50 Years Ago Pt 1

This October comes the 50 year milestone in my life. These are the sort of things that get you looking back on things. So I checked Ozbase to see if there were interesting games, or encounters here in Australia in the year of my birth. However, I was very disappointed to see that the great repository of Australian chess games, doesn't have a single entry for 1966. It's like there were no games played in Australia that year.

Well, there wasn't an Australian Championships, and it was before the Australian Open came into being, but there would certainly have been some things happening in Australia on the chess front that year. This is something which needs further investigation....

I mean, 1966 was a vintage year for chess. It was World Championship year, with Petrosian holding off Spassky, it was also Olympiad year (Australia didn't play) with the Soviet Union winning in Havana. The line up of stars at the Olympiad was impressive: Petrosian, Fischer, Spassky, Tal, Larsen, Korchnoi, Portisch, Gligoric all played, but the star of the show was the Spanish genius Pomar who played an amazing game against Sweden's Johansson. Pomar unfortunately died earlier this year, but in chess terms he had an amazing life. Pomar's opponents included Alekhine (one draw), Botvinnik, Fischer (who he drew with), Karpov, Petrosian (draws), Smyslov, Spassky (draws), Tal (draws), and most of the elite of the times. Here's some interesting reading about Pomar, while here is the obituary on the FIDE site.

Pomar-Johansson Havana Olympiad 1966, the fun and games starts in this position. The game had started as a fairly standard Nimzo-Indian, and black has built nice pressure on long diagonal, which Pomar now just gives up 17.Ng5!? Black takes the bait, 17..Bxg2. A pawn's a pawn, and what is white doing anyway??

18.Bxe6!! What a move! White grabs back his pawn, hitting c8 twice! 18..Bxf1 And again, why not? Black threatens mate and the white queen. What is white doing?

19.Qf3!! Unbelievable! A deflection based on a back rank mate theme. White moves his queen from attack, blocks the mate and cranks up the tactical tension a degree higher. 19..Bg2! An X-Ray defence. 20.Qxb7 Bxb7

Amazingly, after white regains his rook, the position will still be materially level, but black has problems developing as white keeps piling on the pressure. 21.Bxc8! Bd5

22.e4!! White just doesn't let up, throwing another pawn on the barbie. 22..Nxe4 23.Nxe4 Bxe4

24.Re1 f5 Black's king has an escape square 25.Be6+ Kh8 No it doesn't

26.Bxf5 winning back the pawn 26..Bc6 27.d5 and black finally resigned as he is definitely going to lose a piece at least. An absolutely fantastic blaze of tactics!

There was also one of the greatest tournaments of all time played in 1966, the double round robin Piatigorsky Cup played in Santa Monica and featuring Spassky, Fischer, Petrosian, Larsen, Najdorf, Portisch, Reshevsky, Unzicker, Donner and Ivkov. Fischer started abysmally, but then had a brilliant second half of the tournament to finish a close second to Spassky.

And finally, a little teaser. It's white to play and draw from this position, composed in 1966!

White to play and draw! Enjoy :)

The Sunday After

Labour leader Bill Shorten and sausagegate :D (image from the Telegraph)

After the Lord Mayor's show (literally) which was the British referendum on whether to stay in Europe last week, yesterday Australia had a general election. There are some differences in the UK and Australian voting systems that are important to understand.

1. Voting is compulsory in Australia. I'm not sure this is something I agree with. As preferences have to be put in order, this becomes even more imposing on the voter who has to choose between a certain number of candidates.

2. The UK has a first past the post system, Australia has a form of proportional representation. In theory, a vote for a minor party is important in Australia, though in practice the election has been similar to the UK system with a race between the 2 major parties, and the majority of voters not prepared to vote with their conscience as they believe this to be a wasted vote.

3. Australia has a federal system, while the UK is still a central parliamentary system. The states in Australia have considerable legislative, and budgetry powers which make them semi independent entities. The federal system is composed of 2 houses, the Senate and the Representatives which exercises a balance of power, apparently. The head of state is nominally still the UK monarch, but why I don't know.

4. Australia's economy is good, and it is considered a major economic power in the world, especially our mining industry. In reality, Australia's position seems to rely heavily on economic relations with the superpowers, America and China. Diplomatically, Australia is a minor player on the world stage. This is the opposite of the UK where economic strength is based on finance rather than raw materials, and international relations remain a high priority, even in our post-colonial world.


The biggest difference from my point of view of the UK referendum and the Australian general election seemed to have been the intensity of feeling involved. Now I know the UK referendum was about a single issue, but that issue was connected to almost everything about the way the country runs.The UK referendum was hotly debated, with pomp, anger, mistrust, frustration, and even violence among the emotions involved. The Australian election seems to have been conducted in an almost party spirit, with a relatively low key build up from the combatants. (my letter box got one electioneering pamphlet from our local Liberal candidate, and a guide on how to vote) Twitter was awash with pictures of the Labour leader struggling to eat a sausage at an election barbecue

The aftermath has been remarkably similar, though, with no one being any the wiser to what is going to happen. The UK finds itself in limbo waiting for someone to make a decision as to whether the referendum will be taken as a sign for the British Government to invoke Article 50 and leave the EU. It's over a week and no one seems prepared to push the button. Here in Australia, the vote was inconclusive and we wake up to a non-result. Not only is there no winner, the votes haven't even all been counted, and they won't until Tuesday! So we have until then, and possibly later, to discover who our new government will be, or if there will be a new government, or the need for another election.

Crazily long Senate ballot paper (image from http://voiceaustralia.news/)

Saying that, the ballot papers in this year's election were ridiculous. The senate paper was too long to lay flat in the voting booth, and it wasn't set out in alphabetical order, or any other order that seemed to make sense. It took me quite a while to find my first choice party and then I had to search for the second choice. I guess like many, I wasn't fully aware of all the parties I'd be putting preferences down for, but I knew which main parties to vote for or not. This made it rather cumbersome choosing a 5th and 6th choice at the polling booth, and next time I go to the polls, I'll be going with 6 definite choices.

Whinging Poms

I'm living in Melbourne, Australia, with my beautiful wife, and loving the time I'm having here. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, have been an Australian citizen since 2007, and intend to grow old here and die here. I'm as happy with my life as I could be, and more content than I was living in England. Saying that, not all is perfect in paradise, though to say such can land you in hot water!

We have an election coming up here in Australia, and a friend posted a thread on Facebook about the merits of the various major parties, and which should be voted for. My wife had the temerity to suggest that it doesn't really matter which party is voted for, neither are good and in the bigger scheme of things it hardly matters nationally or internationally who takes charge as policy won't change significantly, and our economy and foreign policy is hardly determined by ourselves, but more to be in line with our superpower trading partners. It was said it a flippant way (we are talking Facebook here), but the crux of the argument is pretty well founded. Not really that surprising seeing my wife has an BA (Hons) in political and social science.

But her criticism of the 2 party system (yes, I know we are nominally a PR system, but lets get real about what is actually happening here!) was greeted by harsh words, and even the typical call for her "to go back to where she came from if you don't like it here, you whinging pom" comments. It's bizarre! In England, before we moved to Australia, we moved to a village and always felt like outsiders and not a part of the community, and it was really the same sort of attitude that came across here. The lack of belonging was one of the driving forces that made us emigrate to Australia, or rather to emigrate away from the UK. To be honest, we haven't really experienced that sort of thing before, so it was a bit of a surprise, especially seeing anyone that knows Caroline, especially on Facebook, knows how much she loves the country and city she lives in.

But just to get things straight, the Liberal and Labour parties in Australia both have a lot to answer for, to my mind. At the moment, the 2 party rivalry in Australia resembles the situation in the UK in the 1990's where 2 centrist parties stood against each other and it was difficult to choose between the 2. I admittedly wouldn't have voted Conservative on principal, but I had no love for Blairite New Labour either. Well, things are similar here now. It's embarrassing to think that as a nation we voted in Tony Abbott at the last General Election. Anyone laughing at the US election campaign and finding Donald Trump an embarrassment shouldn't be pointing too hard yet. I mean, he's a bigot, and racist and supports extreme immigration protectionist policy, like our good old Tony. But the American's haven't voted him in yet, not like we did! In fact, his own Liberal party found Tony so embarrassing that they axed him and we now have the classic situation of having a leader of the country who wasn't elected as such. I wonder how many rednecks are happy to see their Tony replaced by a double speaking lawyer? And much like the situation in the UK, we see an opposition leader, Bill Shorten, with no personality (possibly rivalling John Major in that respect), and no real strong opposition to the incumbent party.

Anyway, after being told she was a whinging pom, the thread became a bit of breast thumping mantra of 'politicians may be crap , in fact are crap, but Australia is the best country in the World!' I wouldn't disagree with this. For me, it is as good as it gets. But then again, I'm white, English is my first language, I'm male, I'm heterosexual, I'm healthy, and I have an income. To be honest, I'm not sure which of these I'm most glad about, because being non-white, or female, or homo/bisexual, being ill or poor would leave me in a very bad spot. I'm not necessarily saying that these things would be better in other Western Democracies, or other countries, but that doesn't make it right here. I'm particularly concerned about the situation for asylum seekers in offshore detention centres. The United Nations Refugees Agency (UNHCR) has criticised our refugee policy as being "return-orientated" and others have called the centres "a chain of Human Rights violations". Read this report from Human Right's Watch, to see how proud we should be of our country's record on preserving Human Rights recently. Neither of our 2 main parties have said they would close offshore detention centres, so as I see it, the Labour party are as bad as the Liberals here.

Of course, if the politicians are crap, and their parties, and we accept that although Australia is a good place to live, it does have problems, then there is always the final platitude. At least we're in a country where we're free to express our complaints without violent recourse. Well, yes, I guess we aren't in a dictatorship, or a militarily run junta. We can say what we want about things without getting thrown in prison, or disappearing mysteriously. And that has to be a good thing. Except when freedom of expression isn't allowed, like for instance in the case of doctor's who go to the offshore detention centres to treat patients, and then aren't allowed to say about anything they did or saw. Strange really. I mean what has a doctor got to hide? Shouldn't we know if children are suffering because they are being detained? Shouldn't we know if sexual abuse, or physical abuse is happening in these places, if traumatic episodes are causing mental instability with self harm or suicidal tendencies being displayed? If overcrowding and/or malnourishment are causing illnesses? I guess not. Why should I care, I'm a happy, healthy, White, middle class Anglo-hetero male living in the best country in the World where if I want to criticise things I can.

But then again, I don't think I will criticise things or I'll just get called a whinging pom, and to fuck off back to where I come from if I don't like the way things are here.

Celebrating Australia

Yesterday was Australia Day, a public holiday which in recent years has brought mixed feelings out. On the one hand we are celebrating a great nation which I'm proud to have emigrated to. On the other hand, the indigenous population have had their land stolen and atrocities committed throughout the past 200 years.

In chess terms, Australia is not one of the great nations and never has been. However, there is still much chess being played and a chess culture is developing. The Australian Junior Chess Championship recently concluded in Adelaide and the under 18 was won convincingly by Ari Dale. Ari joins a list of very strong players who have captured the title. The girls title was won by Zhi Lin Guo who has progressed excellently into the top 20 active women in Australia, and who will hopefully be fighting for an Olympiad place in the not too distant future.

The age group champions were:

U-16 David Cannon (Vic)
U-14 Bobby Yu (Vic)
U-12 Michael Ostapenko (Qld)
U-10 Brandon Soetanto (Vic)
U-8 Sayum Rupasinghe (NSW)
U-16 Girls ??
U-14 Girls ??
U-12 Girls ??
U-10 Girls ??
U-8 Girls ??

Unfortunately it isn't clear who won the girls titles as events were doubled up, so the U-18 and U-16 played in one section as did the 14/12's and the 10/8's. I'd assume that the winner of each section would take the older age group award, but seeing I don't know, I'm not going to guess, potentially get things wrong and upset people.

I know I've already been harping on about the inequality in chess representation between men and women, but this is another example. With the open events, it is fairly clear who won excepting for the odd tie that required a play off, but with the girls there is no recognition of their achievements. Pretty poor.

What isn't poor is the Australian Chess Magazine 50 Moves which I resubscribed to today, though again it would be good to see some female representation in the pages of the magazine, rather than just Cathy Rogers with her excellent photography. The other thing I'd like to see more of is coverage of Australian chess, of which there was little in this magazine. Ian Rogers is obviously an excellent writer and his articles are great. In the December issue he focuses on The World blitz and rapid Championships where he was reporting from the scene. This is great for Australian audiences, but I actually enjoyed Adrian Chew Lee's and Eunice Koh's article about the World Youth Championships more. I guess the local feel, and personal knowledge of some of the players brings it a little closer to my own world.

I hope to see articles by Australia's young talented travellers on their experiences in chess tournaments abroad, as well as as tournament reports of important events in this country. Those reports were always the backbone of the British Chess Magazine when I was younger in the 1980's. Having quality players writing about the events they participated in, with great chess content was inspiring and educative. All top British GM's would write for BCM back then, with articles from Nunn, Miles, Short, Keene, Speelman etc, it truly was an excellent magazine. Due to financial issues the BCM took a hit, and very nearly folded a short while ago. Well it is back, and is excellent!

Again, I bought an issue (I was annoyed by the online reader edition I bought and if I subscribe, it will be to the hard copy) and it seemed excellent. Articles by McShane and Howell on the London Classic, and the British knock out tournament were the top 2 articles, but other contributors include Australia's own David Smerdon, Pentala Harikrishna and Krsten Muller. Like the Australian 50 moves, there is little of local interest, which again is a bit disappointing, but there is an article by a female contributor, Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant.

I guess both magazines, 50 Moves and BCM are aiming at high end material, and they certainly both have that. I think they are both great, but they would be even better with more local news.

(Good luck to Justin Tan and Moulthon Ly in Gibralter, and I hope they bring us a brilliant report for a future 50 Moves magazine. They are both currently leading ex World Champion Anand!)

Post Olympiad Chess Round Up

The recently finished Olympiad in Norway will no doubt be one long talked about. It was China's first victory in the open event, and probably not their last. With India coming in third without superstars Anand and Harikrishna, the focus of world chess certainly shifted away from Europe to Asia. There were category prize golds for Krygyzstan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, making the event a big haul for Asian countires. Australia competes in Asian events, and the continental success came here too. Australia were one of the big achievers gaining 29 places on their initial ranking and moving from a starting rank of 60th through to 31st (equal 24th). While all the Australian team contributed, our stars were undoubtedly current Australian Champion Max Illingworth and 13 year old Anton Smirnov. To be honest, the future looks good for Australian chess with a group of young and ambitious players who should soon be making their breakthroughs for Australia. In the current top 20 by FIDE rating, there are 9 players born 1990 or after, and 4 of these are born after 1994. Australia has every opportunity to be looking at an all GM team representing us at an Olympiad in the not too distant future!

The women's event was equally successful for Asia. China came in second (a slight disappointment for the tournament favourites) and category gold medallists include Mongolia, Tajikistan and Thailand. Australia's women also performed excellently, like the men moving up from an initial ranking of 51st to 32nd (equal 27th). For the girls it was a real team effort with no stand out results, though maybe it should be said that Berezina's performance on board 1 was very good. Australia's women don't have the same promise of youth that the men have, though there are 6 players in the top 20 born 1990 or after. However, of the remaining 23 players, 17 are born 1990 or after, so hopefully some of these will achieve their full potential and push into the top places.

Unfortunately, while the play seemed excellent, the Olympiad will also be remembered for some not so nice things. On the final day 2 players died. The official site of the Olympiad confirms the deaths of Kurt Meier of the Seychelles and Alisher Anarkulov of Uzbekistan. These are both very sad losses.

Hot on the heels of the end of the Olympiad there came more fall out. Another sad loss for chess will be the retirement of Judit Polgar. When announcing her retirement, Polgar in the Times took a dig at sexism in the game. Having coached a number of girls, I've seen this first hand and part of coaching girls in this male dominated game is to constantly help them to cope with the institutionalised sexism that is rife in chess clubs.

The other news from the women's game that interested me was Ukrainian GM Natalia Zhukova's swipe at turncoat Kateryna Lagno. Lagno switched federations from Ukraine to Russia at a politically volatile time. Added to this, the Russian team entered their player list late so that Lagno could represent her new country. When asked about her ex teammate Zhukova said:

"Getting rid of the parasites is always painless. Well, love cannot be forced. If she doesn't want to play for Ukraine, why do we need such people? We didn't communicate at the Olympiad, she avoided it. Cleansing is always for the better"

Tromso was also host to a FIDE election where Garry Kasparov lost to Kirsan Ilyumshinov, who stays as FIDE President for another 4 years. There has been mixed emotions about this, but one of the first big things to come up was Magnus Carlsen's participation in November's scheduled World Championship match. The Carlsen camp have asked for a postponement to the match which has been rejected by FIDE. It is getting like the Olympiad all over again!

Anyway, I intend to get lost in analysing many games from the Olympiad, stick my head in the sand and hope that all the politics and nastiness in chess sorts itself out. Fat chance!

Mixed feelings

Last night came the dreaded moment when my country of residence, Australia, took on my country of birth, England, in the women's Olympiad. I found it very difficult to cheer for one team or another. In the end, the Australian team won by a narrow margin which was something of an upset but good from my point of view was that Anne-Marie James drew with Sally Yu, probably the 2 players in both teams I know the best. This match has pulled the Aussie women's team up the rankings to 32nd or equal 23rd in match points terms. From a starting position of 51st this is a fantastic effort and they will continue their tournament next against a strong Serbian team, where Australia will be out rated by quite a bit on every board. However, this Olympiad has provided quite a few upsets already in both men's and women's sections, and Australian team spirit will be high for the match.

The women's event was virtually decided in the last round with the match up of China-Russia. These 2 amazing teams had been cutting a swathe through the rest of the field, and their 7th round encounter seemed like a tournament decider. Of course, with 4 rounds to go, anything could happen, and it is unlikely that a team will be able to hold it together for every match in the event, but the Russian women have given themselves a great opportunity to retain their title by beating China 3-1. If Russia do win, then it will add to the stories in Olympiad history, as the team were nearly denied entry to the event before it began. The Olympiad organisers had denied the Russian women a spot in Tromso after Russia failed to enter their team list on time. This caused a crisis in the chess world with FIDE President Ilyumshinov finally stepping in to use his Presidential power to allow the Russian women a spot. By all accounts, the late entry was due to Kateryna Lagno changing federations from Ukraine to Russia, and the Russian's not wanting to name the team until that change came through. It has certainly worked out well for the Russian's as Lagno's victory over Women's World Champion, Yifan Hou was an integral part of Russia's victory yesterday.

The Open section also had some amazing results. Firstly, Azerbaijan are on an absolute mission in this event, and with the sad death earlier in the year of star player Gashimov, it as if the team are playing with a purpose of winning the tournament as a tribute to him. Azerbaijan are now sole leaders having won all games except one draw. Of course, it gets harder to keep things going the further the tournament goes, and today they have a very tough draw against China who have already drawn with the Russians in an earlier round. Not that Russia are performing that well. After struggling to beat Uzbekistan, they then lost to the Czech Republic and currently languish in 16th spot 3 points off the leaders. In fact, there are a whole bunch of top nations above Russia who could easily win their last 4 matches to take out the title should Azerbaijan slip. Armenia, Ukraine, France and the USA have all come back from disappointments earlier, and are all ahead of Russia. The English team are on the same score as Russia, with surprisingly, Scotland also in that group.

Australia's men had a fine win against higher rated Mexico yesterday, that has pulled them up to 50th, though they are on the same score as the team in 28th. The open event has the most amazing pairings in round 8, and at the top, every match will be hard fought. It will be hard pushed to top the USA-Hungary pairing, though, where 5th seeds take on 6th seeds. Russia need to win all their remaining 4 matches to stand any chance of a top finish, and that starts tonight against a tough Spanish team. England out rate Serbia by quite a margin, but that won't help to make their job easier as the Serbs have been playing well so far. Australia have to play Uzbekistan where David Smerdon will continue his tournament against tip rated opposition. After drawing with world number 2 Aronian earlier in the tournament, he has to face 2700 rated Kazimdzhanov today.

Anton Smirnov at the Australian Championship in January

Australia's star performer has been their youngest player, 13 year old Anton Smirnov who has scored an impressive 5.5/6 for a rating performance just below 2600. It's Anton's turn to rotate out of the match today, but there will be 3 more matches after that when he will hopefully add to his tally. Meanwhile, England's star has also been the bottom board. Matthew Sadler took time off chess, but he is back and performing well, with 5.5/7 for a 2696 performance. England have had some tough pairings, but have performed quite well. Nigel Short has perhaps been the weakest link this time round, but he is a stalwart for England and may yet come through in the final rounds, that is if he isn't working too hard in his role in the Kasparov electoral team.

Olympiad Inspiration

When you're teaching something you have a responsibility to be a role model and to inspire the students. Of course, every teacher would like to see their students excel, but I doubt that it is possible to hope for 100% excellence. My own personal goal is to make every kid to whom I teach chess to come away with a positive feeling of the experience. This might mean them improving to a certain level, but more often, it is about enjoyment of their time in the classes.In that respect, I try to engage all the kids in the group in some way, to make each of them feel worthwhile, and to excite them in some way. It can be a challenge finding something for everyone. For example, today I was working with one 6 year old who had never played before, through to 11 year old's who are playing competitively in adult events with ACF ratings of around 1000.

Well today was easy, as my lessons all revolved around the Olympiad. No matter how experienced the kids were, they all shared a desire to see their favourite team do well. In multi cultural Melbourne this does not always mean Australia, though all kids have an interest in the Australian teams. When I told the kids that both Australian men's and women's teams won their first round matches, there was actual cheers from some of the kids. I told them of Australia's heroic losses to top rated teams in round 2, and although the kids groaned a bit, they seemed genuinely impressed with our players efforts, especially David Smerdon's draw with Aronian. There were more groans when I told the kids that Australia had below par results in round 3, but when I said the teams both scored 2-2 draws against lower rated opposition. But the kids rallied and said that the teams didn't lose and still had plenty of time to win games.

I can definitely say that the players in both Australia's men's and women's teams are absolutely inspirational for my students at the moment, and I'm sure if those players could see that effect on these primary school kids, then they could be proud with their achievements.

Here was a nice finish from Emma Guo in her third round game. Here, black has just played 33..Ne4 making white's rook look for a new home. Emma found 34.Rd8!. Black found the best move in 34..Kf8. Emma then found the nice forcing line 35.Rxe8+ Kxe8 36.g4 Qg6 37.f3 Nf6

Black's pieces have been pushed out the centre, while her king has found it's way into the centre. White finished with 38.Qxe5+ Kf8 39.Qd6+ which prompted black's resignation as 39..Kg8 40.Ne7+ forking king and queen.

I'll be using our teams as inspiration for my students for the next couple of weeks. And I wish all the Australians players the very best in the rest of their matches.

Olympiad Coverage

Day 2 of the event and there were still a lot of mismatches. That didn't stop there being some amazing upsets, but they were few and far between. Most notably, Ivanchuk lost to the board 1 of Norway's second team, and the Ukraine who are seeded second in the event were held to a draw. The teams that I'm following seemed to put in good performances. England won their match comfortably against Singapore, while Australia kept defending champions Armenia to a 3-1 scoreline. Sensational results by David Smerdon who held world number 2 Aronian to a draw, and Max Illingworth who held Sergi Movsesian to a draw were outstanding efforts. In fact all the Australians put in good performances but were outrated by 200+ points per board.

Lower down the field, Hong Kong managed a 2-2 draw with Afghanistan and Bhutan scored a half point against a pretty solid Trinidad and Tobago side. Unfortunately, all the island teams from close to Australia went down 4-0. That is Palau, Solomon Islands, and Fiji. The pairings will start to bring sides closer to their own levels from the next round, though, so it will start to get more competitive across the matches. My own favourite result of the round came from the board 1 match between Seychelles and Romania. Seychelles had scored an excellent 4-0 first round win against the GM led Turkmenistan team. In reality, Turkmenistan had failed to show, and the Seychelles found themselves in unusual territory. However, their board 1, Peter Meier rated 2039 stepped up to the plate against Romania's top board, 2626 rated GM Constantin Lupulescu, and came away with a draw. In fact, the game had looked good for Meier earlier, and in the end Lupulescu forced a repetition to hold the game.

Lupulescu as black is faced with a number for threats around his king with Qxh4+ or Nf7+ with Qxg6+ to follow being the major threats. The Rumanian player bailed out with the perpetual 35..Nf1+ 36.Kh1 Ng3+ 37.Kh2 and Peter Meier came away with a draw against a player 600 points his senior!

In the meantime, perhaps the game of the round was the all GM Fried Liver battle between Shirov and Sulskis.

Now I seem to remember an article in New in Chess a few years ago suggesting 11..Qh4 as an attempt to improve black's play. Sulskis played the sensible looking 11..Kd6 getting out of the discovered check, but after 12.d4 he soon found his king facing a typical Shirov onslaught. To be honest, I'm not sure what black was thinking allowing the Fried Liver against one of the most creative attacking players of our times. Anyway, here's the game.

Finally, here's some other places to follow the Olympiad. The coverage is truly excellent with chess24 and TWIC providing superb coverage of games and news. Facebook and Twitter are full of photo's and news from people on the scene but I'm following the blogs of Kerry Stead, Shaun Press, and David Smerdon. Of course, these all have a typically Australian flavour to them, and I'll be looking for blogs from players and visitors from other countries too.

Chess Fever Fortnight

Yesterday the first round of the Chess Olympiad started in Norway. This event will take my spare time over for the next 2 weeks, which means this blog is switching back to chess only for a while. Like most observers in the chess world, the Olympiad holds a special place for me.I will be following the results and games of a number of teams in the events. The event has plenty of coverage across the internet, but undoubtedly top site for coverage is chess24.

Firstly, I will be hoping that Australia can put up good results. My adopted country has been good to me, and I'm a firm supporter of the teams, especially as I know most of the players personally. The men's team start the event from a lowly 60th position in the seedings. However, the 2012 team was also outside the top 50 at the start of the event, but finished just outside 30th place, so hopefully good team spirit will bring us some good results. A young team, the Australians will certainly gain invaluable experience whatever their result. In fact, after their first round 4-0 win over the US Virgin Islands, the Aussies will have about as big an experience as is possible, playing defending champs, Armenia. The Australian women's team also won by 4-0 against Kenya. I was pleasantly surprised to see Sally Yu's name in the team list as I knew she had not been selected originally and I'd missed the news that she had found a place in the team. However, the downside is that our top player, Arianne Caoilli, will not be playing. Still, the women's team will also hopefully finish above their initial seeding of 51st.

I'll also be following the country where I was born, England. The men's team are pretty strong on paper, starting in 10th position in the seedings, and can hopefully bring some team spirit to the event, and challenge for a podium spot. The women's team start in 39th place, and features an old friend of mine in Ann Marie James, who I hope will have a great event. Both the men's and women's teams started with 4-0 results which is a great start, though not unexpected.

While these countries hold the most interest for me, I usually follow some other teams to make things more interesting. Of course, the top teams, and those near the top of each round will be of interest. But at the lower down the seedings, I'll be following some teams: Scotland and New Zealand have to be followed, just to make sure they don't finish above England and Australia respectively :D; I'll keep an eye on the Irish side, and no doubt will get some reports from Alex Baburin in Chess Today; Palau, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands are islands not too far from Australia, while Hong Kong I visited this year; finally, I will be following Bhutan who I think have the best flag in the event, though Swaziland's flag is also pretty cool. In fact, for a short while it looked as if Bhutan had produced the shock of the first round with a 4-0 win over Luxenbourg. However, the results had been recorded wrongly on the site, and in fact it was the other way round.

Bhutan's flag has to be one of the coolest!

Saying that, the coverage of the first round was remarkably smooth. Usually, the first round is full of errors, impossible to see because of lag or overuse of the site, and slow on producing the games. However, the results were mostly correct, the live games coverage generally good, and pgn files have already been put out, while an excellent bulletin can be found on the chess24 site.

A Day Out In The Country

I haven't written for a while for a number of reasons which I won't bore you with, but I'm back to blogging. I've a lot to write about, both concerning chess and non chess so there'll be bits of both. For now I want to talk about my day today. It's days like today that I realised why I moved to Australia.

Kookaburra looking at St Andrew's Market

I took a drive out to the countryside with my lovely wife, Caroline. I have always been amazed at just how lush this part of Australia is. I can remember back to my preconceptions of Australia. Those basically consisted of it's hot, there's loads of beaches, deserts and dangerous animals, and it's bloody hot! However, after living here for nearly 10 years, I've found the reality different. Winters in Victoria can be quite cool and the countryside is diverse and really beautiful. Today we travelled to one such area, the Yarra Ranges. We started with a trip to St Andrew's Market. Besides having some great stuff, the market is set in the beautiful eucalypt forest of St Andrew's. Unfortunately, there had been a power outage today, but it didn't stop the market. It shut down some cafe's and slowed things down a bit at the food and drink stalls, but that didn't dampen spirits of the market goers. In fact, even the weather didn't keep people away. It never really rose above 10 C and there were showers, but everyone seemed to still be having a great time.

The Honey Stall at St Andrew's Market set among the Eucalypt's

We then took a short drive through the Yarra hills to Healesville where we went for a walk at Badger Creek. I'd been to the nearby Healesville Sanctuary before which is great to walk around, but Badger Creek was really magical. After a lot of recent rain the creek was flowing well, and the ferns and flora were splendid.

Full flowing Badger Creek 

Badger Creek is an excellent place to spot the elusive Lyrebird. I had never seen a lyrebird before today, which included a walk through a lyrebird enclosure at a wildlife sanctuary! Today that changed and I saw a young male lyrebird. We were able to get quite close to him, though I couldn't get a good photo. Caroline thought he was young as his plumage didn't seem full yet he still seemed magnificent to me. In fact the whole area was magical, with great light catching the moisture on the ferns while sunshine lit up the gullies.

Sunlight on the ferns at Badger Creek

Today was a reminder to me to not take my new country for granted. Just a stone's throw from my city home is some absolutely amazing countryside which is so different to that which I was used to in England. As I get more settled into Melbourne life, it is all too easy to forget just how alien this part of the world seemed to me in the not too distant past. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but that hasn't applied to my view of Victoria.

To keep things fresh, it is good to check out the views of other people who are new to Australia, or thinking about emigrating or visiting here. It makes me smile when I compare people's thoughts about Australia to my own. So I'll be following this blog about an Australian roadtrip that is being undertaken by the brother of a friend from my school days, John Fowler. John and I were junior chess rivals who both ended up emigrating and while I didn't know his brother David that well, I'll still be interested to see how he feels about his trip. Hopefully David will see some amazing things and not too many scary Australian animals. I still haven't seen a snake in the wild but we did see a scorpion in Badger Creek today.

A wood scorpion (I think).

Chess in Victoria

Chess in Victoria seems to be booming, with good numbers attending club events, weekend tournaments, and junior events throughout the state. Currently the state Championship is under way, with a pretty good field. There are 2 IM's, James Morris and Igor Goldenberg, thought he highest rated player is visiting FM Kanan Izzet. After 3 rounds, FM's Wallis and Hacche are leading on 3/3 in the 12 player round robin.

While the flagship event is looking good, there are some things which aren't so good. Unfortunately, no Victorians qualified for the Australian Olympiad team. I say unfortunately as IM's Bobby Cheng, and James Morris would have stood a chance as well as GM Johansen. However, for one reason or another none of them applied. Saying that, an exciting young side is to represent Australia at the coming Olympiad. The players are:

GM Smerdon, IM's Ly, Illingworth, Ikeda, FM Smirnov

The women's team seems to be strong, though we in Victoria are disappointed that Sally Yu missed out:

IM Berezina, WIM's Caoilli,Guo, Dekic, WFM Nguyen

Good luck to all these players representing Australia in the Olympiad in Norway. That is, if it is going to be held in Norway. Recent speculation in the chess press has suggested that the Tromso organising team don't have the financial budget to pull the event off.  The best source to follow in the press is probably Norwegian journalist Tarjei Svenson who is writing on the Chess24 website. The latest article, written just yesterday, is ominous reading, and really sheds no light on whether the Olympiad is to go ahead as planned, or a contingency is to take place, or the event to be cancelled altogether. With only a few months before the event is due to start, this is pretty poor management.

I play at 2 chess clubs, and am enjoying life in both. Unfortunately, I couldn't play last night at the MCC in the City of Melbourne Open due to work commitments. CM Jack Puccini continued his unbeaten start moving on to 4/4 and he is joined by Paul Kovacevic. These 2 now have a clear 1 point lead over a large group of players, Malcolm Pyke, Dean Hogg, Svetozar Stojic, Richard Voon and Marko Grabovac. The rest of the field is spread out behind these players as we approach the half way mark in the 9 round event. Before moving on, I just have to mention Geoff Cook again, who won with the black pieces against higher rated Tom Kalisch. Geoff is putting in a strong performance in this event. And to make Tom feel better, I was looking through an old British Chess Magazine and saw his name in it. Well I guess it's his name, unless there's another T. Kalisch somewhere. So Tom, did you play in the Hastings tournament in England during the late 70's, maybe 76/77?

My other chess club is Glen Eira Chess Club, where I am the top seed in our second tournament of the year. The club is very sociable, made up of some regular adult players, lots of juniors, many of whom are pretty strong, and some new to competitive chess adults who again can be quite strong, though a bit raw. We are running a 7 round event and have about 20 players involved. This is a few less than our last tournament, but seeing that Box Hill Chess Club are running their club championship on Friday's, I think we're not doing too bad. One of our new junior players, Fergus Chiverton won an upset win against Alistair MacCutcheon. Alsitair performed well in our first tournament, and backed this up with a solid performance in the Doeberl U-1200 event. He is working extremely hard at his game, so this is a great win for Fergus. My game this week was in an opening I haven't played for a long time, but was once very important to me, the 6.Bg5 main line of the Sicilian Najdorf. I remember as a young player putting in a lot of work into this opening, and I still remember a lot of it....though I'm going to go into this in another column this week. Late entries are still being accepted, and we are happy to see any players at the club, old or new, so come along and have some fun.

WOM Women's Masters

Girl Power at the MCC

I just so happened to be in the vicinity of the Melbourne Chess Club today, so I thought I'd head in, pay my membership for the year, and check out the Women's Masters' tournament currently being held there. Well, I managed to pay my membership and my entry for the 2014 Club Championship (so there is no backing out of it now!) before hearing some of the grief of the organisers of the WOM Women's Masters. Apparently, organisers Gary Bekker and Jamie Kenmure have been criticised for clashing their event with the Australian Junior Championships, something which may have had an effect last year, this year and possibly next year. Of course, organising a tournament in the busy summer schedule without clashing with the Australian Championship or Australian Junior is going to be difficult. In fact, this year, senior and junior championships even clashed with one another! To be honest, I find it a bit odd that a quality event should receive criticism. I remember GM Ian Rogers saying that he wouldn't advocate giving the Junior Championships qualification status for attendance at the World Youth Championships, saying that selection is preferable. His reasoning for this was that if a strong young player decided to play at a super tournament like Wijk aan Zee, then this would be preferable for them than playing in the Australian Junior Championships. A bit like MCC's IM Ari Dale is doing at the moment! Of course, the same standard should apply to the Women's Masters and if our strongest girls are selected to play in this event, like WFM Savithri Narenthran, then this should be a preferable experience for them than playing in the Australian Juniors. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with this, but it would seem a consistent theme.

Graffiti opposite MCC. Is this how the critics of the Women's Masters see the organisers?

The organisers were also beset by a withdrawal, which is never an easy thing to take in a round robin. However, WCM Vineetha Wijesuriya is currently in hospital with appendicitis which is something that couldn't have been foreseen. As a friend and work colleague of Vin, I wish her a speedy recovery and hope to see her back on the chess circuit soon.

So far, before today's games, English WIM Heather Richards was leading the event with 3/4 points, though 6 players are just half a point behind, WGM Sukander (top seed, Indonesia), WFM Sengeravdan (Mongolia), WFM Vahtra (Estonia), WFM Brokko, and Aussie WIM's Alex Jule and Katherine Jarek (last year's winner). However, there is a long way to go and anything can happen, as top seed Irine Sukander found out in the last round when she was held to a draw by the lowest rated player in the tournament, WFM Savithri Narenthran, the 2011 Australian Girls Champion.

The MCC are doubling up tournaments over the weekend with the annual Australia Day Weekender taking place (but I'll be blogging about that in a couple of days time) so the women are moving their games from the afternoon session to a morning session for the next few games. Now while I'm pretty happy to see such a strong women's event being played in Australia (I have reservations about women's only events, as regular readers of this blog will probably know), but I find it infuriating that women should have to play second fiddle to men in chess. As a norm providing round robin, this should be seen as one of the most important events in Australia this year, not a aside to a junior championship, or a weekender.

Anyway, I want to finish on a positive note, so well done to the organisers for bringing this event together, and for the players for their combative play, and their tolerance of circumstances.

An Englishman Abroad?

Iconic Brighton Beach Huts. People already swimming at 8 am as the temperature hits 30 C. Later it will be too hot to be outside!

The question on my mind today is to what extent do expats assimilate to their new countries. Or how much do they keep of their old country with them? This is on my mind as Melbourne hits temperatures that I'd never encountered before leaving the UK. I have been in 40 C temperatures before here in Australia. I moved to Australia in 2005 during the drought years in Victoria, and have lived through the 2009 season which is the worst on record. February 7th 2009 has been dubbed "Black Saturday" in Victoria when a combination of intense heat (47 C) and strong winds which brought down power lines and fanned flames, caused widespread devastation throughout Victoria and resulted in over 170 deaths.

The view from Elwood at 8 am this morning. A hazy 30 C temperature

This week has seen 40+ C temperatures in Melbourne, and it is something that I don't think I'll ever get used to. Today has seen a high of 42 C (108 F), yesterday was 41 C and tomorrow promises to be 44 C (112 F). Friday will also reach 40 C, but there is a cool change promised later in the day. Perhaps even more of a problem for me is the heat accumulation and the fact that is stays unbelievably warm at night. Tonight for instance, the low temp will be 26 C. To me that is a beautiful daytime temperature!

Personally I feel very Australian, I love where I live and fully embrace Australian culture in its multicultural dimensions. There are some things that I think I'll never get used to, but that doesn't deter from the fact that I feel totally at home here. As much as I love travelling to different countries, I always enjoy coming home to Melbourne, a feeling that I didn't really experience in the UK.

So while I might sound English, and have come from England, and still exhibit some English traits (it's difficult to throw off 40 years of social upbringing just like that), I don't consider myself an Englishman abroad. I am living where I want to be, which makes me more Australian than English!

My windswept Aussie look!

How Australian am I? Well, I scored 14/18 for a Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oy, oy, oy. How'd ya do, mate? Performance on this quiz: see if you are more Australian than me? :D

Best In The West

Now this is a tournament I would have really liked to have played in, but I had to work for most of the first day so it wasn't an option for me. The turnout was fantastic from both a quality and quantity point of view. A great tribute to the organisers, Hobson's Bay Chess Club.

Tony Davis, player and organiser.

The tournament has been run since the early 1980's, but this must surely be the strongest and biggest of all so far. There were over 80 players competing this year and it caused a few comments about the fact that the tournament was only to be a 5 round swiss. This meant that there was potentially going to be more than one winner without them having to play each other, but in the end the tournament had only one winner, and some great games and upsets. Members of Hobson's Bay Chess Club were happy with the format, and chief organiser Tony Davis said that if more than one player finished on full points, then a play off match would be organised. It seems that no one who played was too bothered with the arrangements.

Top seed in the tournament was a real coup for the small Western suburbs club. GM Hrant Melkumyan from Armenia came to Australia straight from the World Cup in Norway and agreed to play in the event. This attracted some big names from Australian chess, with young guns Bobby Cheng, Max Illingworth and James Morris all coming along for the chance to play the 2600+ GM. In the end, the Armenain proved too good and won the tournament with a perfect 5/5, beating Morris and Illingworth among others.

GM Melkumyan taking his coat off as he arrives to play IM James Morris. Cheng-Illingworth is already underway in the background.

It was great to see the 3 young Aussie players competing in the same weekender, with Max travelling down from NSW. They represent, perhaps, the future of chess in this country, and already occupy top 10 positions  for Australians in the FIDE list (Illingworth 3rd, Cheng 4th, Morris 9th). These 3 stars finished on 4/5, Illingworth and Morris only losing to Melkumyan, while Cheng lost to Illingworth. They were however beaten to second place by FM Chris Wallis who finished on 4.5. Chris was held to a draw in the third round by Sylvester Urban, but won the rest. Knowing Chris, I'm sure he would have rather scored less and had the chance to take on the GM, but he proved too good for the rest of the players he had to play. The group on 4/5 was large, and Illingworth, Cheng and Morris were joined by another IM Ari Dale, FM's Bill Jordan, Dusan Stojic and Greg Canfell (last year's winner with another good showing), and Zachary Loh (the high school kid, had an unbeaten tournament including a draw with NZ FM Luke Li). However, it was a Hobson's Bay Club member, Dean Hogg, was the star of the show joining this elite group on 4/5. Dean's only loss was to Chris Wallis, and his scalps included IM Ari Dale.

Dean Hogg of HBCC with a great tournament performance.

And now on to the upsets. On the first day Marko Grabovac already produced 2 amazing victories and could be said to be the player of the day. In round 1, Marko rated 1560 beat FM Anton Smirnov (2328), and in the second round won against WIM Emma Guo (2018). He couldn't maintain this pace, and had to concede a draw to FM Bill Jordan in round 3! Unfortunately Marko's run only lasted the first day and he lost both games today, albeit to another 2 strong players, FM Stojic, and Noble Park club champion, John Nemeth.

Day one hero, Marko Grabovac writes his move down against FM Dusan Stojic

While Marko was the hero of day one, the upsets continued on the second day, and the biggest upsets were probably caused by Alanna Chew Lee. Alanna, rated 1206 first beat George Hua (1951), and then Anurag Sannidhanam (1663) to help her to reach a score of 3/5. In fact, the tournament featured many of Australia's top women players, Emma Guo (5th), Sally Yu (6th, and currently on vacation from her studies in America where she returns to tomorrow!) Savithri Narenthran (14th), Tanya Krstevski (22nd), Rebecca Strickland (26th) and Alanna (27th) were all playing, as well as some younger girls.

Sally Yu, playing the day before going back to America to study

Women's Olympian Emma Guo playing Youth Olympian Savithri Narentran. Second day hero Alanna Chew Lee fills in her scoresheet on the next board.

 The tournament was run by Hobson's Bay Chess Club, with support from International Arbiter Gary Bekker, and a live display board was operated by Noble Park's Phillip Drew. Seeing Melkumyan's game live was great, and more games can be seen through the tornelo operating system, which was provided by David Cordover of Chess Kids. All in all, this will be a tough tournament to top, but the guys at Hobson's Bay Chess Club are a pretty much down to earth bunch, and they will no doubt organise next year's event with the aim of producing a good event that all the competitors will enjoy, not one that will be bigger and better than previous tournaments. That is why the Best in the West is an enduring and successful event, and I hope it will remain so for many years to come.

A Typical Wednesday

My work as a chess coach sees me mainly driving from school to school running hour long sessions of coaching and playing for kids. I also do some more advanced coaching, and try to write a little bit as well, and of course try to keep up with chess news and look at some games and ideas. During the week I have some time between lessons to relax, or work, or do whatever I feel like doing. I always have reading material with me ("Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson, "The String Diaries" by Stephen Lloyd Jones, and the latest  New in Chess Magazine), and a laptop with mobile internet access.

So besides my work admin site, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, I have dropped into a sort of routine about which sites I look at on a regular basis. I follow chess news mainly through TWIC, though I sometimes go to other sites if there looks to be a story of interest. I also seek opinions on chess forums in both Australia and England (I must branch out a bit here, and start looking at some more forum sites). Today, I learned from the Australian Chesschat forum the sad news of the death of Peter Parr. I had never met Peter but his role in Australian chess is legendary, as an arbiter, organiser, mentor, chess shop owner and a player. Memories of Peter Parr, and tributes from chess players who knew him can be found here.

RIP Peter Parr (image from CDS)

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It's currently a typical Melbourne winter's day. There is a fairly strong breeze blowing, and rain is coming in showers. Funnily enough, the day started in a completely different manner, with sunshine and what felt to me like a surprisingly early sunrise. Needless to say that Melbourne is famous for it's 4 seasons in a day. My main concern is whether the rain will be coming down when I'm outside or inside. So far I've been pretty lucky this winter, as I have mostly seemed to avoid the rain. That luck has to run out sometime I guess! Talking about 'unlucky', GM Cori of Peru will definitely be feeling aggrieved being eliminated from the World Cup. Cori was involved in a potential big upset against Radjabov after finishing 1-1 in the Rapid games and taking the match to a blitz play off. Cori claims he thought the start time of the next round was 6.50, when in fact it was 6.15. After seeing players taking their seats online, he rushed to the playing hall, arriving 2 minutes late for the start of the game, and was forfeited. This seems incredibly harsh to me, especially as there were no written notices as to when the start time of rounds were to be. While the decision may have followed the letter of the law, it seems that the processes involved were rather sloppy, and this certainly needs tightening up, by organisers and FIDE.

I am somewhat luckier than Mr. Cori, as the rain has stopped just as I walk to head to my next class. Will the weather be as kind to me on the walk back?

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Well luck has stayed with me today, and I've been inside when it's been raining, though we're only half way through the day. Driving between jobs can be somewhat monotonous and I often fill the time listening to music, like I guess a lot of drivers do. But sometimes I just like to think either about the lessons that I'm to present, or chess in general, or anything else that comes to mind. Today, 2 subjects have been buzzing round my mind in spare moments. One is what I genuinely feel about the 'zero tolerance' rule that cost GM Cori his game, and the other is coffee!

I actually quite like the fact that a player can be forfeited if he isn't ready to start at the allotted time. If chess wants to be recognised as a professional game/sport then I think setting professional standards of organisation and behaviour is reasonable. Of course, the case involving GM Cori was anything but professional. A minimum expectancy from the organisers should be prior written instructions as to when rounds are to be played. In this case it was a verbal instruction given to players after the stress of having already played in a 2 game rapid match. The more I consider this, the more I personally don't think that this case was handled fairly and I have a definite sympathy with Cori.

Quite another issue is applying the zero tolerance rule to all events, and this touches on how different levels of events are treated. I'm sure if FIDE could get their way, then all FIDE rated events would have an automatic forfeit rule for players not present at the start of a playing session. But at the amateur level this is really not realistic. Take for instance, the FIDE rated tournament currently being played at the MCC, the Malitis Memorial. Players are travelling to the club after work on a Monday, through traffic which can sometimes be heavy and it cannot be expected that they would get to the venue for the start time of 7.15 pm every week. In fact. some players even let the arbiter know if they will be late in an act of courtesy to the club and their opponent. Thankfully, tournament organisers currently have the discretionary ability to state their own forfeit time for a game, and the MCC uses a 30 minute period of grace for a player to arrive after the start of the playing session. If a player has trouble with this, then postponements, and late starts (with the agreement of an opponent) are possible.

There are definitely 2 tiers to chess competition, and even if we all play under one rating system, FIDE have to understand that local club players have different needs to the top professionals. Getting sponsorship and full recognition at the top level is a different issue to getting a large number of bodies to play chess at lower levels, but both are equally important for their own reasons.

I'm the Expresso (from a meme site)

Coffee is a different subject that I have daily thoughts about. In fact, I may have a mild addiction to coffee, and I usually have 1 or 2 coffee's a day. We're not talking about instant coffee here, but the real thing. My preference is simply black coffee, either in short or long form. I don't take milk or sugar preferring the genuine taste of the coffee. Or at least, I hope to enjoy the taste of the coffee, though they aren't always great. I usually pick up a take away on my way to my first class in the morning. This class will be at 8 am each morning so an early pick me up int he form of a coffee is much needed. I tend to pick my coffee up from the Artful Dodger in Elsternwick which serves a very good coffee, strong and full bodied, but with s slightly sweet flavour. After that I tend to find somewhere to sit and have a coffee at some stage during the day. Today I was in the bayside suburb of Black Rock and had a pretty decent long black in Jacques, along with a tasty almond croissant.

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Well, I'm sitting at home in the evening after a miraculous day of missing rain showers and staying dry. I suppose I should really apologise for going on about the weather, but I believe it has something to do with my English upbringing. With rain always around the corner, the English are weather obsessed, and if it's not too wet, then it must be too hot, or too cold, or too dry, or just "not quite right", or "about to deteriorate". Looking back on my day, I can say there were some real highlights. Starting a new book is always a risky thing, but "The String Diaries" has completely gripped me. It has the potential to be one of the best thrillers I've ever read (not that I'm particularly well read in that genre).

(Goodreads)

The other notable moment was when I was showing some of the kids I teach pictures of top chess players from my New in Chess Magazine. Comments included "Wow, he's just a kid" (on Carlsen), "Who's that old guy?" (on Gelfand, depressingly younger than me!) and "He looks weird" (on Ivanchuk). Sometimes it's a challenge working with kids, but there are times when it brings a smile to your face!

By the way, just 33 days before my holiday!!