups, and indeed, there are a number of younger (under-12's) players in the tournament hall. Perhaps a discussion regarding how best to attract older kids needs to be opened, and this may help with the wider issue of retaining players in the game generally, rather than the falling off at club level we see in the 16-25 age group. Funnily enough, some over 25's return to the game, and some of these become lifelong addicts, but they have lost some of the best chess playing years of their lives, and not as many return as give up.

Anyway, this is really a celebration of Junior chess rather than a condemnation. Chess Victoria and the Box Hill Chess Club have arranged the tournament. There are some issues with the format. It has been suggested the prizes are small, especially compared to the entry fee. However, I have certain issues with handing out anything other than nominal cash prizes in junior events, and if I go back to when I was a junior, there was no prize money on offer. Yesterday, Box Hill Chess Club had a clash with the tenants of the building they use, and the kids were squeezed into a small room, though it was sufficiently large to play, if not particularly comfortably.It is certainly not the worst venue I have seen used! Today there have been 3 games scheduled which seems a bit tough seeing the schedule is 75 minutes + 30 seconds per move. That could easily work out at 9 hours chess for some players today, and seems to be against the general guidelines of the Australian Junior Chess League for their staging of the Australian Junior Championship where even 2 games a day is deemed excessive.

The field in the end has turned out to be quite good. The late inclusion of James Morris and Michael Chan has bolstered up the top end of the field. The winner of the Under-12 event, Karl Zelesco, along with his arch rival Ari dale means that the tournament can claim to have strength at the top. All these players have made their way to 2/2, though not without some difficulties. Reports are that Karl Zelesco was a little lucky against Jason Chew in round 1 for example. The third round is currently under way, and about half way through. It is a fascinating round with some great match up's (the rounds will become more competitive through today), with perhaps the board 2 game between Zachary Loh and Karl Zelesco being the stand out game. The top games can be followed live at Box Hill's website.

Time to look at some games (there are already a few finished).

Some interesting endgames:

Here it is white to play, and Oswald Lee on board 19 exchanged bishop for knight. Was this correct? The bishop is usually a better piece than the knight when there are pawns on both sides of the board, but white does suddenly have a passed a-pawn.

White, Daniel Yuan, has got his rook stuck. Luckily, he knew the drawing pattern and played 1.Rxa6! as even if he loses his b-pawn, the bishop is the wrong colour for promoting the a-pawn! Well played!

One of the most interesting fights was between David Cannon and Nicolaas Schroeder, 2 pretty evenly matched younger players, and it has come to this. David has created a frontal defence to the passed pawn and should secure a draw.

Generally speaking, this is showing a pretty high standard of chess as juniors are usually weak in this part of the game, but Daniel and David are showing that good endgame knowledge can win a player valuable points and half points!

I spoke too soon in the last position. David Cannon had set up an excellent defence, but couldn't hold out. It was great to see 2 young players continuing their game to the death, and Nicholaas tried to win the position. Unfortunately, David didn't know the technique and succumbed.

I showed this to the boys after, and hopefully they have gained something from this ending.

The tournament hall is buzzing as James Morris just wins, and Ari Dale blunders a piece to Max Chew Lee. Max has a low ratin (1465) but already has some big scalps and is a dangerous opponent. Ari is going to find it tough to get a half point from this game.

Meanwhile, it has to be remembered that girls titles are also on offer in this event, although everything is run as one big tournament. Currently, Savithri Narenthran, the Australian under 18 girls champion is on 2/2 and is in a tough fight against Michael Chan. The next top seed is Denise Lim, but she is having her work cut out and Zhi Lin Guo in the following position.

This game has moved on somewhat, and white has made the most of the position. Black had a central king that was immediately hassled with 1.Rae1. After some exchanges, white has then fastened on black's backward b-pawn, and looks to be cleaning up the queen side. I think Denise will have her work cut out to hold on.

Meanwhile, Ari looks busted, Karl Zelesco has won a pawn against Zachary Loh, but I think Zach looked good earlier. Michael Chan looks to be winning a pawn in a double rook ending against Savi Narenthran. Will it be enough to win? Difficult to say. Kyle Gibson has a huge bind against Charlotte Dilnutt and is looking at breaking through, while the game between Dmitry Lee and Jack Puccini is a tough one. A perrenial favourite of openings at junior events is the 2 knights and this round was no exception.

There are just 3 of games left but none of them look like finishing soon. The next round is due to start in just under 10 minutes, which begs the question of whether the organisers have really considered the correct times for each round. It is an issue which tournament organisers need to look at. With 3 games in a day, the organisers obviously want to get the games finished as quickly as apossible, but not giving enough times between rounds is not the answer. This round will start 30 minutes late, and if the same is said of the next round, then some players could be subjected to over 10 hours play today. At the moment there is much hanging around which is not healthy for the players. Really, when there is a 2.5 hour basic time, and 30 second increment, it is obviously dangerous to give a 3 hour playing time. Are the last players to finish going to be given some time before their next games? Will this mean that the whole round will be delayed even longer? I don't know, and I'm going to have to go for a while. I will be back for the last round today, though I have no idea when it will start!

A day out down the Peninsula

2011-07-08T20:44:00.001+10:00

It's school holidays so with 2 weeks off work (mostly) it would be criminal not to get out and about a bit. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been great but as my wife is a photographer, that means good conditions. We decided to head down the Morning ton Peninsula, with the idea of checking out some places on the ocean side of the Peninsula. First we went for lunch in Sorrento, at Buckley's Chance, a great cafe/restaurant that does pretty good coffee, and a mean savoury pancake.

After that, we were ready for the elements. We started with a small trip round to the Sorrento Back Beach. The surf was amazing, the spray from the sea invigorating, and the sights of the cliffs, and sea stacks along with the sound of the surf and the smells of the sea were fantastic. We walked on the beach, and I took a trek to a lookout on the cliffs, while Caroline took on the role of professional photographer on the beach (hopefully she will put up some silky water, long exposure shots on her blog soon).

Around the corner is Portsea Beach, and further is Point Nepean

Sorrento Back Beach had great swell today.

Even Arthur's Seat and Port Phillip Bay can be seen from the cliffs.

From Sorrento we took a short drive back towards Melbourne before turning off. We weren't sure where we were going, but found ourselves on a track which led to Bridgewater Bay. This was a fantastic experience. The tide was in and was crashing high up the beach. We were able to just get down to the beach, but had to be careful to not get drenched or stranded.

Bridgewater Bay, with the sea right in your face!

The real photographer in the family dodges the waves for her art!

You can see by the photo's that the weather was grim. We were wet, cold and getting tired, but we did manage a couple of other small stops at Gunammatta Beach (where it was literally 'blowing a gale'), and at Flinders, where unfortunately the views were marred by works machinery on the pier. And then it was home, in about an hour!

When I moved to Melbourne from England a bit over 6 years ago, it was an exciting experience, and with day trips like today, things remain as exciting as ever. And for the first time in my life, I am living this close to the sea, and it is something that I will not take for granted.